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New Facebook Feature Empowers the Dangerous "Comment Nazis"

125 points by kgarten 16y ago

michaelchisari 16y ago
As an addition to that last question, about the Eygptian protestors, I also often wonder how different Mark Zuckerberg's positions on privacy, anonymity and identity would be if he were gay...
- prodigal_erik 16y ago
  Or if he ever had to to apply for a job, after getting caught calling other students "dumb fucks" for trusting him. I mean what I say, but I can't rely on every stranger out there to treat me rationally afterward, so I intentionally limit who knows it was me. In venues like Facebook (and now linked forums), solely because I can't do that, I never say anything beyond the inoffensively vacuous when I bother to use them at all.
- DuncanIdaho 16y ago
  J. Edgar Hoover was gay. He was so gay in fact that he had to organize a massive scale anti gay witch hunt. Don't underestimate lengths people will go, to cover their inner feelings. I really wonder what Zuckenberg's daddy and mommy issues are.
- tallanvor 16y ago
  This is a very good point, one that I thought about noting in a response where I discussed my identities online, but chose not to. --Luckily I'm at a point in my life - both physically and mentally - where I don't have to hide who I am to others. So to that extent, I don't feel that I have to try to either hide or specifically state that I'm gay in any normal social interaction. Unfortunately many people - even in the US - don't have this luxury. I saw the way the one person in my high school was brave enough to come out was ostracized, and given that I was already a target, I knew there was no way I could put up with what he had to go through. For Facebook to be working this hard to strip away the ability for people to have one image in public and another in private, well, it could end up hurting a lot of people.
kylec 16y ago
"You have one identity. The days of you having a different image for your work friends or co-workers and for the other people you know are probably coming to an end pretty quickly … Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity." It's not a lack of integrity - what people say and how people act is always based on the context it's in. There are things you'd say to your friends that you wouldn't say to your family or even other friends. It's always been this way, and it's pretty arrogant for Mark and, consequently, Facebook to assume otherwise. This has actually pretty much pushed me off Facebook, as the only stuff I post is what falls in the relatively small subset of stuff I'd tell to my family, coworkers, boss, friends, and people that I know online.
- wiredfool 16y ago
  Multiple identities are real, online and in meatspace. You all see a different 'me' than my wife or kids see, or my oarents see, or my coworkers. I manage different identities online, depending on what I've got invested in the community. Some places, I'm the voice of reason, such as it is. Some places, I'm anonymous, because there are not entirely sane people and its a local forum, and people could know where I live. It's not dishonest, it's real. I do try to avoid having multiple personalities in one community though, since that's just rude. So, I'm not using facebook's facet flattening system.
- wisty 16y ago
  Anyone trying to beat facebook should read that quote every day. People should, in an ideal world, behave with integrity. But it's not an ideal world. My boss shouldn't care what I'm doing in my own time, but he might. The military shouldn't care if a potential recruit once tried pot at a college party, but they might. No employer should care about sexual orientation, but they probably do. It's not about integrity. It's about living in a hypercritically judgemental society. Choosing to remain slightly anonymous is one way to maintain your integrity. It's better than treating every statement like a PR release. Like Mark does, if he has the integrity to say everything using his own name, like he tells us to.
  - jasonlotito 16y ago
phwd 16y ago
In Season 5, Episode 17 of House, a guy loses his inhibition which causes him to speak his mind having no control over what he says. Now if you watched this episode (or read the recap), I hope you would understand the difference between stating a comment because you take notice of those around you versus saying the first thing that comes to mind.
- rue 16y ago
  Is a TV show really the best example, even if it's been seen by a relatively large number of people? It's not real, after all.
  - ramchip 16y ago
    Related discussion from Less Wrong: http://lesswrong.com/lw/k9/the_logical_fallacy_of_generalization_from/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/k9/the_logical_fallacy_of_generaliza... http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Generalization_from_fictional_evidence http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Generalization_from_fictional_e...
  - phwd 16y ago
    No it is not the best example. Yes it is not real. You are concentrating a bit too much on the first sentence which has a little (if not anything) to do with the second (which is my fault ... I needed something to associate with). The point being raised is that sometimes some are quick to comment when under anonymity (no inhibition) rather than use their reasoning to go through what they are going to say. Though the first comment might be true, intelligent etc.. be wary of who that affects (because the people who read are real and they have feelings). Anonymity for some, skips that wary stage and leaves it up to the reader to either feed the fire or salvage. The related discussion from ramchip (though a great read) is only weakly related again to the first sentence. I could tell my girlfriend I love her very much or I can tell her every ounce of annoyance she gives to me, first comment versus what you actually want to impart to produce a constructive and stable relationship. I want to be thoughtful and sincere not quick to the punch (Nothing at all to do with with whether the medical condition is real or not because the morals and values are learned). In case this derailed, I am talking about users who leave the first thing that came to mind and had no thought of the consequences since under anonymity.
goombastic 16y ago
Ever get the feeling that the web is suddenly trying to profile you? Every upvote you make, every comment you leave, every article you read... Until one day they start knocking on your door for having negative thoughts, being unhappy, being prone to rebellion, not being conformist, or whatever category some data mining app applies to you.
- forensic 16y ago
  Of course the web is trying to profile you. If it's not Google and their advertisers then it's Facebook and their government friends who plug all your comments into NSA supercomputers to check for terroristy thoughts. We all have profiles in some NSA database somewhere, just waiting to be expunged and used against us when someone important decides we're a Homeland Security threat.
  - mkjones 16y ago
    I think you mean "extracted" or "opened," not "expunged" (expunged means sealed or erased, the opposite of what I assume you intend). That being said, I work on anti-abuse systems at Facebook and I'm pretty sure we don't "plug all your comments into NSA supercomputers." What evidence do you have that indicates we do such a thing?
    - paulnelligan 16y ago
      Interesting, my feeling is that we're being profiled, but not for the purpose of homeland security - I mean let's face it, we're not characters from 'minority report' ... I do however feel that our profiles are commodities, and it's very valuable for companies to have this information about us. They sell shit, we buy it ... In any case, it looks like facebook are trying to monopolise the internet, and that in itself is a bad thing ...
    - forensic 16y ago
      I meant exhume actually. You don't need to plug them into the NSA. Since Facebook pays your salary it wouldn't be your job. NSA employees would do all the work. I'm sure they have circumventing the privacy measures down to a well oiled system by now. The NSA loves to illegally wiretap everything. This is their obsession. Justification: all the foreigners who use Facebook being a potential national security threat. All the communication on Facebook (e.g. Egyptian revolution) being invaluable data to CIA analysts. Etcetera. It's naive to think that these agencies don't have large teams focused solely on extracting value from Facebook. Zuckerberg, being the guy with control over everyone's data now, is way too friendly with the various alphabet soup agency heads to believe that Facebook is hindering their never-ending investigations. You don't see FBI directors kissing the feet of Larry and Sergey.
