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How it feels sometimes
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this post was submitted on 01 Apr 2024
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Relaxed section for discussion and debate that doesn't fit anywhere else. Whether it's advice, how your week is going, a link that's at the back of your mind, or something like that, it can likely go here.
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Absolutely. My unsolicited advice is to proceed with caution. I was there, many years ago, when the Internet changed from University access to a flood of the public. It has become known as the 'Eternal September'.
From most person's experience, during that transition, we all knew each other in real life. There wasn't anonymity.
And, all of a sudden, there was anonymity. Thus, people could just say anything that they wanted without consequences.
Fast forward to now, and it's a complete shit show. Where do we turn?
Interesting. People on Facebook happily spout insane and hateful stuff, with their whole everything on display
I feel it's less about anonymity and more about being part of a tribe. When you identify as part of a tribe, anonymous or not, you're more likely to follow social conventions within that tribe. When the tribe grows and nobody recognises anyone any more, suddenly you're among strangers, tribal norms break down, and being an asshat is on the table for some. We saw the same thing happen recently with Reddit (anonymous) and Facebook (known).
Facebook has recently gone anonymous, they're now letting people create additional accounts that "don't need to use your real name"... can't wait to see what 3 Billion anonymous users pushed together into a single place, can come up with.
I always kinda liked the idea of this kind of closed networks
Only with anonymity will you hear the truth, so I don't think it's a downside. Google and others wants to end anonymity since then they make sure nobody will speak the truth under their real name.
Only people who has nothing socially challenging to say will talk under those circumstances.
It's like we have forgotten that social change starts by hearing uncomfortable things.
Anonymity enables you to speak the truth if you want, but it also enables you to lie whatever, if you want. No one can hold accountable an anonymous person if their lies produce something tragic.
While people speaking openly under their identity are more likely to speak the truth when they do it, as they have much more to lose if they're caught lying.
That depends very much on what they have to say.
You assume that people are more likely to speak the truth, but it depends very much how socially acceptable the truth is. People lie all the time because they know their real opinions wouldn't be accepted by others.
So what you get with real identifies are everyone falsely agreeing with eachother. Look at linkedin for example of what happens when people don't discuss their true opinions in front of their employers for example. You get lots of upvotes, cheering and general faked positivity and self promotion.
You will never see an employee being critical of his employer there, because of real names. If you go to glass door, you get the true opinions, because of no real names.