By
Madeleine Kando
Historically, 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.
Criminal behavior increases with anonymity, since it allows conduct without consequence, and therefore non-accountability; when fully identified, a person can be tracked down and punished for his behavior. In the case of a pseudonym, even if punishment of the person herself is impossible, the reputation of the author will suffer. Besides, complete anonymity serves a different purpose than pseudonymity. It is used for actions, like robbing a bank, posting a sign, or visiting a web site; pseudonymity is necessary for communication, allowing the back-and-forth exchange of ideas or a consistent identity to foster understanding.
Organizations like Alcoholics Anonymous are actually based on pseudonyms. i.e. only a first name is required and members are not allowed to reveal others' membership status outside the AA community. But inside the group, the members are still individuals, not completely anonymous.
Misuses of Anonymity: There are no safeguards against the abuse of anonymity: spam, stalking, hacking, and sharing of illegal documents, viruses
Philosophical arguments: Whether you adhere to Hobbes’s social contract theory or Locke’s more democratically based government, both say that if a member commits an unlawful act, he owns that act. If an act is committed anonymously, there is no way to attach a man's responsibility to it. An anonymous society by definition, could not function as a society; evil deeds would destroy it. Systems administrators often take on the role of the punisher in online communities, restricting or denying service to offenders of regulations. This only works if the identity of the perpetrator is known. In a completely anonymous system, it is impossible to detect an offender, as the source of the problem is entirely nameless and identity-less.
Privacy versus Anonymity: The issue of online privacy is at the forefront of the debate of our online presence. But privacy and anonymity are not the same thing. Online privacy is the expectation that your privacy (which is already online) will not be shared. But privacy does not necessarily imply anonymity; a website may, for example, record visitors' behavior, but recording users' names and personal information for later use or exploitation is an invasion of privacy.
My conclusion is that anonymity on the Internet is a double-edged sword. Its potential to protect free speech is abused to the point that it has become a blunted instrument.
PS. Sometimes our readers comment as ‘anonymous’ without really wanting to. The blogger blog platform makes it difficult to comment if you don’t have a Google account. Therefore, please don’t hesitate to comment, even as ‘anonymous’. leave comment here
