Ollie
kraken titsThe sheer number of people on Facebook with their real names, photos, locations and workplaces on their profile who are happy to throw abuse at other people kinda disproves the argument that it’s online anonymity that causes abusive behaviour
occoris@kirstyyarr afaik its less "online anonymity" and more "online you cant punch me in the moment"
🐚 Undo Influence 🐚@kirstyyarr Yeah. I remember when mr_xenophora was first all excited about it for this very reason (10 years ago). I said, "Yeah, I'm skeptical."
Jo 🌸@kirstyyarr yep. it’s their personality which is part of it as well.
Bob Mottram 🔧 ☕ ✅@kirstyyarr That argument against anonymity was always bogus. They just wanted real identities for advertising reasons, otherwise it's hard to cross reference the profiles with information from other sources, like credit card companies and data brokers.
binchicken@kirstyyarr i heard about the Dunbar number or Dunbar's number or something, it's about the number of people our brains are capable of conceptualising as actual humans with thoughts and feelings and it's very low. so it's not that we don't fear consequence, it's because we don't think there IS a consequence because we can't see those we hurl abuse at as human. our brains are too small
Doc Edward Morbius ❌@kirstyyarr The problem was never anonymity or pseudonymity, it is impunity and immunity.
Ex-Googler Yonatan Zunger, chief architect of Google+, has an excellent observation on this, and of the harms of forced identity revelation.
@kirstyyarr In practice, the forced revelation of information makes individual privilege and power more important. When everyone has to play with their cards on the table, so to speak, then people who feel like they can be themselves without consequence do so freely -- these generally being people with support groups of like-minded people, and who are neither economically nor physically vulnerable....
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https://web.archive.org/web/20180903205908/https://plus.google.com/+YonatanZunger/posts/WegYVNkZQqq
@kirstyyarr People who are more vulnerable to consequences use concealment as a method of protection: it makes it possible to speak freely about controversial subjects, or even about any subjects, without fear of harassment.
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teaneedz 🍄@dredmorbius @kirstyyarr So true. Some sub-reddits remain civil because of community rules and mod efforts. I recall that Ello had a rather easy going vibe. What the community allows is what it seems to get, pseudonymous or real-name.
I think ad tech platforms just like to push the bad pseudonym angle just to collect real names for their own business efforts of advertising.
AdministratorI bet Zuckerberg would say: "But at least there's less outright rape and murder threats, right?"
Tau_LeonisI rarely, if ever, use my real name on line.
But it is mostly for privacy and safety reasons.
Half of my family are Trumpers and a good portion of those are Young-Earth-Creationists (YEC).
If they ever found out that I tend to skew left, not exactly straight, and love studying things like evolution, astronomy, high-energy physics (i.e. things that blow their YEC stuff out of the water) it would cause a lot of drama in my personal life that I don't need right now.
I would also argue that in certain places online anonymity can be a life or death situation.
Like holy shit, there are still places in the world where you can be legally MURDERED for being LGBT or not believing in the "right" version of the "right" religion.
I mean, my earlier post was just me not wanting to get bitched at by people in my family, but other people need to worry about being murdered by their family, community, or government over that stuff.
And I live in a part of the US where workers can be fired for any reason at any time, so-called "right to work" state.
So yeah my Boss could fire me if he didn't like something I posted.
This is a very real concern that many people in the US have.
You can be fired for any reason. There was even a court case recently where a politician fired a staff member for liking their opponent's page on Facebook and rather or not that was protected free speech.
@Tau_Leonis ah, that’s rough. I actually started out using my real name on Facebook then changed it to a pseudonym when I realised how terrible their privacy controls were
Yep and I definitely do not want family members, bosses, coworkers, etc. reading some of my comments on certain things lol
matthewsheffield@kirstyyarr I wouldn't know, I'm not on Facebook. But I avoid being over-rude online anyway. It seems rather uncouth and unproductive.
Dan moved, see pinned toot@kirstyyarr Aye, online abuse happens because the platforms allow it. They see the bickering, insults, threats, and they go "Yup, that's fine here."
Except the really big ones don't just allow it, they encourage it, 'cause anger gets more engagement than anything else.