9 ms·
4chan's Chris Poole: Facebook & Google Are Doing It Wrong
- jeffool 15y agoWe present ourselves differently in different contexts, and that's key to our creativity and self-expression. "It's not 'who you share with,' it's 'who you share as,'" Poole told us. "Identity is prismatic." moot just kinda blew my mind. And it makes total sense. I'd go so far as to say it's almost painfully obvious once it's pointed out to you. I hope someone's got it on video and posts it somewhere.
- ShawnJG 15y agoI agree completely. It does seem really obvious now. But anyone who's had a pre-Google/Facebook online life remembers that you had different handles for diff sites. My aol name was not the same as my underground name, wasn't the same as my regular email name. At first what seemed like a good idea, "mirroring" yourself online as Poole puts it became the bane of people who were diverse in their online dealings. But I look at Google and Facebook as the "establishment internet", there for the masses. And for most people that is fine, they rarely stray from these walled off gardens. But there are still options to be as diverse or "prisimatic" as you please if you look for them.
- pnathan 15y agoShawnJG posted this, I liked it. It's dead for some reason... ShawnJG 1 minute ago | link [dead] I agree completely. It does seem really obvious now. But anyone who's had a pre-Google/Facebook online life remembers that you had different handles for diff sites. My aol name was not the same as my underground name, wasn't the same as my regular email name. At first what seemed like a good idea, "mirroring" yourself online as Poole puts it became the bane of people who were diverse in their online dealings. But I look at Google and Facebook as the "establishment internet", there for the masses. And for most people that is fine, they rarely stray from these walled off gardens. But there are still options to be as diverse or "prisimatic" as you please if you look for them. -----
- jeffool 15y agoEr, they obviously didn't want his name associated with the post, though I agree it's a good one. Maybe replace it with "An HN user posted this, ..."? Just as a kindness to them?
- Periodic 15y agoI have always to have three areas of identity online. I've had my professional persona, which I try to associate with my work and professional interests. I have a different identity that I present to my friends, which is a lot goofier, complains about work and plays a lot of video games. Then I have my third layer of handles which I use to identify with others in games or specific mediums such as discussion boards. I don't want potential employers looking at my Reddit post history, or my gaming clan looking up details about my personal life, or Reddit trolls looking up pictures of my wife. I like that Google+ made some efforts to let you keep those lives separate through Circles, which prompted Facebook to make their lists more prominent, but I still prefer to have multiple identities. I acknowledge that with a little work you could probably connect all my identities together, but I'd rather not make it obvious to the casual observer. Let's keep honest people honest.
- 15y ago
- joebadmo 15y agoHm. I have three responses to this: 1. It seems similar or at least parallel to something I wrote about needing new metaphors for social networking: http://blog.byjoemoon.com/post/7072771434/a-new-metaphor-for-social-networking http://blog.byjoemoon.com/post/7072771434/a-new-metaphor-for... 2. We need our social networking software to give us better representations of social context, and good representations of that context through UI. 3. Maybe it's the case that the different services will evolve into different contexts, with a different service for every context? I.e. Twitter for shouting pithy aphorisms into the public void, G+ for conversing about nerdy stuff, HN for conversing about even nerdier stuff, LinkedIn for marketers to market to each other about marketing jobs, and FB for farming?
- socratic 15y agoIs there some difference between this and what Danah Boyd et al. were saying 8 years ago regarding "Faceted Identity"? http://smg.media.mit.edu/people/danah/thesis/ http://smg.media.mit.edu/people/danah/thesis/
- gujk 15y agoDanah boyd doesn't capitalize danah boyd's name.
- qq66 15y agoA person can choose to brand his or her name with lowercase letters but it's perfectly reasonable to use the convention. http://www.technologyreview.com/TR35/Profile.aspx?TRID=948 http://www.technologyreview.com/TR35/Profile.aspx?TRID=948
- jeffool 15y agoOnly reading the 118 page thesis' abstract? Probably not. Kudos to her for writing it, and you linking it; I've saved it for the weekend. But my point wasn't that "it's an original thought that he's had and no one has ever considered it before!" just "I was ignorant of this exact problem until it was pointed out to me. Then it became evident." But, maybe I'm just reading that as a little more antagonistic than intended.