ohashi 16y ago
As far as I can tell Zuckerberg have no redeeming features (success isn't a redeeming feature in my mind).
- fuzzmeister 16y ago
  Wow, is this really how bad the hate for Facebook and Zuckerberg has gotten on HN? To say that someone like Zuckerberg, whether you agree with him or not, has "no redeeming features" is simply ignorant. I'm all for reasonable debate about the privacy issues Facebook brings up, but can we please avoid this personal attack nonsense?
  - anigbrowl 16y ago
    I somewhat agree, but suggesting anyone who prefers to be anonymous lacks integrity is pretty insulting. A lack of integrity is certainly a motivation for secrecy, but to generalize from that is a fallacy and makes Zuckerberg look foolish: All criminals crave anonymity Socrates craves anonymity Therefore Socrates is a criminal I think the point Zuckerberg is attempting to make is that in an ideal society, Socrates would have nothing to fear and thus no reason to crave anonymity. But fear is only one among several legitimate reasons to speak without identity. One might wish others to evaluate facts or arguments on their own merits, rather than by the reputation of the speaker - this is one reason the Economist newspaper does not print the names of its writers. One might wish to get frank opinions uncolored by social norms - hence the many stories about gods and monarchs who disguise themselves to learn what people really think of them. One might wish the simple freedom to be wrong when exploring a new concept. Zuckerberg has fallen into a common pitfall of the well intentioned (and one I've spent time in myself) which we might call a militant consequentialism. His conception of Facebook is essentially a 21st century version of Bentham's panopticon. It's not so much that the idea is inherently bad or unworkable, as that for it to work everyone has to adopt the same ethical standard as the person advocating the idea. It might well be a better world if we all had the same ethical standards as Zuckerberg currently happens to hold - no joke or sarcasm intended. The problem is that if your vision of a better world depends on everyone adopting a new pattern of behavior before the rewards appear, then it won't happen. It's like communism; it might actually be a great system if everyone were honest and unselfish, and once we could see the benefits people would want to empower each other as fully as possible because of the potential gains. But in reality everyone is inclined to hedge their bets, and attempts to implement communism across whole societies quickly end up in failure or repression. Consequentialism itself has its place; without it, leadership or personal morality aren't possible, and one is just an obedient automaton, mindlessly enforcing some religious or legal or social code. On the other hand, the reason codes exist in the first place is because we tend to have extremely limited foresight in most regards, perhaps especially in ethical matters. If the people who don't share your consequentialist vision can only be brought into compliance by inflexible rules, then you tend to end up with a nonlinear feedback system. These tend to lurch to abrupt extremes, or else display periodic or chaotic behavior. tl;dr attempts to legislate morality fail, usually ignominiously.
jpr 16y ago
Zuckerberg doesn't get context sensitivity.
- natrius 16y ago
  You're assuming that if he understood context sensitivity, he'd come to the same conclusions that you have.
bpeters 16y ago
We can all pull the "Mark never walked in our shoes" line, but what he is trying to say is that transparency is inevitable as we march forward into the information age. So we might as well accept our convictions and live with them. As for the people in Egypt there will always be outlets for anonymous communication. However, it won't be found on some tech blog. Putting faces behind the comments provoke people to consider their opinions more carefully, just like we do in real life. And if you are one of those people who want to lash out, but don't have the guts to do it in face then you should just tell your best friend or keep it to yourself. Just my thoughts.
- SeanDav 16y ago
  In a perfect, idealistic world, I would agree with this sentiment. Alas we live in no such thing.
- trotsky 16y ago
  It's only inevitable if you give up on it. Technologically speaking the tools are there for it to go either way. That's why you see these technology CEO's that make their money on tracking and surveillance making statements like this. They have to convince you to stop caring and shift societal norms. I admit it doesn't look good for privacy for now. But 20 years ago, a lot of smart forward thinking people, including global intelligence organizations, thought it was going the opposite direction. What they didn't anticipate is that we'd all be convinced to voluntarily give it up ourselves.
- VladRussian 16y ago
  >Putting faces behind the comments provoke people to consider their opinions more carefully You're absolutely right. KGB and Stasi had achieved a lot of success in putting faces behind the comments, and as a result people were considering their opinions extremely carefully.
  - bpeters 16y ago
    Easy to take everything out of context isn't it? Also you would have to assume that the people hosting the comments where either KGB or Stasi... Are you referring to Techcrunch?
redstron 16y ago
Nothing stops one creating a fake Facebook profile. Choose a reasonably human sounding name, crank the privacy levels way up, and comment. FB is unlikely to figure out it's fake. There are some disadvantages. Your fake identity will probably need to be reused across sites, since creating a new account involves getting an email address, which takes a few extra minutes per identity. But choose a generic enough name, and it is less of a problem...
- Skalman 16y ago
  Though I really don't want to create a fake Facebook profile. I don't want to resort to being dishonest with Facebook, and I still don't want all my comments to go through Facebook. Also, it's not easy to be logged in to Facebook with multiple identities at once.
  - phwd 16y ago
    Try using a page as Siegler did http://www.facebook.com/pages/MG-Siegler/106690852693356 http://www.facebook.com/pages/MG-Siegler/106690852693356 . But see if you can tune the settings on your original profile to prevent people from viewing this page and then you can name your alter-ego to whatever you please. Though this is different from users who intentionally impersonate others, never really understood that ... especially when no humour came from it.
- yeahsure 16y ago
  You would have to be behind a proxy or something though, otherwise if you say something that can be remotely miss-interpreted you might end with a gps tracking device in your car anyway (like that guy on Reddit).
- buza 16y ago
  Now Google is requiring users to verify new gmail accounts with a text message sent to a mobile phone. I can only assume that it will soon be prohibitively difficult to create fake email addresses to use to create other fake accounts. I fear that anonymity will likely die soon, whether we like it or not.
spullara 16y ago
Everyone did notice that Facebook's comment system allows you to login via an essentially anonymous Yahoo! account as well, right? When/if they add Twitter and Google those will be equally anonymous and the trolling / spamming will return to normal levels.
msh 16y ago
Wow, a lot of hate directed towards Zuckerberg. I understand why the auther can be sceptical og facebook and his comments, but degrading it into namecalling is just not keeping the debate at a serious level (in example, calling Zuckerberg a manchild).
reneherse 16y ago
People, it's time we create a "contextual persona" toolset for social networking. This is the widest crack in Facebook's armor that a rival could exploit...
- fungi 16y ago
  ok lets flesh the idea out. you have a single sign on that allows you to create multiple persona's e.g. public, family and friends when posting you would have the ability/requirement to tag content as being accessible to individuals in groups you have associated with each persona. sounds like a bit of a pain in the ass that would become very unwieldy beyond a few groups.
  - quattrofan 16y ago
    What we need is a browser "persona" plugin, that allows you to swap in and out different accounts when it indicates you are on a FB enabled page.
    - wladimir 16y ago
      I've thought about that idea as well. Not only for facebook, but the same applies to Google and other trackers. Many sites link to your Google account. This is possible because your cookies can be shared/accessible by scripts communicating between sites (and checking referers). To isolate them you'd essentially need something like firefox profiles -- isolating cookies and credentials per persona. But to be more usable it needs to be more integrated into the browser somehow, and more lightweight, as running multiple firefox profiles is a bit clunky.
