The the question in my title is not just there to grab your attention. It seems many news sites, including sites like the Huffington Post and The Washington Post, are considering altering the rules under which people who post comments to their websites are permitted, to a large extent, to use anonymity to hide their true identities.
The Washington Post plans to revise its comments policy over the next several months, and one of the ideas under consideration is to give greater prominence to commenters [sic] using real names. […]
The Huffington Post soon will announce changes, including ranking commenters based in part on how well other readers know and trust their writing.
“Anonymity is just the way things are done. It’s an accepted part of the Internet, but there’s no question that people hide behind anonymity to make vile or controversial comments,” said Arianna Huffington, a founder of The Huffington Post. “I feel that this is almost like an education process. As the rules of the road are changing and the Internet is growing up, the trend is away from anonymity.”
The trend is away from anonymity. I don’t know if that is a good thing or a bad thing.
I do know that the first time I published comments under my real name and then posted an op-ed in my local paper mildly and politely criticizing John McCain for his us of the words “gooks” (note: my children are half Japanese-American) back in 2000 and suggesting that he should apologize for those remarks I received harassing phone calls, a few of which made implied threats of violence to my family. At that time I vowed never to post online using my real name again.
On the other hand, we all know that anonymity allows easy access to individuals with an agenda who come to this site and other sites to attack individuals for their views or even in BooMan’s case to disclose personal information about him that at the time he wished to keep private. However, we also know that anonymity allows some very vile ad hominem attacks to be made and racist, bigoted remarks to see the light of day, comments that likely never would be made if the commentator’s name could be discovered by family, friends or employers by a simple search online.
Many sites which accept anonymous comments treat the problem in different ways. Some sites seem not to care and allow anything and everything to be posted. Daily Kos allows its own members to hide comments that are offensive by using troll ratings, and on occasion the site administrators ban posters who it deems too controversial (a process that continues to evolve and recently led to multiple diaries regarding the issue of the misuse of troll ratings to foster flame wars and repress the views of those with whom certain groups disagree).
At Booman Tribune, we generally give out warnings first, and if the behavior persists the individual may be banned from the site, though that has been an infrequent occurrence of late. But no one here discloses the identity of the person whose behavior has crossed the line into personal atatcks. That was not the case in a recent incident involving derogatory comments posted to the Cleveland Plains Dealer’s online comments section.
The Plain Dealer of Cleveland recently discovered that anonymous comments on its site, disparaging a local lawyer, were made using the e-mail address of a judge who was presiding over some of that lawyer’s cases.
That kind of proxy has been documented before; what was more unusual was that The Plain Dealer exposed the connection in an article. The judge, Shirley Strickland Saffold, denied sending the messages — her daughter took responsibility for some of them. And last week, the judge sued The Plain Dealer, claiming it had violated her privacy.
There is no expectation of privacy under American law when speech is made in a public forum such as on television, in print or standing on a soapboix in the public square. That is one reason why newspaper editorial boards and journalists, in my view, have been very cautious about what they say, fearing the reactions of advertisers, powerful individuals and organizations (think of the pouf pieces written by the NY Times leading up to the Iraq war as one example) and even mobs of citizens to opinions considered unpopular.
It must be remembered that it wasn’t the mainstream media that led the fight for Civil Rights or led opposition to the Vietnam War in the 20th Century. Far from it. Journalists, editors and publishers, by the very nature if their business (and it has become ever more a business over the course of my lifetime) tend to avoid controversy, or or hide the truth of many issues through the use of ridiculous “balanced reporting” in which the lies of one side are permitted as much weight as the facts of another side (see, e.g., the current “controversy” over global warming as one example where the lies and half truths of climate change skeptics — for the most part not experts in climate science who are funded by groups opposed to the reduction in the use of fossil fuels — are given equal weight in the news media to those of climate scientists who publish their research in peer reviewed scientific journals).
However, from its inception, the internet, by custom and tradition has permitted anonymity (assuming no other violation of the law such as comments which threatened bodily harm or death to specific individuals) giving rise to a belief among most people who post online that anonymity was the norm and that this custom or tradition would always remain. That belief is now being challenged directly by new organizations and may lead to legislation in the future from Congress limiting the use of anonymity omnline.
There are many negatives to online anonymity, as the NY Times’ article from which I have quoted points out, but there is one large advantage: it allows the fee expression of ideas without fear that you will be punished for that expression, or that others will retaliate against you for your views. That is something to consider carefully before we plunge headlong into any new era in which online anonymity is weakened and posters are required to use their real names or provide personal information to online blogs and websites that can be discloses publicly at the whim of the website owner.
