By
Madeleine KandoHistorically, there are many reasons to be ‘anonymous’. It guarantees free speech by protecting the individual from persecution. Many famous writers and thinkers wrote under a pseudonym. Voltaire’s real name was François-Marie Arouet. Additionally, less savory occupations required people to be anonymous: the executioner at the guillotine is hooded. The bank robber or thief covers his face with a black ski mask. Kuklux Klan members wear hoods to hide their identity.
But how do you interact with someone who does not have an identity? If a person rings your doorbell and starts a conversation, it is normal to expect some kind of response. But would you react differently if that person were wearing a ski mask?
In the online world, there are three ways to identify a user: 1) by its identity, i.e. his name and possibly other identifying facts. 2) By using a pseudonym: the user’s true identity is masked, but not impossible to trace. 3) As anonymous. The user’s true identity is masked, such that any actions by that user cannot be traced to a person.
Posting under your own identity makes you accountable for what you write. Even writing under a pseudonym, without being held personally accountable, the writer has to maintain a consistent "identity". Anonymous however, falls beyond the term ‘accountability’, since there is no one to hold accountable.
Credibility:
The more identity is revealed, the more credible the writing is. Kierkegaard had very little regard for anonymity:
‘An anonymous author by the help of the press (read: internet) can day by day find occasion to say whatever he pleases to say, and what perhaps he would be very far from having the courage to say as an individual; that every time he opens his mouth he at once is addressing thousands of thousands; that he can get ten thousand times ten thousand to repeat after him what he has said—and with all this nobody has any responsibility.’
Read more...