    - raghava 16y ago
      But would it still help? I mean, accessing multiple personas through the same browser on same machine would still be a giveaway, isn't it? https://panopticlick.eff.org/browser-uniqueness.pdf https://panopticlick.eff.org/browser-uniqueness.pdf
      - 16y ago
deleted 16y ago
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- mynameishere 16y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalist_Papers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalist_Papers Please, tell us you were trolling. Please. Unlike the tech culture geniuses at AOL, I'm okay with "trolls", but I like to know them when I see them. I'm hoping no one is really that ignorant.
- bambax 16y ago
  > The right is to free speech, not to anonymity. This statement is demonstrably false. Anonymous communications have an important place in our political and social discourse. The Supreme Court has ruled repeatedly that the right to anonymous free speech is protected by the First Amendment. A much-cited 1995 Supreme Court ruling in McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission reads: Protections for anonymous speech are vital to democratic discourse. Allowing dissenters to shield their identities frees them to express critical, minority views . . . Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority. . . . It thus exemplifies the purpose behind the Bill of Rights, and of the First Amendment in particular: to protect unpopular individuals from retaliation . . . at the hand of an intolerant society. The tradition of anonymous speech is older than the United States. Founders Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay wrote the Federalist Papers under the pseudonym "Publius," and "the Federal Farmer" spoke up in rebuttal. The US Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized rights to speak anonymously derived from the First Amendment. http://www.eff.org/issues/anonymity http://www.eff.org/issues/anonymity
kkowalczyk 16y ago
A problem with that article is fundamental, but unfortunately not uncommon, misunderstanding of free speech. A website is a private property. You have no more right to leave a comment on my website than I have to come to your house and bore you with a speech on politics. My free speech rights allow me to publish my thoughts on my blog or publish them in my newspaper. Free speech, however, is not about allowing me to publish my thoughts on your blog or giving me right to publish an op-ed in New York Times, anonymously. So saying: "But to force all comments into the realm of "single real identity" public exposure -- as Facebook now appears intent on doing -- is unacceptable, reprehensible, dangerous, and utterly at odds with basic free speech rights in the United States at least." ,as dire and dramatic as it sounds, is, frankly, utter bullshit. Today we have unprecedented ability to exercise our rights to free speech, anonymous or otherwise, so let's not fall for demagogy of people who want to pollute web with worthless comments while hiding behind principles of free speech (while completely misunderstanding those principles).
- mattdeboard 16y ago
  And exactly who is the arbiter of what is "web pollution," of what is "worthless?"
- michaelchisari 16y ago
  Normally, I would agree with you. However, there is an exception I make for hegemony. When a private entity becomes powerful enough, I think there are similar arguments to be made about as there would be for governments. Maybe "censorship" and "free speech" aren't accurate terms, but that doesn't negate the discussion itself.
  - kreilly 16y ago
    This might be a valid point except that TechCrunch made a business decision to use FaceBook's comments in an apparent attempt to improve the user experience by limiting trolls. In no way is any government or monopolistic entity forcing them to do this.
ozziegooen 16y ago
So small business owners trying to prevent their forums from become cesspools of curses should be considered "Nazis"? This post illustrates the same alarmist tone that trolls normally do. He's trolling people because they're trying to stop trolling. Requesting real accounts for comments on personal business websites isn't a violation of the Freedom of Speech. It's the equivalent of asking politicians to reveal what bills they voted for. Transparency means accountability, not the destruction of everything good online. Geese.
mkramlich 16y ago
A hacker in their early/mid 20's with supposedly poor social skills who's quickly become a multi-billionaire for making what is essentially just an profiles/feed website, went to Harvard, and who seems to have never had a real job in his life is, I dare say it, going to have a rather skewed and limited perspective on what's realistic in life for the vast majority of people. For the majority of folks who must or desire to maintain separate work/personal or friends/family or public/private identities, or who belong to oppressed groups, are clearly not going to be able to relate to it. People without FUx1000 money in the bank (like Mark clearly does) are going to have a hard time relating to it, because without FU money one does have to be much more careful and arguably afraid of what happens when the wrong people see the wrong thing and do something that hurts you down the line. That said, despite his perspective, he clearly has a financial motive to turn Facebook further into the dominant identity system in the web. Actually, I'll take that back, it's not clear to me that he has any motive personally to make it any more dominant, because he's now into the discretionary billions range of wealth. Perhaps his motive is to increase ROI for all the sub-one-percent shareholders. I dunno. I've just never gotten this whole sort of unbounded ambition that thinks it's not good enough to be the 3rd best thing in the entire world -- we're talking the entire world here, it's not like coming in 1000th place, and it's not even truly a race. If anything, it's a race to stand still, and then you die, no matter what. It's interesting to think that there are now more people with a Facebook identity than most meatspace nations have citizens. More Facebookians than Brits, for example. Than French. Japanese. I don't know the exact count of total Facebook users offhand but I wouldn't be surprised to find it's already surpassed the number of US citizens as well.
- defen 16y ago
  > I've just never gotten this whole sort of unbounded ambition that thinks it's not good enough to be the 3rd best thing in the entire world -- we're talking the entire world here... Reminds me of something... I have no spur To prick the sides of my intent, but only Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself, And falls on th'other.
- sorbus 16y ago
  I recall that there are half a billion facebook accounts (wikipedia says 600 million active users). The USA has around 307 million people. North america has a mere 352 million, while Latin America and the Caribbean have 589 million. Europe has 733 million[1]. So yeah, way more people on facebook than in the US, as long as the average number of accounts per person is less than two - active accounts aren't the same thing as real people, after all. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population
lwhi 16y ago
The comment attributed to Zuckerberg, really shocked me. It has the ring of a pronouncement made by a despot, or an out of touch royal detached from the real world. It scares me that this guy and those around him, are able to try to shape world according to such twisted world views. Even if this really was a question of integrity, why does he feel the need to enforce it on our behalf? This for me is a pronouncement that is fit for a dictator.
pluies_public 16y ago
You have one identity. The days of you having a different image for your work friends or co-workers and for the other people you know are probably coming to an end pretty quickly... Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity. This sounds awfully like: Mr. Anderson, it seems that you've been living two lives. In one life, you're Thomas A. Anderson, program writer for a respectable software company. You have a social security number, you pay your taxes, and you... help your landlady carry out her garbage. The other life is lived in computers, where you go by the hacker alias "Neo" and are guilty of virtually every computer crime we have a law for. One of these lives has a future, and one of them does not.
benohear 16y ago