- socratic 15y agoNo worries. I've actually probably only looked at the pictures. SecureId has some good ones. http://smg.media.mit.edu/projects/SecureId/ http://smg.media.mit.edu/projects/SecureId/
- FreakLegion 15y agoRhetoricians have actually been talking about this for more than four thousand years. Everything's performance.
- FlemishBeeCycle 15y agoAs individuals, we don't act the same way around our peers, our friends or our family. While we certainly present ourselves differently in different contexts, I wouldn't call these different "identities", rather the same identity applying the rules of the given context to their behavior. Where it becomes tricky is when one is strips away the context isolation. For example, at your friend's bachelor party, some behavior might perfectly normative within context and participants, but the next day when people outside of that context can watch a video of your behavior - you might feel a little shame/embarrassment/regret/etc. The internet, for better or worse, allows a complete breakdown of context isolation. While the rules of posting on 4chan or HN greatly differ, a person adhering to rules of a given context, will still be judged across both contexts by outside viewers. The solution here is to create context isolation - which is very easy to do with anonymity.
- yuhong 15y ago>The solution here is to create context isolation - which is very easy to do with anonymity. Not the best solution. I in fact has been saying the illusion that people are perfect is fundamentally flawed for a while now.
- slowpoke 15y agoYou're completely missing the point. Nobody is saying or implying that people are perfect. Rather, it's the opposite - we acknowledge that people are imperfect - and that's exactly why we need anonymity and different identities. moot also made another very good point about total anonymity once before: the reason 4chan (and by extension, other image boards) became such a success is because there is no personal cost of failure, which allowed almost boundless creativity - which is why most of the internet knows 4chan mainly as a meme-generator.
- yuhong 15y agoAnd my point is that it is not the best solution to the problem.
- FaceKicker 15y ago> We present ourselves differently in different contexts, and that's key to our creativity and self-expression. Isn't this pretty much exactly what Google+ tries to reflect with circles? It almost sounds to me like the marketing speak they had going when the product first came out.
- wcchandler 15y agoYes, I agree. But it's really not the same. Think about steve yegge and his posting on google+. We cannot rely on anonymity across a board when user error is such a likely possibility. While it's easy and intuitive to correctly post when sober and clear minded, certain things may slip your mind. Steve yegge also intended for only a select group of users to read it. Let's pretend that he had full anonymity. There wouldn't have been any hesitation in posting. No immediate deletion. And no backlash or grief from his readers.
- salvadors 15y agoHowever, it's likely that his post wouldn't have had the same effect if it had been fully anonymous. Being _by him_ carried with it a lot of other things. Reputation matters.
- wcchandler 15y agoCould that reputation been carried throughout an anonymous identity? The only benefit from having an actual name is verification of identity. But when you talk in a certain manner, identities can become fluid and obvious of spoofs -- eliminating that need for verification.
- pheaduch 15y agoAbsolutely spot on. I struggled with the notion of putting myself out there on the internet as since the days of BBS's I've always interacted with other "internet folk" through an alias and very much under a different persona. Even running successful websites I ran them under a female alias not just because I could, but because it was a great marketing trick. But today, the web has become so ubiquitous with the real world that I know I now have to play the game. It has taken me a long time to realize this, and I still don't feel comfortable with it.
- endtime 15y agoHow is that not isomorphic to Circles?
- slowpoke 15y agoIt's not. You seem to have misread the article. moot's saying that it's important "who you share as" not "who you share with". G+ doesn't allow you to have multiple identities, it allows you to share in different contexts with the same identity - which is fundamentally different. Besides, it's a very bad idea to leave identity management in the hands of a third party anyways, and the last third party I'd trust with my identities are Google and Facebook. Call me paranoid all you want, but identities are something you manage yourself - nobody should be trusted doing it for you.
