On the internet, no one knows you’re a dog. Or a paedophile, a stalker, a paid astroturfer, a Giyus (Give Isreal Your United Support) agitpropper or just your common or garden angry white male with a grudge. Or many grudges, even. Some brave souls go public in person here on Comment is free — the site’s editor, Georgina Henry, is apparently considering imposing this on the rest, and unsurprisingly the idea is meeting resistance.
With a few rare exceptions of posters being forcibly ousted by the obsessive types who build dossiers of throwaway remarks seeking true identities, most of us are anonymous online and release what personal information we do, because we choose to — for the majority, that seems to be very little.
Over the years, among semi-professional argument-pickers like myself, I see a pattern of disclosure occurring only when a poster wishes to nail a particular topic with some clincher of personal experience, or even identity: a black or gay poster, for instance, will often toss that nugget into the mix to provide a little support for their argument — “Hey, I know what I’m talking about!”
Beyond that, the prevailing model for these kinds of boards is for anonymity — discussion pieces carry bylines, comments carry pseudonyms. But would loss of anonymity bring loss of freedom? Loss of fringe perspectives?
It’s not the lone nut that commenters are concerned about, rather the multitude. It’s public controversy that posters fear. Shocking that, isn’t it? Stop and think. They fear being exposed for controversial political and social views.
Many point to the increasingly common practice of personnel departments and recruitment agencies googling candidates to pick up anything awkward. This is of course alarming.
Clearly enough, the prime concern regarding employers and/or prospective employers googling you isn’t their curiosity, or the monitoring itself; it’s the purpose, and end result. If employees are going to be persecuted for their political views, then one might hope that anyone who considered themselves liberal would view those actions as entirely wrong and oppose them in fact and principle.
It’s easy to see why anonymity is prized by commenters — and easy to see in the current climate why a loss of anonymity might swiftly lead to anodyne discussions of the kind found on the BBC’s boards. Case closed then?
Nope. Georgina is absolutely right that anonymity is not a liberal value — democracy, progression, political discourse, cannot survive on anonymity. Moreover, the individual’s voice matters — today that means on the internet.
Guardian