As long as website owners are aware of the consequences, it seems to me to be up to them to use this or not. I'm guessing the main attraction is to have the comments automatically propagated to the commentator's Facebook friends (that IS how it works, right?) Personally I'd like to see a similar system for Hacker News - you'd get a much better comment moderation while keeping the discussion in one place and not having to worry about running a commenting system yourself.
henrikschroder 16y ago
Ah, this will be how Facebook crumbles. The value of Facebook's users is that the overwhelming majority of them are real. People use their real names, and hook up with their real friends, resulting in a real social graph. But if Facebook becomes the single-sign-on provider, the identity provider, for a majority of blogs and forums and other venues where people today participate anonymously, then Facebook will start seeing a huge number of fake profiles appear as people make multiple identities to preserve their privacy and anonymity, and the more those fake profiles are used, the less the real userbase will be worth, which ultimately threatens their bottom line.
- reemrevnivek 16y ago
  We can only hope that people will be smart enough to do that. It's certainly not a guarantee.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
DanielBMarkham 16y ago
The only thing I put in my FB feed is funny pictures. No politics, no computer stuff, nothing that might be construed as being controversial. Why? Because I am a "fake" person? I mean heck, I post a lot more than that over here. Nope, because my FB feed includes stuff like friends of my grandmother, or my 14-year-old son, or my HS buds. Each of these audiences has completely different standards and measurements of civility.
Duff 16y ago
I've chosen to out-opt of Facebook for a variety of reasons that aren't really germane. To assist with this, I use a Chrome extension called "Facebook Disconnect" to basically remove FB from my daily web experience. So for me, TechCrunch doesn't have a comment system anymore. That's too bad, as I liked the previous system and found the commentary interesting. I'm not alone -- 4,000 people a week install this browser extension. The end result for TechCrunch is that a small, but growing minority of readers will be less engaged with the site. In the grand scheme of things, not a big deal for them I suppose.
tptacek 16y ago
Long story short: if you don't allow anonymous or psuedonymous comments on your site, you're a Nazi.
- jimfl 16y ago
  And if you insist upon making anonymous or pseudonymous comments, you're a troll.
  - tptacek 16y ago
    Who said that? Because, he overtly said the Nazi thing.
brown9-2 16y ago
It seems to me that there is a solution to these type of identity problems, although it's a bit non-ideal: don't mix business and personal networks on sites like Facebook.
jeffreyrusso 16y ago
You might have one identity, but you probably have many personas - and personas are what most people put forth on the web. That's a pretty fundamental fact, and it seems like Zuckerberg is dead wrong on this. This might be an unpopular statement... but IMO, Google seems to get this on some level (even though they haven't figured out a way to package it.) There is a recurring theme in the occasional bits that leak out of Google about their high level thoughts on what they could contribute to the social web around understanding and helping people separate their personas - http://mashable.com/2010/07/13/google-social-slide-deck/ http://mashable.com/2010/07/13/google-social-slide-deck/ (update: creator of this deck now works at FB... wonder if he took his opinions with them, or if this is still indicative of the thinking at Google?) https://profiles.google.com/ https://profiles.google.com/ (notice the language around managing what the world sees when it searches for you...)
ScottBev 16y ago
I have more of an issue with the lack of control that I have between my friends, family, coworkers and their social networks. I had a coworker arrested on some very serious and character destroying charges. It was hard enough to having to relay that privately to our executives. I couldn't imagine that spiraling out on my network and remaining there forever. A former coworker now has a very interesting business, that isn't very PC. Should I screen her because of what that will look like to business and/or community contacts? No, in both contexts I wish to shape how others reflect on my identity. I shouldn't be constrained to one very public identity. And concerning Zuckerberg, how does a billionaire, twenty something have a clue about a normal user of his system? And besides does he really sounds like a press release to his friends in real life?
esila 16y ago
The concept of having your "real identity" associated with comments is very similar to the recent issue with the gaming company Blizzard. There was an announcement a few months ago stating that a poster's full name would be displayed on the battle net forums (this was prior to the release of WoW Cataclysm and SC2). There was an online petition and a massive cry of dissent from the users. There was even a moderator who tried to justify Blizzard's position by posting his real name and saying he "didn't care". Much of his personal life information was displayed and if I remember correctly he had to change his FaceBook account due to all the trolls. Blizzard did not put this idea into effect. Associating identities with views online can have massive repercussions regardless of how much "integrity" that person has. Trolls and stalkers would have an absolute field day due to the loss of anonymity. And now, for some humor to wash down the pessimism, s/fb/blizzard or vice versa: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NgAkWxcPBE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NgAkWxcPBE
eggdude 16y ago
Like most, I disagree that having multiple identities are coming to an end. But I think it is a good thing that Facebook comments are being used on other sites because it will promote integrity. Not every site will use Facebook comments so when we want to dawn a different, anonymous personality, we can close the Techcrunch tab and open a different site that allows anonymous comments. Each site will have its own environment and purpose. I think it is a good thing that we are moving from an almost completely anonymous Internet to an Internet that allows you to be anonymous or not depending on the situation.
plusbryan 16y ago
I find it rather ironic that I'm hesitant to comment on this thread because I disagree with the strongly opinionated majority. Therein lies a paradox.
- ebiester 16y ago
  I believe it'd be an interesting addition. However, before you do, ask yourself: would you have the same opinion if you were gay and 15 years old in a fundamentalist family? In a middle eastern country? If you were transgendered but only in the beginning stages of transitioning? If you were polygamous in a community that disapproved? How about if you were conservative in a liberal university? How about talking about how you had an abortion? That's an important view, with policy implications, but you never know who would fire you if they knew. Should everyone with non-normative views be forced into silence?
  - plusbryan 16y ago
    > Should everyone with non-normative views be forced into silence? Absolutely not, and I agree with you. But help me out - isn't the root cause of all the examples you list a lack of information? Case in point of many: don't people in general become less bigoted the more educated they become? Call me a naive idealist, but I wonder if the information barriers erected by people to protect themselves, are, on a wider scale, actually what keeps bigotry and hatred alive? Zuckerberg isn't a saint, so I'm not suggesting that there is any altruistic motive behind his moves. I'm just questioning if greater transparency is inherently a bad thing.
    - ebiester 16y ago
      That's how I live my life. I also have white male privilege and a wonderful family who embraced me coming out and the ability to choose my employers due to my skills as a developer. That's why I live out of the closet, precisely for the reasons you mention. That doesn't hold for a kid in a religious household, the same exact kid who needs to find a community in which she or he can be heard. It was that anonymous community that allowed me to find the resources I needed. Now, to be fair, the LGBT community is largely going to know better than to force people to name themselves, and the blogger always holds the choice. I'm more concerned about the overarching issue. I'm concerned about governments forcing their citizens to blog and comment using their own names. And Facebook's move is exactly the type of thing that will give them ideas.
sili 16y ago
I believe if this feature takes of, the result will be a lot of sock puppet accounts on Facebook.