- endtime 15y agoI didn't misread anything. What I'm saying is that sharing "as" a different aspect of myself is functionally equivalent to sharing with a different Circle, from a privacy perspective.
- redwood 15y agoSpot on, can't remember who summed it up slightly differently, but it was like this: in the non-internet world you can only share as yourself... BUT in the non-internet world what you share isn't permanently logged, so when you share something with close friends or even anonymous folks at a bar, you're always expressing ideas that will not be tagged permanently t your name. Once in the internet space this changes, and if you can only post under your name, you will self-censor anything controversial since you'll never be able to shake the associated with it otherwise.
- jarin 15y agoAs someone who used to post a lot on forums, I agree that being able to have multiple pseudonyms is great. On the other hand, I also appreciate the value of enforcing real names in online discussions. If you've ever read the comments on news articles on Facebook (MSNBC/Breaking News/etc.), it's amazing the hateful, racist, bigoted shit people will post under their REAL NAMES. I can only imagine how bad it would be if people could choose to post anonymously.
- benbscholz 15y agoYou may want to visit Mr. Poole's first website, 4chan, which requires anonymous posting on some areas but allows a limited identity in others (through tripcodes). The effect of anonymous posting on content quality is immediately apparent.
- runn1ng 15y ago4chan doesn't dissallow tripcodes anywhere. edit: they apparently do that in /soc/. Oh well. I wouldn't say that the discussion there is that terrible (of course if you don't go to /b/, the "everything goes" board). Yes, for example for technology, /g/ board is unreadable, full of mindless hatred and the same type of discussions over and over (absolutely incomparable with Hacker News). The same for /v/. /int/ is just a shoutbox for racism and stereotypes. Really, the more popular boards are terrible. Poole sometimes seems to like it, trumping it as "raw uncensored opinion", but it's mostly just dumb. However, I also visit /co/ board for cartoons and comics, and it is one of the best places to talk about these.
- mey 15y agoThey may be doing it wrong from a psychology perspective, but seem to be doing fine from a business perspective.
- jhickner 15y agoThis point (anti-point?) is often made, but I'm not sure it actually means anything. After all, you could have said the same about AOL at the time when the few forward thinking among us were saying "Hey, there's more to the internet than this walled-garden stuff." On paper AOL looked great (at the time), but they'd made a grave conceptual error in their product design that eventually became apparent to all. Perhaps we're in the same early stage with regard to identity?
- mey 15y agoMy point is, they seem to be serving their users to their satisfaction, there has been several iterations of social sites (Geocities, Live Journal, MySpace, etc) and Facebook seems to be the best combination of simplicity and features right now. I'm not saying there isn't a business model for Poole's ideas, but execution will not be simple. Which shouldn't phase the HN crowd, as the rewards for doing it better and still meeting the needs of the users could be a large pay off. This general "you're doing it wrong" thing reminds me of Jonathan Blow's comments on execution and Doom. It's easy to nitpick from afar, much hard to succeed. I know Poole has a successful community under his belt, but it's a community that's not exactly easy to generate a living from.
- skymt 15y agoI think moot's observation is less psychological and more sociological. If he's right, then Facebook and G+ are unsuited to their goal of becoming the hub for social interaction on the Internet, and they'll inevitably burn out when their networks become too large and dense for users to sustain a single identity.
- notahacker 15y agoYup. The thing is, people don't need to choose between real life identities and personas on the internet. Most people want both: they want to be in touch with their real life peer group and they want escapist personas that can be provocative, obtuse, interested in niche subjects or authoritative in a way that would only be undermined by their real life lack of credentials. And in different arenas, they can. It's the former area that naturally tends towards large, unified networks worth billions though. Its understandable that Facebook prefers not to lose the factors that made it unique by permitting joke accounts and impostors and devils advocates and trolls, even if many people find them find entertaining. Not to mention all the other things that come with a truly liberal policy on identity (like hundreds of millions of autofriending spambots). There's the rest of the Internet for that...
