Siderea, Sibylla BostoniensisJul 27, 2023

I'm not angry about this, contrary to what it may sound like: I'm amused. Perhaps I'm easily amused.

Thing is, it's a pretty normal thing - and it's happening a bit more now given recent topic of discussion here - for me to wind up having conversations with people about the value of anonymity or pseudonymity, in which people volunteer the opinion directly to me, usually in agreement with me, that anonymous commenters are not all bad, or that there's some value to allowing anonymous online comments because of some example... out there (*waves hands airily*) somewhere.

To *me*. They say this directly *to me*. While I am standing directly in front of them, as it were, virtually, *using a pseudonym*.

You know the ID in my wallet does not actually say "Siderea, Sibylla Bostoniensis", right? My professional license does not say "Siderea, Sibylla Bostoniensis, LMHC". That is not what I put at the top of my IRS 1040. It's not what my patients call me.

Show threadSiderea, Sibylla BostoniensisJul 27, 2023

Something is betrayed, when this happens. It reveals something about how people think about pseudonyms. It would seem many people think of pseudonyms, in a sort of unconsidered way, as being things that don't attach to actual identities.

But my pseudonym is very much attached to an actual identity - I am very much a person, and a very distinct one, who exhibits a lot of personality, who moves freely through social worlds, with whom one can develop various types of relationship, from the parasocial to the intimate. For those who have the unconsidered assumption that pseudonyms do not refer to identities, the fact that mine does causes a category error, and causes them to forget (or maybe even never notice) that the appellation by which they know me as a pseudonym, and unsubtly one at that.

I've seen other evidence of this conceptual fault line, for instance in discussions of the threats and value of allowing pseudonymous commenters on the internet, around platform policies.

Show threadSiderea, Sibylla BostoniensisJul 27, 2023
In such policy discussions - here I'm particularly remembering #nymwars and Google+ - it's not uncommon for organizations to reveal such double consciousness about what a pseudonym is, where they issue draconian policies against them, but then are like, "oh but we don't mean the pen names of authors - at least if they're famous." What made Google+'s approach scandalous was that they *didn't* do that. They really did attempt to forbid all pseudonyms. This was a subtle-but-stark contrast to Facebook's "Oh, well, if you can prove that you actually go about using the pseudonym as a regular name you can use it on Facebook". Which is another way of saying "we don't think a pseudonym that designates an identity is a pseudonym, when we say we don't want pseudonyms we don't mean to include pseudonyms that do refer to identities." Except of course they then issue punitive edicts that frustrate or thwart the use of any pseudonym that does not have the legal underpinnings of a legal name.
Show threadSiderea, Sibylla Bostoniensis

In any event, I think that in reasoning about pseudonyms and anonymity on the internet, a lot of people, maybe most people, make the mistake of thinking in terms of pseudonym usage, which is a behavior, and not in terms of pseudonym users, which is a demographic. An identity, if you will.

Allow me to explain. It is, I propose, extremely fruitful to look at pseudonym usage as something some people do not at all, other people do some, and yet other people do exclusively, or near to it.

I, for example, do not use public social media under my professional name. As a matter of policy, I do not socialize in public on the internet using the name my patients know me by. My reasons for this are several, and I bet at least one of them would surprise you.

As a consequence, if a public forum has a "real name" policy, I don't think, "Oh, bummer, I guess I'll have to use my wallet name". I think, "Oh, bummer, I won't be using this forum, then."

Jul 27, 2023 at 2:52amWeb
Show threadSiderea, Sibylla BostoniensisJul 27, 2023

I'm pretty sure that's not what people who promulgate "real name" policies are thinking is going to happen. I'm pretty sure they think they're making a rule about how their users are to behave on their system. They think using a pseudonym as a behavior, and that they are regulating that behavior. I'm pretty sure it never crossed their mind that what they're actually doing is making a rule about who can be a user of their system. It didn't occur to them that what they're doing is forbidding pseudonymous users from joining their platform.

Allow me to put a very fine point on this: if your platform doesn't allow pseudonym usage, as a pseudonymous user, your platform discriminates against me. My reasons for pseudonym usage are good ones, and your social media platform is never going to be valuable enough to me to outweigh those considerations. I will not be changing that behavior.

Show threadSiderea, Sibylla BostoniensisJul 27, 2023

Furthermore, it's not just me of course that you will be discriminating against, and that pretty much guarantees that I'm not going to want to have anything to do with your platform anyways. I generally prefer online social scenes where everyone uses a pseudonym, or at least it's very common.