125 points by kgarten 16y ago

As an addition to that last question, about the Eygptian protestors, I also often wonder how different Mark Zuckerberg's positions on privacy, anonymity and identity would be if he were gay...

prodigal_erik 16y ago
Or if he ever had to to apply for a job, after getting caught calling other students "dumb fucks" for trusting him. I mean what I say, but I can't rely on every stranger out there to treat me rationally afterward, so I intentionally limit who knows it was me. In venues like Facebook (and now linked forums), solely because I can't do that, I never say anything beyond the inoffensively vacuous when I bother to use them at all.
DuncanIdaho 16y ago
J. Edgar Hoover was gay. He was so gay in fact that he had to organize a massive scale anti gay witch hunt. Don't underestimate lengths people will go, to cover their inner feelings. I really wonder what Zuckenberg's daddy and mommy issues are.
tallanvor 16y ago
This is a very good point, one that I thought about noting in a response where I discussed my identities online, but chose not to. --Luckily I'm at a point in my life - both physically and mentally - where I don't have to hide who I am to others. So to that extent, I don't feel that I have to try to either hide or specifically state that I'm gay in any normal social interaction. Unfortunately many people - even in the US - don't have this luxury. I saw the way the one person in my high school was brave enough to come out was ostracized, and given that I was already a target, I knew there was no way I could put up with what he had to go through. For Facebook to be working this hard to strip away the ability for people to have one image in public and another in private, well, it could end up hurting a lot of people.

kylec 16y ago

"You have one identity. The days of you having a different image for your work friends or co-workers and for the other people you know are probably coming to an end pretty quickly … Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity." It's not a lack of integrity - what people say and how people act is always based on the context it's in. There are things you'd say to your friends that you wouldn't say to your family or even other friends. It's always been this way, and it's pretty arrogant for Mark and, consequently, Facebook to assume otherwise. This has actually pretty much pushed me off Facebook, as the only stuff I post is what falls in the relatively small subset of stuff I'd tell to my family, coworkers, boss, friends, and people that I know online.

wiredfool 16y ago
Multiple identities are real, online and in meatspace. You all see a different 'me' than my wife or kids see, or my oarents see, or my coworkers. I manage different identities online, depending on what I've got invested in the community. Some places, I'm the voice of reason, such as it is. Some places, I'm anonymous, because there are not entirely sane people and its a local forum, and people could know where I live. It's not dishonest, it's real. I do try to avoid having multiple personalities in one community though, since that's just rude. So, I'm not using facebook's facet flattening system.
wisty 16y ago
Anyone trying to beat facebook should read that quote every day. People should, in an ideal world, behave with integrity. But it's not an ideal world. My boss shouldn't care what I'm doing in my own time, but he might. The military shouldn't care if a potential recruit once tried pot at a college party, but they might. No employer should care about sexual orientation, but they probably do. It's not about integrity. It's about living in a hypercritically judgemental society. Choosing to remain slightly anonymous is one way to maintain your integrity. It's better than treating every statement like a PR release. Like Mark does, if he has the integrity to say everything using his own name, like he tells us to.
- jasonlotito 16y ago

phwd 16y ago

In Season 5, Episode 17 of House, a guy loses his inhibition which causes him to speak his mind having no control over what he says. Now if you watched this episode (or read the recap), I hope you would understand the difference between stating a comment because you take notice of those around you versus saying the first thing that comes to mind.

rue 16y ago
Is a TV show really the best example, even if it's been seen by a relatively large number of people? It's not real, after all.
- ramchip 16y ago
  Related discussion from Less Wrong: http://lesswrong.com/lw/k9/the_logical_fallacy_of_generalization_from/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/k9/the_logical_fallacy_of_generaliza... http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Generalization_from_fictional_evidence http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Generalization_from_fictional_e...
- phwd 16y ago
  No it is not the best example. Yes it is not real. You are concentrating a bit too much on the first sentence which has a little (if not anything) to do with the second (which is my fault ... I needed something to associate with). The point being raised is that sometimes some are quick to comment when under anonymity (no inhibition) rather than use their reasoning to go through what they are going to say. Though the first comment might be true, intelligent etc.. be wary of who that affects (because the people who read are real and they have feelings). Anonymity for some, skips that wary stage and leaves it up to the reader to either feed the fire or salvage. The related discussion from ramchip (though a great read) is only weakly related again to the first sentence. I could tell my girlfriend I love her very much or I can tell her every ounce of annoyance she gives to me, first comment versus what you actually want to impart to produce a constructive and stable relationship. I want to be thoughtful and sincere not quick to the punch (Nothing at all to do with with whether the medical condition is real or not because the morals and values are learned). In case this derailed, I am talking about users who leave the first thing that came to mind and had no thought of the consequences since under anonymity.

goombastic 16y ago

Ever get the feeling that the web is suddenly trying to profile you? Every upvote you make, every comment you leave, every article you read... Until one day they start knocking on your door for having negative thoughts, being unhappy, being prone to rebellion, not being conformist, or whatever category some data mining app applies to you.

forensic 16y ago
Of course the web is trying to profile you. If it's not Google and their advertisers then it's Facebook and their government friends who plug all your comments into NSA supercomputers to check for terroristy thoughts. We all have profiles in some NSA database somewhere, just waiting to be expunged and used against us when someone important decides we're a Homeland Security threat.
- mkjones 16y ago
  I think you mean "extracted" or "opened," not "expunged" (expunged means sealed or erased, the opposite of what I assume you intend). That being said, I work on anti-abuse systems at Facebook and I'm pretty sure we don't "plug all your comments into NSA supercomputers." What evidence do you have that indicates we do such a thing?
  - paulnelligan 16y ago
    Interesting, my feeling is that we're being profiled, but not for the purpose of homeland security - I mean let's face it, we're not characters from 'minority report' ... I do however feel that our profiles are commodities, and it's very valuable for companies to have this information about us. They sell shit, we buy it ... In any case, it looks like facebook are trying to monopolise the internet, and that in itself is a bad thing ...
  - forensic 16y ago
    I meant exhume actually. You don't need to plug them into the NSA. Since Facebook pays your salary it wouldn't be your job. NSA employees would do all the work. I'm sure they have circumventing the privacy measures down to a well oiled system by now. The NSA loves to illegally wiretap everything. This is their obsession. Justification: all the foreigners who use Facebook being a potential national security threat. All the communication on Facebook (e.g. Egyptian revolution) being invaluable data to CIA analysts. Etcetera. It's naive to think that these agencies don't have large teams focused solely on extracting value from Facebook. Zuckerberg, being the guy with control over everyone's data now, is way too friendly with the various alphabet soup agency heads to believe that Facebook is hindering their never-ending investigations. You don't see FBI directors kissing the feet of Larry and Sergey.