- joshu 15y agoHeh, he spent the evening at my house working on and fretting about this presentation. While my dog watched: http://yfrog.com/hsokxkwj http://yfrog.com/hsokxkwj
- moot 15y agoTHANKS JOSHUA
- citricsquid 15y agoI don't know what I find my humorous, moot's hair or the stairs for your dog...
- joshu 15y agoActually, the dog is a little acrobat and has no problem getting on the couch (she regularly hops up the BACK of that couch.) I actually just flop off the side and put my ipad on them for reading. It works great for that.
- AbyCodes 15y agomoot sits like a Nippon girl!
- ianl 15y agoYou can find the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbPASJiAfu4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbPASJiAfu4
- wahnfrieden 15y agoFor the record, they got his Twitter handle wrong in the info slide - it's not @moot69, it's just @moot
- grandalf 15y agoA character assassination attempt surely!
- beaumartinez 15y agoThat's the point of his presentation: your Twitter handle is not you.
- jeffool 15y agoAhhh, thanks for the link! "It took me four hours to pick my AOL screenname." Same here. And I've been using it ever since. I'm not sure what, if anything, that says about me. But yeah, it's the name I've chosen to associate with.
- Periodic 15y agoThe thing is, that AOL screenname I chose 15 years ago isn't how I want to be seen now. I've changed a lot since then, and it feels right to me that my handle should as well. Over the last 8 years or so I've been moving away from that handle and to something a little more... professional. I'd really like the things associated with that handle to stay in the past, and not be easily accessed by anyone who has my current handle.
- jeffool 15y agoI can absolutely understand what you're saying. I don't have so much of a problem with having the same name I chose in 1996, at the age of 16, though. (That's what I meant by "I'm not sure what that says about me.") And actually, my problem is different. I worry not about my past overlapping with my present, but my "real life" crashing into my digital one. While it certainly doesn't take much to piece together who I am, I do get oddly disconcerted by people who I grew up with who are only now getting online. I've mostly avoided it by not visiting Facebook anymore. I like to compare the Internet to a swimming pool, only, it operates exactly the opposite as you'd expect. Normally adults would be wary of children getting into the deep end, as it's less safe. But on the Internet, not only are the younger ones far better swimmers who live in the deep end... The adults stay in the kiddie pool/inlet. One scary run-in with the deep end, and they never want to "swim" again. I'm very curious about the effects this is having on society. I can't wait to see what parents and children are culturally like in twenty years. (Of course, who knows what'll be around then.)
- gnu6 15y agoChris Poole operates the world's most popular child pornography web site. Let's all listen to what he has to say.
- molesy 15y ago"The National Security Agency operates the world's most popular child pornography web site, originally founded by Chris Poole. Let's all listen to what he has to say." Fixed.
- gnu6 15y agoYou're thinking of facebook.
- molesy 15y agoYou're thinking "successful due to its remarkably high level of cooperation with", rather than "wholly operated by." Insert Twitter, Google responses below.
- gnu6 15y agoIt's baffling that I'm being downvoted so much. Apparently most hackernews users are devoted fans of 4chan who use that site to get their child pornography fix.
- suivix 15y agoIt's baffling that you're getting downvoted for accusing a site of being government-operated with 0 evidence, and then you put down HN users? Really?
- molesy 15y agoNaw, that was me. He just said moot runs the world's largest CP site and that's probably not a good reason to listen to him. This is the internet, so pastebin is as good as any other evidence: http://pastebin.com/fPW1myL9 http://pastebin.com/fPW1myL9 Of course that doesn't say NSA but my tinfoil is strong. Seriously, if you don't believe that these large social sites that popped out of nowhere with no obvious need and no chance of profitability haven't at least been very happily ushered along the path to success by an all-too-eager network of governments that give not two shits about their population for anything but their perverse amusement and enrichment, you're a complete moron and a prime example of why the founding fathers knew you can't trust the people to run a country. Because you're morons.
- grandalf 15y agoChris came up with a great metaphor to explain online identity. Most of the people leading major product decisions in this area either have very common names or are already famous. But for the rest of us, using our real name online means that anyone who meets us can discover our online identity with a google search. When I "meet" someone online (such as reading a comment he/she wrote on HN) I really don't care what his/her real name is. I don't understand why Google cares.