It's funny to me how people have these beliefs about the value of "real name" policies as basically positive forces of moderation to improve the sociability of a forum, but all the best, most popular, most fun, most informative forums, are resolutely pseudonymous: Twitter (once upon a time), Reddit, Slashdot, StackExchange, the Fediverse, e.g. Meanwhile, places with real name policies like Facebook, or even just places where real name usage becomes too common (arguably Twitter now), are terrible drags.

The evidence of people's experience would teach them, if they listened, that actually pseudonymous norms lead to much more appealing forums then real name policies do.

Show threadSiderea, Sibylla BostoniensisJul 27, 2023

I figured this out a long time ago. Online forums that have real name policies can have certain utility, but they wind up feeling tragically corporate and stultifying. I, for one, have no interest in trying to conduct my social life in such a context. I don't not use Facebook because I disapprove of their security practices or their ethical practices or any other reasonable principled position: I don't use Facebook because it's boring and tedious and filled with unpleasant people behaving unpleasantly. Ew.

In the past it's been made to clear to me by friends who work for Facebook that they'll get my pseudonym approved if I want. I do not want. *My* getting to use *my* pseudonym on Facebook does not solve the problem at all of how dreadfully dreary and stilted Facebook is because they didn't let *everyone* use their pseudonyms. Everyone behaving like their boss or their mom could show up at any minute (or maybe already has) is not my idea of a party.

Show threadSiderea, Sibylla BostoniensisJul 27, 2023

And I honestly don't think it's anybody's idea of a party. It's just most people haven't made the connection.

And then there's the fact that among the pseudonymous population are overrepresented all of the coolest people. The people who are gendery. The people who've done cool enough things to have earned cool epithets. The people in strange subcultural demimondes. The people crossing the line of the law to engage in victimless vices.

And above all, the artists. The people with pen names and stage names. The poets and the troubadours, the novelists and the magicians, the divas and the circus freaks, the comedians and the essayists, the movie stars and the rock stars.

Real name policies are like signs that say "freaks use the back door". Yeah, even if you would let me into your pathetic little party, I know none of the other freaks decided to come in the back door and I'm going to go figure out where their party is and go there instead.

Show threadSiderea, Sibylla BostoniensisJul 27, 2023

My experience taught me, over and over and over again, that pseudonym usage being normal in a community, whether online or off, is a pretty reliable sign of a community that is going to turn out to be vibrant, creative, liberal, politically aware, and intellectual, and valuing authenticity, vulnerability, learning, risk-taking, curiosity, wonder, delight, and joy. Their food will be better, their arguments more rollicking, their clothes more luxurious, their entertainments more transporting, and their lovers better lays.

Their computer security tends to be better too.

Show threadJon (now at neuromatch.social)Jul 27, 2023
@siderea great thread!
Show threadlevampyreJul 27, 2023
@siderea Amen! (Thanks for speaking my mind and heart.)
Show threadlevampyreJul 27, 2023
@siderea Some years ago we had this discussion in my community: If you're honest, you use your real name to stand for it, some claimed. But no, using your real name will keep you from freely experimenting (!) with your ideas & identities - because your real name fixes your identity & exposes you (also quite literally to nazi scum that doxx & harass you later for your antifascist stand, not just your mom and boss). Pseudonyms are safe spaces to try yourself out, enable social & cultural progress.
Show threadlevampyreJul 27, 2023
@siderea "Some years ago"... Geez, it was more than 10 years ago when we had this discussion. I wrote a blog post about it in 2011. Now I feel old. 🙈
Show threadTheriacJul 27, 2023
@siderea
In Japan they have the reverse problem - when the internet was new, and given the telecom monopoly was against the internet forcing them to give up using phone units to cost data usage, cutting edge development was pushed by mobile phone companies. Emails were made from real usernames and after a while they (a) began running out of combinations of human readble symbols with names like Taro/Hanako Suzuki, the Japanese equivalent of John/Mary Smith and, more importantly, (b) attracted scammers. Now when setting up a new account users are encouraged not to use their real names, but to use made up ones.
Show threaddynamicJul 27, 2023

Interesting observations, @siderea

Now I'm curious, what happens if we put your thoughts on pseudonymity next to @Lady's thoughts on coercive platforms:
https://glitch.cat.family/@Lady/110772324853832414

Quote:
"...the fact that people are forced to live their lives on facebook is one of its failures. ... there are people [including marginalized organizers] there who in an ideal world would not be on any platform, who have no need for the platform itself but are forced for one reason or another to participate."

