12 ms·

Reddit has the killer social network feature: anonymity

140 points by RandyRanderson 13y ago

This blog describes how reddit is the solution to facebook fatigue.

lutusp 13y ago
A quote: "For some reason big companies are really into real names." Yes, and increasingly so. The reason? People are forced to be more serious as well as more polite in their comments if they must post under their real names. The primary reason for the juvenile atmosphere in many Reddit threads is the fact that contributors mostly post anonymously. Huffington Post recently changed its policy, now requiring commenters to post under their real names: http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/22/tech/web/huffington-post-anonymous-comments http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/22/tech/web/huffington-post-anony... Quote: "Arianna Huffington is fed up with the trolls." Well put. I've been posting under my real name since the days of Usenet, twenty years ago, when anonymous posting was almost universal. Now it seems the rest of the world is catching up.
- throwaway2048 13y ago
  Sorry, but the idea that real name policies are all about improving discourse is nothing but a load of self serving bullshit from the companies that push it. They (and their advertisers) stand to benefit massively the easier people are identified and profiled.
  - lhnz 13y ago
    > They (and their advertisers) stand to benefit massively the easier people are identified and profiled. How? Surely people are just easily matched on a pseudonyms?
    - TimSAstro 13y ago
      Not when they choose a different pseudonym for each site. You only have one real name (usually).
      - lhnz 13y ago
        It's pretty easy to link psuedonyms together so I don't think you're right.
  - ars 13y ago
    Tell me something - would you say the sentence exactly like that in person? (Not to close friends, but people you only sort-of know.) Or would you tone it down a bit? I hope you get my point.
    - fosap 13y ago
      I'm not the person you addressed, but I would. And just a single glimpse at facebook (or twitter or a newspaper comment column) shows people will show horrible, socially absolutely unacceptable behavior on the internet, even if their real name is attaced. I think facebook has worse manners than reddit. The believe that real names would increase the quality of the content or the manners is IMO back up by nothing but wishful thinking.
    - RandyRanderson 13y ago
      I think what I was trying to say in my piece is that if you have anonymity AND a reputation you get the best of both worlds. Trolls will be modded down by other users (assuming a reasonable reputation system) and people will be free to speak BOTH respectably and openly. Note that you can always use your real name as your handle if you choose.
  - lutusp 13y ago
    > They (and their advertisers) stand to benefit massively the easier people are identified and profiled. I agree that predatory advertisers are the scourge of the modern Internet, but one can profile a nickname as easily as a real name. On the other hand, it is certainly true that a person posts more carefully if his real name is attached to the result. From the perspective of a website operator, a nickname has an associated IP, and a real name has an IP -- they're the same, both easily tracked. A nickname arises in a browser indexed with cookies, as does a real name. > ... nothing but a load of self serving bullshit ... And the tone of your reply proves my point.
    - mindslight 13y ago
      > it is certainly true that a person posts more carefully if his real name is attached to the result It's pretty easy to agree on this. What's up for debate is what carefully implies. And there's no shortage of people who will still post stupid inane comments under their real name, so you've still got to rank them somehow.
- eksith 13y ago
  I disagree. Pseudonyms have in no way hindered polite, serious discussions on any forum I've ever seen. The only way to ensure the atmosphere you seek is through curated and carefully moderated discourse. Heavy or light-handedness in handling discussion will kill the atmosphere and dissuade any honesty, politeness or even truth (for fear of reprisal) even if real names are enforced. Reddit is the way it is because its founders and moderators wish it so. Every community gets the users it deserves. Edit: Some cleanups (not enough coffee... also it's 5:13AM here)
  - aninhumer 13y ago
    Obviously good moderation works better, but that doesn't mean real names can't help.
    - edwintorok 13y ago
      And how do you know if someone actually used their real name, or just something generated by a tool like rig?
- GauntletWizard 13y ago
  Look at Twitter; Almost everyone uses their real name. Even terrible trolls. Discourse is as uncivil as you can get on the internet. Moderation makes communities; Real Names do not.
  - camus 13y ago
    I 100% agree,it is all about the kind of community one wants to build. If your content is trash like in some sub reddits or 50% of the huffpo articles, you'll get the trolls. Some more serious sub-reddits are totally clean of trolls.
yuhong 13y ago
I am not a fan of real name policies, but anonymity should not be a long term solution if possible. Better solutions should be sought.