- SoftwareMaven 15y agoGoogle cares because it allows them to correlate all that juicy information you give them online with all those things you interact with offline. Together, these will combine into more targeted advertising (or "direct-to-individual marketing"). There is a HUGE financial incentive to force people into using their real names.
- slowpoke 15y ago>There is a HUGE financial incentive to force people into using their real names. "Financial incentive" is not, or rather, should not be a valid argument, ever. Especially not for infringing on fundamental principles of personal rights and liberties. We (as in, the privacy/anonymity advocates) have always known that Google/Facebook wants to profit. What we question is why that is any justification for the shit they are pulling. Has capitalism really clouded most people's minds this much?
- toyg 15y agoUnfortunately, "financial incentives" are the basis for any business. Are you arguing that Google and Facebook should be run as charities, or by the State? Or should they simply shut down their social networks and tracking, including Like buttons etc? I'm not criticizing, i'd like to know the alternatives.
- slowpoke 15y agoI'm saying that "financial incentives" is no valid argument to excuse the stuff that G+ and Facebook do, and so far it is the only. Do we justify all shady, if not borderline criminal business with "financial incentives"? Besides, there have been non-intrusive ways to implement Like/+1 Buttons. heise.de for example did. You might remember what Facebook did - threaten to sue. With reasons that I cannot describe as anything but bullshit.
- artursapek 15y agoIdentity is prismatic, but the faces of that prism aren't disjointed. They're all part of the same whole and for this reason I'm not sure his metaphor works with his point about how we present ourselves differently in different contexts. I've always used my real name on everything I do since I got in trouble in high school for being part of a group prank under a pseudonym. My father told me that unless I want what I do to be associated with my real name, I just probably shouldn't do it. I've found those to be good words to live by. And if you've ever explored 4chan for even a minute you'll see why this is important, the anonymity there turns those people into, well, freaks. I think "real names" can be considered a product of evolution, they came about for a good reason.
- naner 15y agoAnd if you've ever explored 4chan for even a minute you'll see why this is important, the anonymity there turns those people into, well, freaks. Pseudonyms have been used all over the web from the very beginning. 4chan has problems because there is less accountability than other sites (like this one), not because they allow people to be anonymous.
- artursapek 15y agoThat's a good point. It really is a free-for-all.
- dhugiaskmak 15y agounless I want what I do to be associated with my real name, I just probably shouldn't do it This sounds an awful lot like "if you aren't doing anything wrong then you don't have anything to hide" to me.
- artursapek 15y ago"Wrong" is too black and white to go by, the way I put it is more like saying that you sculpt your identity based on the choices you make.
- bmelton 15y ago
- apollo 15y agoSo why require Facebook to register on Canvas?
- jeffool 15y agoHe talks about that in the video (linked elsewhere in this thread, on YouTube.) It's used to keep out the more casual trolls. But on the site itself, you're not required to reveal your identity.
- 0003 15y agoHis reason is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbPASJiAfu4#t=323 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbPASJiAfu4#t=323
- teki 15y agoRings a bell, changing nickname on IRC was essential part of self expression.
- whackberry 15y agoBoth Facebook and Google are doing it right. They just work for the wrong interests?
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- jroseattle 15y agoThe most insightful discussion of online identity I've heard to date. Facebook has painted themselves into a corner, and Google isn't creative enough with their approach. Twitter is better, but only because they don't have the same policies and don't try to get in the way.