Show threadMartijn Faassen has movedJul 27, 2023

@siderea

Interesting observations!

While I use my real name here, I use pseudonyms in other places. Online games for instance are almost exclusively pseudonymous, and have been so since the days of text-based muds

I derive some benefits from using my real name as it's associated with my professional identity as a software developer.

I have noticed that a pseudonym can bring out different sides of myself: I have noticed a more empathic self in one context.

Show threadChris MahanJul 28, 2023
@siderea because government names are just control monikers.
Show threadskribe 🇺🇦 Jul 28, 2023
@siderea you guys wear clothes?
Show threadI AM BANKSY ☕ / 🗑‍🔥Jul 28, 2023

@siderea there are people that I've known for over a decade without knowing their "real" name.

A couple that I was surprised were actually using their real name all along, too.

Show threadrixxJul 27, 2023

@siderea oooh are the cool people who are gendery.... the gendry?

(sorry, will show myself out etc etc)

Show threadsabikJul 27, 2023
@rixx @siderea
Or, in this case, show yourself in
Show threadDušan MitrovićJul 27, 2023

@siderea I use my real name everywhere. I want to be known by my own name and I want my accomplishments to be under the name my parents wanted me to have, under the name that honors my late grandfather that never was.

There is tradition attached to my name that I could never emulate using a pseudonym.

Show threadDušan MitrovićJul 27, 2023

@siderea Yet I have no qualms with people using pseudonyms. I might not trust them enough to do business with them, but they otherwise don't affect me in any way.

I guess people attach value to real world identities. It's all about trust.

Show threadGeoWendJul 27, 2023
@siderea definitely not lost on me that the more fascist states are now trying to control nicknames in schools…
Show threadktvandJul 27, 2023
@siderea I see your point. I don't use my real name anywhere except linked in, but still am careful with my facebook pseudonym. I can't make statements I can on sites that officially allow pseudonyms. If it weren't for some older friends and relatives that still rely on it, I wouldn't use facebook at all.
Show thread-dsr- (not a dog)Jul 27, 2023

@siderea

As far as I'm concerned, the point of FaceBook is to be where my mom does show up, all the time. And her friends, and my cousins, and their kids, and those people I remember from high school but haven't lived near in decades, and the other people in town that I don't really know.

And that's a fine purpose, but it's certainly not an all-purpose social network, nor could it grow to be one from where it is now.

Show threadDame-Armiger Kali Ranya ⚔️🐈Jul 27, 2023
@siderea far, far too many people saw the "Greater Internet Dickwad Theory" and took it as a point of brilliant insight worthy of guiding policy. When it's a joke in a comic strip by a pair of dudes who have shown themselves 100% capable of being greater dickwads while proudly displaying their real names.
Show threadWndlBJul 27, 2023

@siderea I think real-name policies comes from a simplistic idea that ppl will behave better if they can’t be anons, and that anons, because anon, may behave very, to very very badly.

OTOH, I can see how the EVP of clinical research at Brigham & Women’s might want to be more let’s say unbridled than she might feel she could under her real name.

One other thing: if you’re in the market, the car groups on FB are a great resource.

Show threadtoxtethogradyJul 27, 2023
@siderea I encontered one instance that placed my real name above my stage name. In larger font. No, that's not happening...
Show threadSyllus GreenJul 27, 2023
@siderea I just ignore the rule and use my pseudonym anyway.
Show threadHawkwinter :firefish:Jul 29, 2023
@siderea
I've got a native friend who facebook keeps refusing his real name because of the unusual (by white people standards) punctuation in his name. Mind bogglingly racist company moderation policies.

I use a Pseudonym on facebook. (Not this one, I have a three. I use this one more often now but obviously I cant change it on FB or I would). I think I've been left alone only because I've had the account for 15 years and many of my friends call me by it in posts and in messenger and on calls.

I mostly just use fb messenger these days though. Occasional I make posts with maximum privacy settings seen by friends and family, and a book club group and a d&d 3.5 group, but thats like, once a week or so now.

If FB started making me use my photo instead of my artwork, and my legal name instead of a pseudonym, I'd go from only using FB for a few things, to informing me contacts they will need to message me elsewhere (here for public stuff, I'd find a private messenger) and my fb messenger account would then be closed in a week too.

In my case though, subsuming my pseudonym as my legal name is a lifegoal which has been delayed by a dual citizenship application.