ohashi 16y ago

As far as I can tell Zuckerberg have no redeeming features (success isn't a redeeming feature in my mind).

fuzzmeister 16y ago
Wow, is this really how bad the hate for Facebook and Zuckerberg has gotten on HN? To say that someone like Zuckerberg, whether you agree with him or not, has "no redeeming features" is simply ignorant. I'm all for reasonable debate about the privacy issues Facebook brings up, but can we please avoid this personal attack nonsense?
- anigbrowl 16y ago
  I somewhat agree, but suggesting anyone who prefers to be anonymous lacks integrity is pretty insulting. A lack of integrity is certainly a motivation for secrecy, but to generalize from that is a fallacy and makes Zuckerberg look foolish: All criminals crave anonymity Socrates craves anonymity Therefore Socrates is a criminal I think the point Zuckerberg is attempting to make is that in an ideal society, Socrates would have nothing to fear and thus no reason to crave anonymity. But fear is only one among several legitimate reasons to speak without identity. One might wish others to evaluate facts or arguments on their own merits, rather than by the reputation of the speaker - this is one reason the Economist newspaper does not print the names of its writers. One might wish to get frank opinions uncolored by social norms - hence the many stories about gods and monarchs who disguise themselves to learn what people really think of them. One might wish the simple freedom to be wrong when exploring a new concept. Zuckerberg has fallen into a common pitfall of the well intentioned (and one I've spent time in myself) which we might call a militant consequentialism. His conception of Facebook is essentially a 21st century version of Bentham's panopticon. It's not so much that the idea is inherently bad or unworkable, as that for it to work everyone has to adopt the same ethical standard as the person advocating the idea. It might well be a better world if we all had the same ethical standards as Zuckerberg currently happens to hold - no joke or sarcasm intended. The problem is that if your vision of a better world depends on everyone adopting a new pattern of behavior before the rewards appear, then it won't happen. It's like communism; it might actually be a great system if everyone were honest and unselfish, and once we could see the benefits people would want to empower each other as fully as possible because of the potential gains. But in reality everyone is inclined to hedge their bets, and attempts to implement communism across whole societies quickly end up in failure or repression. Consequentialism itself has its place; without it, leadership or personal morality aren't possible, and one is just an obedient automaton, mindlessly enforcing some religious or legal or social code. On the other hand, the reason codes exist in the first place is because we tend to have extremely limited foresight in most regards, perhaps especially in ethical matters. If the people who don't share your consequentialist vision can only be brought into compliance by inflexible rules, then you tend to end up with a nonlinear feedback system. These tend to lurch to abrupt extremes, or else display periodic or chaotic behavior. tl;dr attempts to legislate morality fail, usually ignominiously.

jpr 16y ago

Zuckerberg doesn't get context sensitivity.

natrius 16y ago
You're assuming that if he understood context sensitivity, he'd come to the same conclusions that you have.

bpeters 16y ago

We can all pull the "Mark never walked in our shoes" line, but what he is trying to say is that transparency is inevitable as we march forward into the information age. So we might as well accept our convictions and live with them. As for the people in Egypt there will always be outlets for anonymous communication. However, it won't be found on some tech blog. Putting faces behind the comments provoke people to consider their opinions more carefully, just like we do in real life. And if you are one of those people who want to lash out, but don't have the guts to do it in face then you should just tell your best friend or keep it to yourself. Just my thoughts.

SeanDav 16y ago
In a perfect, idealistic world, I would agree with this sentiment. Alas we live in no such thing.
trotsky 16y ago
It's only inevitable if you give up on it. Technologically speaking the tools are there for it to go either way. That's why you see these technology CEO's that make their money on tracking and surveillance making statements like this. They have to convince you to stop caring and shift societal norms. I admit it doesn't look good for privacy for now. But 20 years ago, a lot of smart forward thinking people, including global intelligence organizations, thought it was going the opposite direction. What they didn't anticipate is that we'd all be convinced to voluntarily give it up ourselves.
VladRussian 16y ago
>Putting faces behind the comments provoke people to consider their opinions more carefully You're absolutely right. KGB and Stasi had achieved a lot of success in putting faces behind the comments, and as a result people were considering their opinions extremely carefully.
- bpeters 16y ago
  Easy to take everything out of context isn't it? Also you would have to assume that the people hosting the comments where either KGB or Stasi... Are you referring to Techcrunch?

redstron 16y ago

Nothing stops one creating a fake Facebook profile. Choose a reasonably human sounding name, crank the privacy levels way up, and comment. FB is unlikely to figure out it's fake. There are some disadvantages. Your fake identity will probably need to be reused across sites, since creating a new account involves getting an email address, which takes a few extra minutes per identity. But choose a generic enough name, and it is less of a problem...

Skalman 16y ago
Though I really don't want to create a fake Facebook profile. I don't want to resort to being dishonest with Facebook, and I still don't want all my comments to go through Facebook. Also, it's not easy to be logged in to Facebook with multiple identities at once.
- phwd 16y ago
  Try using a page as Siegler did http://www.facebook.com/pages/MG-Siegler/106690852693356 http://www.facebook.com/pages/MG-Siegler/106690852693356 . But see if you can tune the settings on your original profile to prevent people from viewing this page and then you can name your alter-ego to whatever you please. Though this is different from users who intentionally impersonate others, never really understood that ... especially when no humour came from it.
yeahsure 16y ago
You would have to be behind a proxy or something though, otherwise if you say something that can be remotely miss-interpreted you might end with a gps tracking device in your car anyway (like that guy on Reddit).
buza 16y ago
Now Google is requiring users to verify new gmail accounts with a text message sent to a mobile phone. I can only assume that it will soon be prohibitively difficult to create fake email addresses to use to create other fake accounts. I fear that anonymity will likely die soon, whether we like it or not.

spullara 16y ago

Everyone did notice that Facebook's comment system allows you to login via an essentially anonymous Yahoo! account as well, right? When/if they add Twitter and Google those will be equally anonymous and the trolling / spamming will return to normal levels.

msh 16y ago

Wow, a lot of hate directed towards Zuckerberg. I understand why the auther can be sceptical og facebook and his comments, but degrading it into namecalling is just not keeping the debate at a serious level (in example, calling Zuckerberg a manchild).

reneherse 16y ago

People, it's time we create a "contextual persona" toolset for social networking. This is the widest crack in Facebook's armor that a rival could exploit...