- taariqlewis 15y agoThis is a problem for Linkedin, as well. We have many facted personalities for work, but we are only allowed one-dimensional presentation. It's terrible, but most folks don't care or just don't know.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- toyg 15y agoThe problem with the multiple-vs-unique-ID debate is that people tend to ignore what these systems are really built for: data mining, behavioural analysis, targeted advertising etc. Users will agree with moot that separate identities are better and safer, but this is not how the real FB/Google customers see it; advertisers and marketeers want to know that user-A is an engineer AND loves cooking AND has a pet AND goes on 4chan.org/tv, not just one OR the others. That's why FB/Google try so hard to reconcile all your activities under one ID: to better represent the unique intersection of interests that will be resold to marketeers. Any feature they implement to "manage your faceted identity" will only give you an illusion of separation, and will inevitably link all your activities anyway, because that's necessary for their business model. Note that this is not a rant (I use FB and G+ every day), I just think this point tends to be overlooked when talking about "social" websites, almost like it was not polite to point out where these businesses make their money.
- MatthewPhillips 15y agoI'm not sure why Google would care to know those things. The most profitable form of advertising is a direct search. "Bears tickets" is advertising gold. Joe liking the Bears on Facebook is not on the same level. Google might get incremental value on having the additional data but I don't think it's worth the reputation hit.
- yuhong 15y agoAs I said before, personally, I am not for real name policies, but I am for fixing the problems with using real names if possible.
- troymc 15y agoI'm reminded of a quote: "Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes." - Walt Whitman
- tomasienrbc 15y agoI'll never understand why people are so afraid of having their information sold by Facebook in order to better target ads to them. Do you like seeing shitty ads that don't matter to you? I don't.
- tomasienrbc 15y agoI understand it from the standpoint of privacy for privacy's sake, but beyond that I don't get it.
- josh_miller 15y agomoot and Scott Heiferman argue about online identity here: http://www.atroundtable.com/onlinecommunities http://www.atroundtable.com/onlinecommunities
- njn 15y agoThis is refreshing... :) his talk is great: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbPASJiAfu4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbPASJiAfu4 I like how Twitter lets you change your username with no hassle.. and how a lot of twitter apps allow multiple accounts.
- traveldotto1 15y agoGoogle captures your intent, Facebook captures your social graph. It's not Google and Facebook does it wrong, they just represent part of us. A service that tries to generalize the whole embodiment of human interaction where they only capture a piece of what we do is not going to work. I think it's human tendency to have multiple identities on the web based on context.
- twakefield 15y agoSeems that email is the unifying online id and emphasizes the importance having an email address at a domain that you own and control so that you don't lose it when these social networks disappear or violate your privacy to the point that you need to walk away. Would it be worthwhile to have a service that managed all of your online identities? You could register multiple avatars/aliases and the service would create email addresses for each of them that could be used to sign up for different networks. Then all of those email notifications, etc. could be forwarded to one confidential email address at a domain that the user owns and registers with the service.
- abava 15y agoI think multiple ID is a working idea. We have used it in safe location sharing WATN: http://servletsuite.blogspot.com/2011/10/where-are-they-now.html http://servletsuite.blogspot.com/2011/10/where-are-they-now.... And yes, it is good for users but bad for advertisers
- bteitelb 15y agoPoole is spot on. I'll add as a corollary, that users also don't want real-time communication that is a mirror. This is one of the reasons that videoconferencing has failed repeatedly since 1964. The entire cosmetics and fashion industries exist to provide avatars for when we must endure the gaze. And yet, we continue to work on videoconferencing and tele-immersion. Sigh.
- demallien 15y agoWhat on earth makes you think that video conferencing has failed? I might not use it for business calls, or to organise an evening out with friends, but I use Skype video every weekend to catch up with my family... Sure, it doesn't replace every type of telephone call, but it certainly does replace some.
- bteitelb 15y agoYour reply illustrates exactly how it has failed. You use it only to catch up with family...every weekend. These are the people for whom we do not bother putting on makeup or even our clothes sometimes. Depending on demographics, per capita voice minutes (though falling) are still 500-1000 per month; and you are spending maybe a 10th of that on video calls with family. Judged against 50+ years of heavy R&D and promotion of this communications medium, I'd have to call that failure.
- bteitelb 15y agoAnother corollary is that we need better tools for lying. Prismatic identity management require that you can manage the persona on each facet and lie about the occluded personas. One of the killer features of the telephone that is often overlooked is how well it has supported lying.