- bandushrew 13y ago
  You can take my online anonymity when you pry it from my cold, dead hands. With a few very carefully selected exceptions, there is absolutely no upside for me in being recognised online, and there is a lot of possible downside - from being 'targeted' for advertising, to having my habits tracked, to being hounded and hunted in real life by people who have nothing better to do. All the reasons for wanting to take my anonymity away come from people who have something to gain by doing so. I do get it - you would rather not have anonymous people posting on your website, fine. You get paid more if you can provide identified 'consumers', thats awesome. Nothing in it for me though.
  - yuhong 13y ago
    I did say I am not a fan of real name policies.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - rtpg 13y ago
    you seem to feel strongly about it, so I'll ask you: what's the downside to targeted advertising? I've honestly never figured it out, and honestly if I'm going to have ads shoved in my face, I like it better when it's for things I might actually want. Not trying to be snarky
    - VLM 13y ago
      "downside to targeted advertising" Mode shifting. When I'm in "work mode" I don't want to see ads for my daughter's birthday gift shopping research, and vice versa, its kind of jarring and probably the near opposite of the "smooth personalized engagement" the advertisers were promised. Heck, if I'm not at work, and work is stressful, I don't wanna see anything about work when I'm not at work. Or if I'm going on vacation I don't need the distraction of vacation ads while I'm theoretically working. Another jarring impact is related to the current sorta-anonymous way the internet presently works where what I looked for on ebay has very little to do with what I looked for on amazon so ads based solely on one or the other are going to be an epic fail. If you google for the term "uncanny valley" what I'm claiming is 2013 era state of the art targeted advertising is very near a local minima or whatever of the uncanny valley. Less personal and it wouldn't be so creepy, and more personal and it would actually be in at least some danger of occasionally being useful... "things I might actually want" - things I might actually want At This Moment. One fundamental problem is "targeted ads" usually mean target to one identity. If they were ever implemented as one identity AND simultaneous activity, well OK. This is before we hit process issues. Don't spam me with car ads after I've signed the papers and driven away in something else. Yes I researched heavily online so you think I'd be a great advertising victim, but you're too late, the project is done. Why can't I see ads relevant to what I'm interested in Now as opposed to what I was interested in the past? I buy a new video card every 2-3 years. Advertising would be almost useful for a couple weeks every hundred or so weeks. Most of the ads will be after I make a purchase, probably viewed at work where I'm theoretically not supposed to be doing home computing projects.
angersock 13y ago
This is why the most interesting OC on the 'net seems to come from the swamps of 4chan and reddit (and SA and YTMD and the like). There is very little to gain (other than targeted advertising and srs bznz) from giving up anonymity online, and if you make friends somehow you can always coordinate out-of-band. I'm really sad that so many places want me to integrate my gmail or my real name or my birthday or whatever other bit of personal info I claim into their registers. We're still recoiling from the NSA stuff: why the fuck should we accept companies that want to do the same things to us? EDIT: I'll go one step further. An author I'd read in some scifi story or something similar had suggested that the mark of our era was the relentless pursuit and shaming of hypocrisy. The idea was that, having embraced moral relativism and given up any attempt at judging people on a cultural basis, nerds and soon the rest of people flocked to the last bastion of the judgemental: chiding others for doing something other than what they'd preached, or saying something different at different points in time. Without anonymity, it can be very difficult to conduct useful intellectual discourse, especially if you aren't strong-willed enough to deal with trolls and jerks who say "But aha! Yesterday you claimed A, but today B; which is it?".
- dageshi 13y ago
  Or "your future prospective employer is going to google your name when you apply for a job" In which case I'd suggest you've got a very strong motivation for not posting anything remotely controversial under a real name account.
  - angersock 13y ago
    At this point, even with my handles and nicks, that cat is out of the bag. I look at it this way: if they wouldn't hire me over something I said online, I don't want to work there anyways.
    - dageshi 13y ago
      That assumes you'll always have the luxury of being able to pick and choose your job. For you perhaps that's the case, for others it won't always be the case.
idexterous 13y ago
And it has "downvote" button
- smtddr 13y ago
  So does HN, but you need 500 Karma before the downvote button appears.
  - adamnemecek 13y ago
    I'm assuming that he's comparing it with FB.
6ren 13y ago
Not necessarily - if you verify your account with (your real) email, that can be used to connect to the rest of your network. I don't believe reddit is doing this right now... but the future is long. (Of course, you can simply not verify, or use a fake email.)