fungi 16y ago
ok lets flesh the idea out. you have a single sign on that allows you to create multiple persona's e.g. public, family and friends when posting you would have the ability/requirement to tag content as being accessible to individuals in groups you have associated with each persona. sounds like a bit of a pain in the ass that would become very unwieldy beyond a few groups.
- quattrofan 16y ago
  What we need is a browser "persona" plugin, that allows you to swap in and out different accounts when it indicates you are on a FB enabled page.
  - wladimir 16y ago
    I've thought about that idea as well. Not only for facebook, but the same applies to Google and other trackers. Many sites link to your Google account. This is possible because your cookies can be shared/accessible by scripts communicating between sites (and checking referers). To isolate them you'd essentially need something like firefox profiles -- isolating cookies and credentials per persona. But to be more usable it needs to be more integrated into the browser somehow, and more lightweight, as running multiple firefox profiles is a bit clunky.
  - raghava 16y ago
    But would it still help? I mean, accessing multiple personas through the same browser on same machine would still be a giveaway, isn't it? https://panopticlick.eff.org/browser-uniqueness.pdf https://panopticlick.eff.org/browser-uniqueness.pdf
    - 16y ago

deleted 16y ago

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mynameishere 16y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalist_Papers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalist_Papers Please, tell us you were trolling. Please. Unlike the tech culture geniuses at AOL, I'm okay with "trolls", but I like to know them when I see them. I'm hoping no one is really that ignorant.
bambax 16y ago
> The right is to free speech, not to anonymity. This statement is demonstrably false. Anonymous communications have an important place in our political and social discourse. The Supreme Court has ruled repeatedly that the right to anonymous free speech is protected by the First Amendment. A much-cited 1995 Supreme Court ruling in McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission reads: Protections for anonymous speech are vital to democratic discourse. Allowing dissenters to shield their identities frees them to express critical, minority views . . . Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority. . . . It thus exemplifies the purpose behind the Bill of Rights, and of the First Amendment in particular: to protect unpopular individuals from retaliation . . . at the hand of an intolerant society. The tradition of anonymous speech is older than the United States. Founders Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay wrote the Federalist Papers under the pseudonym "Publius," and "the Federal Farmer" spoke up in rebuttal. The US Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized rights to speak anonymously derived from the First Amendment. http://www.eff.org/issues/anonymity http://www.eff.org/issues/anonymity

kkowalczyk 16y ago

A problem with that article is fundamental, but unfortunately not uncommon, misunderstanding of free speech. A website is a private property. You have no more right to leave a comment on my website than I have to come to your house and bore you with a speech on politics. My free speech rights allow me to publish my thoughts on my blog or publish them in my newspaper. Free speech, however, is not about allowing me to publish my thoughts on your blog or giving me right to publish an op-ed in New York Times, anonymously. So saying: "But to force all comments into the realm of "single real identity" public exposure -- as Facebook now appears intent on doing -- is unacceptable, reprehensible, dangerous, and utterly at odds with basic free speech rights in the United States at least." ,as dire and dramatic as it sounds, is, frankly, utter bullshit. Today we have unprecedented ability to exercise our rights to free speech, anonymous or otherwise, so let's not fall for demagogy of people who want to pollute web with worthless comments while hiding behind principles of free speech (while completely misunderstanding those principles).

mattdeboard 16y ago
And exactly who is the arbiter of what is "web pollution," of what is "worthless?"
michaelchisari 16y ago
Normally, I would agree with you. However, there is an exception I make for hegemony. When a private entity becomes powerful enough, I think there are similar arguments to be made about as there would be for governments. Maybe "censorship" and "free speech" aren't accurate terms, but that doesn't negate the discussion itself.
- kreilly 16y ago
  This might be a valid point except that TechCrunch made a business decision to use FaceBook's comments in an apparent attempt to improve the user experience by limiting trolls. In no way is any government or monopolistic entity forcing them to do this.

ozziegooen 16y ago

So small business owners trying to prevent their forums from become cesspools of curses should be considered "Nazis"? This post illustrates the same alarmist tone that trolls normally do. He's trolling people because they're trying to stop trolling. Requesting real accounts for comments on personal business websites isn't a violation of the Freedom of Speech. It's the equivalent of asking politicians to reveal what bills they voted for. Transparency means accountability, not the destruction of everything good online. Geese.

mkramlich 16y ago

A hacker in their early/mid 20's with supposedly poor social skills who's quickly become a multi-billionaire for making what is essentially just an profiles/feed website, went to Harvard, and who seems to have never had a real job in his life is, I dare say it, going to have a rather skewed and limited perspective on what's realistic in life for the vast majority of people. For the majority of folks who must or desire to maintain separate work/personal or friends/family or public/private identities, or who belong to oppressed groups, are clearly not going to be able to relate to it. People without FUx1000 money in the bank (like Mark clearly does) are going to have a hard time relating to it, because without FU money one does have to be much more careful and arguably afraid of what happens when the wrong people see the wrong thing and do something that hurts you down the line. That said, despite his perspective, he clearly has a financial motive to turn Facebook further into the dominant identity system in the web. Actually, I'll take that back, it's not clear to me that he has any motive personally to make it any more dominant, because he's now into the discretionary billions range of wealth. Perhaps his motive is to increase ROI for all the sub-one-percent shareholders. I dunno. I've just never gotten this whole sort of unbounded ambition that thinks it's not good enough to be the 3rd best thing in the entire world -- we're talking the entire world here, it's not like coming in 1000th place, and it's not even truly a race. If anything, it's a race to stand still, and then you die, no matter what. It's interesting to think that there are now more people with a Facebook identity than most meatspace nations have citizens. More Facebookians than Brits, for example. Than French. Japanese. I don't know the exact count of total Facebook users offhand but I wouldn't be surprised to find it's already surpassed the number of US citizens as well.

defen 16y ago
> I've just never gotten this whole sort of unbounded ambition that thinks it's not good enough to be the 3rd best thing in the entire world -- we're talking the entire world here... Reminds me of something... I have no spur To prick the sides of my intent, but only Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself, And falls on th'other.
sorbus 16y ago
I recall that there are half a billion facebook accounts (wikipedia says 600 million active users). The USA has around 307 million people. North america has a mere 352 million, while Latin America and the Caribbean have 589 million. Europe has 733 million[1]. So yeah, way more people on facebook than in the US, as long as the average number of accounts per person is less than two - active accounts aren't the same thing as real people, after all. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population

lwhi 16y ago

The comment attributed to Zuckerberg, really shocked me. It has the ring of a pronouncement made by a despot, or an out of touch royal detached from the real world. It scares me that this guy and those around him, are able to try to shape world according to such twisted world views. Even if this really was a question of integrity, why does he feel the need to enforce it on our behalf? This for me is a pronouncement that is fit for a dictator.

pluies_public 16y ago

You have one identity. The days of you having a different image for your work friends or co-workers and for the other people you know are probably coming to an end pretty quickly... Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity. This sounds awfully like: Mr. Anderson, it seems that you've been living two lives. In one life, you're Thomas A. Anderson, program writer for a respectable software company. You have a social security number, you pay your taxes, and you... help your landlady carry out her garbage. The other life is lived in computers, where you go by the hacker alias "Neo" and are guilty of virtually every computer crime we have a law for. One of these lives has a future, and one of them does not.

