a thoughtful web.
Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking.   Login or Take a Tour!
comment
Loogawa  ·  3940 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Chris Poole: The anonymity I know

To be fair your picture has absolutely nothing to do with 4chan (although I admit they could easily do something like that).

As you say elsewhere in the thread:

    There are three kinds of anonymity:

    - total anonymity. This is what you get at 4chan. You post something, nobody knows where it's from.

    - transitory anonymity. This is a blog comment with a throwaway name, or a Youtube comment. You can own your comments, but there's no reputation, there's no accountability.

    - conditional anonymity. This is what you get at Hubski, at Reddit, at eBay. You are anonymous, but your alias is not. There are consequences to your persona for misbehavior. There's a bifurcation between your "real life" and your "internet life" that forms a Chinese Wall between the two, preventing blowback from one injuring the other, but you are vulnerable to attack.

This was on reddit, not 4chan. So an example of conditional anonymity, not total anonymity. I don't think the problem is total anonymity, the problem is that people on the computer think they're safe and they can be an asshole. I see people ALL THE TIME say the most horrible things on facebook to groups and things like that, thats not anonymous at all.