benohear 16y ago

As long as website owners are aware of the consequences, it seems to me to be up to them to use this or not. I'm guessing the main attraction is to have the comments automatically propagated to the commentator's Facebook friends (that IS how it works, right?) Personally I'd like to see a similar system for Hacker News - you'd get a much better comment moderation while keeping the discussion in one place and not having to worry about running a commenting system yourself.

henrikschroder 16y ago

Ah, this will be how Facebook crumbles. The value of Facebook's users is that the overwhelming majority of them are real. People use their real names, and hook up with their real friends, resulting in a real social graph. But if Facebook becomes the single-sign-on provider, the identity provider, for a majority of blogs and forums and other venues where people today participate anonymously, then Facebook will start seeing a huge number of fake profiles appear as people make multiple identities to preserve their privacy and anonymity, and the more those fake profiles are used, the less the real userbase will be worth, which ultimately threatens their bottom line.

reemrevnivek 16y ago
We can only hope that people will be smart enough to do that. It's certainly not a guarantee.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]

DanielBMarkham 16y ago

The only thing I put in my FB feed is funny pictures. No politics, no computer stuff, nothing that might be construed as being controversial. Why? Because I am a "fake" person? I mean heck, I post a lot more than that over here. Nope, because my FB feed includes stuff like friends of my grandmother, or my 14-year-old son, or my HS buds. Each of these audiences has completely different standards and measurements of civility.

Duff 16y ago

I've chosen to out-opt of Facebook for a variety of reasons that aren't really germane. To assist with this, I use a Chrome extension called "Facebook Disconnect" to basically remove FB from my daily web experience. So for me, TechCrunch doesn't have a comment system anymore. That's too bad, as I liked the previous system and found the commentary interesting. I'm not alone -- 4,000 people a week install this browser extension. The end result for TechCrunch is that a small, but growing minority of readers will be less engaged with the site. In the grand scheme of things, not a big deal for them I suppose.

tptacek 16y ago

Long story short: if you don't allow anonymous or psuedonymous comments on your site, you're a Nazi.

jimfl 16y ago
And if you insist upon making anonymous or pseudonymous comments, you're a troll.
- tptacek 16y ago
  Who said that? Because, he overtly said the Nazi thing.

brown9-2 16y ago

It seems to me that there is a solution to these type of identity problems, although it's a bit non-ideal: don't mix business and personal networks on sites like Facebook.

jeffreyrusso 16y ago

You might have one identity, but you probably have many personas - and personas are what most people put forth on the web. That's a pretty fundamental fact, and it seems like Zuckerberg is dead wrong on this. This might be an unpopular statement... but IMO, Google seems to get this on some level (even though they haven't figured out a way to package it.) There is a recurring theme in the occasional bits that leak out of Google about their high level thoughts on what they could contribute to the social web around understanding and helping people separate their personas - http://mashable.com/2010/07/13/google-social-slide-deck/ http://mashable.com/2010/07/13/google-social-slide-deck/ (update: creator of this deck now works at FB... wonder if he took his opinions with them, or if this is still indicative of the thinking at Google?) https://profiles.google.com/ https://profiles.google.com/ (notice the language around managing what the world sees when it searches for you...)

ScottBev 16y ago

I have more of an issue with the lack of control that I have between my friends, family, coworkers and their social networks. I had a coworker arrested on some very serious and character destroying charges. It was hard enough to having to relay that privately to our executives. I couldn't imagine that spiraling out on my network and remaining there forever. A former coworker now has a very interesting business, that isn't very PC. Should I screen her because of what that will look like to business and/or community contacts? No, in both contexts I wish to shape how others reflect on my identity. I shouldn't be constrained to one very public identity. And concerning Zuckerberg, how does a billionaire, twenty something have a clue about a normal user of his system? And besides does he really sounds like a press release to his friends in real life?

esila 16y ago

The concept of having your "real identity" associated with comments is very similar to the recent issue with the gaming company Blizzard. There was an announcement a few months ago stating that a poster's full name would be displayed on the battle net forums (this was prior to the release of WoW Cataclysm and SC2). There was an online petition and a massive cry of dissent from the users. There was even a moderator who tried to justify Blizzard's position by posting his real name and saying he "didn't care". Much of his personal life information was displayed and if I remember correctly he had to change his FaceBook account due to all the trolls. Blizzard did not put this idea into effect. Associating identities with views online can have massive repercussions regardless of how much "integrity" that person has. Trolls and stalkers would have an absolute field day due to the loss of anonymity. And now, for some humor to wash down the pessimism, s/fb/blizzard or vice versa: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NgAkWxcPBE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NgAkWxcPBE

eggdude 16y ago

Like most, I disagree that having multiple identities are coming to an end. But I think it is a good thing that Facebook comments are being used on other sites because it will promote integrity. Not every site will use Facebook comments so when we want to dawn a different, anonymous personality, we can close the Techcrunch tab and open a different site that allows anonymous comments. Each site will have its own environment and purpose. I think it is a good thing that we are moving from an almost completely anonymous Internet to an Internet that allows you to be anonymous or not depending on the situation.

plusbryan 16y ago

I find it rather ironic that I'm hesitant to comment on this thread because I disagree with the strongly opinionated majority. Therein lies a paradox.

ebiester 16y ago
I believe it'd be an interesting addition. However, before you do, ask yourself: would you have the same opinion if you were gay and 15 years old in a fundamentalist family? In a middle eastern country? If you were transgendered but only in the beginning stages of transitioning? If you were polygamous in a community that disapproved? How about if you were conservative in a liberal university? How about talking about how you had an abortion? That's an important view, with policy implications, but you never know who would fire you if they knew. Should everyone with non-normative views be forced into silence?
- plusbryan 16y ago
  > Should everyone with non-normative views be forced into silence? Absolutely not, and I agree with you. But help me out - isn't the root cause of all the examples you list a lack of information? Case in point of many: don't people in general become less bigoted the more educated they become? Call me a naive idealist, but I wonder if the information barriers erected by people to protect themselves, are, on a wider scale, actually what keeps bigotry and hatred alive? Zuckerberg isn't a saint, so I'm not suggesting that there is any altruistic motive behind his moves. I'm just questioning if greater transparency is inherently a bad thing.
  - ebiester 16y ago
    That's how I live my life. I also have white male privilege and a wonderful family who embraced me coming out and the ability to choose my employers due to my skills as a developer. That's why I live out of the closet, precisely for the reasons you mention. That doesn't hold for a kid in a religious household, the same exact kid who needs to find a community in which she or he can be heard. It was that anonymous community that allowed me to find the resources I needed. Now, to be fair, the LGBT community is largely going to know better than to force people to name themselves, and the blogger always holds the choice. I'm more concerned about the overarching issue. I'm concerned about governments forcing their citizens to blog and comment using their own names. And Facebook's move is exactly the type of thing that will give them ideas.

sili 16y ago

I believe if this feature takes of, the result will be a lot of sock puppet accounts on Facebook.