- astrobe_ 13y ago
  Yes, indeed. I started to build my digital safe ~20 years ago ex nihilo. I think it's still possible today. Build a second identity with which you can really speak your mind. The funny thing is that your "real name" identity is, as the OP points out, a bit less representative of your real-self than your "fake name" identity.
espeed 13y ago
Your ability to conceal your identity on Reddit, and in public forums in general, is an illusion. Your identity can be revealed by your writing, regardless if you use a nym or not. Text analysis algorithms can detect and match you by your writing style and reveal characteristics about your personality that you have no idea you're leaking (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-secret-language-code http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-secret-...). Even your use of pronouns provide clues. It's like your fingerprint, or your gate (http://www.cs.umd.edu/~chiraz/icpr02.pdf http://www.cs.umd.edu/~chiraz/icpr02.pdf). "The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say About Us" (http://www.amazon.com/Secret-Life-Pronouns-Words-About/dp/1608194965/ http://www.amazon.com/Secret-Life-Pronouns-Words-About/dp/16...), by Dr. James Pennabaker (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_W._Pennebaker http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_W._Pennebaker).
- Dewie 13y ago
  What if one writes in English under a pseudonym but only in another language under ones real name?
- petera 13y ago
  True, but you need an identity and written material to compare it to.
- DennisP 13y ago
  Seems like it'd be reasonably easy to run those same algorithms in reverse and change your writing style to someone else's.
- LordHumungous 13y ago
  I think most people on reddit realize this, and it is actually not a totally bad thing- it prevents people from engaging in excessively nasty behavior (at least with their primary accounts)
buro9 13y ago
I'm working on a hosted forum/community platform, and the feedback we received when asking customers (site admins) and users was strong, and unequivocal: They want to present themselves as an alias and not have their interactions with their interests be tied or related to their real identity. When asked why, various reasons were given: People view their hobbies and pastimes as a sanctuary from real life, home, family, a safe space, and they don't want that safe space ruined by being forced to use real identity. People distinguish themselves in ways that their real identity might not allow. Their work or social position might not grant them the ability to express themselves fully as an avatar in an online world, or as someone into tap-dancing, but a constructed alias allows them to immerse themselves more fully. People fear that engagement in their interests/pastimes will lead to them being judged by future employers/partners/others. Aliases allow people to really engage with their interests, and from that it becomes more likely that the experts in a community will congregate and share information. That the value for a community is realised. And if you need to cite an example of that: Hacker News For all this, the downside is that you have to have ways to deal with trolls and spammers that do not use the very easy and simple mechanism of "who are you?". That's harder to do, and so you either allow it (4chan) or you create complex flagging/reporting/moderating layers. The really interesting part for me is how active/engaged and in-your-face that moderation is, or how invisible it is, and where the line of transparency is (the more transparent the easier to game, the less transparent the harder to trust). tl:dr People want anonymity so that they can share freely, but the price you have to pay is managing spammers and trolls.
- superuser2 13y ago
  I don't see anyone arguing against pseudonyms for forums, internet communities, or anything else that's separate from your real life. Hobbies are indeed sacred. Google's stance with Google+ is pretty clear: this isn't the place for internet lives and internet friends. This isn't a forum, or Reddit, or HN, or any of those things. It's a place, like Facebook, for people's real identities to engage with each other.
thewarrior 13y ago
Well Quora does this. You can go anonymous for some answers. So is Quora the next big thing ?
losethos 13y ago
They give you markers to write on prison walls. God is just. God says... forgottest slipped fasting in-breathing ships laying Receive manfully play currents whit Difficulty Circus exceeded partaker mule having nobility mysteriously hungry wallowed So legal raised viper arisen Onesiphorus wherein covenanted Ordainer Danae's facts concupiscences Greenland preacher panted desired pole heavily Israel animate aught centre antecedent overcome you_shouldn't_have Ivory_Coast ghetto Happy intelligence fog Clearly Intelligences rudiments helping deridedst oblation healing requited Soon redeem well-formed stripes meekness -nor twins celebrated forgetteth Blessed earliest sights belongs reverence condensed groaning deeps contrary richer fast flee whirlpool gifts sceptre better sit title 20 plausibility sick sayest undertake Angels stealth conquering page loveth reacheth privacy new-born dotages derived offer shed begannest persistence bath yikes undergo conveying created commander envenomed risen wayward working pronunciation hadst transferring qualities abandon First mangled heal ungodly On distracted hello something we universal wearisome 'Gainst achieve unexpected lightened reclaim
zmmmmm 13y ago
Actually it is not anonymity that makes Reddit (or HN) successful. It is pseudonymity. You still have an identity, and the identity has value - karma. It is just disconnected from your biometric, "real life" identity. The desire to protect the value of the pseudonymous identity is a powerful motivating force for making positive contributions. In many ways it is even more motivating than for your real life identity, because your real life, "biometric" identity is so precious that you will almost always favor low-zero risk contributions which are incredibly boring. If Reddit was only anonymous it would be a horrible failure.
- bluefinity 13y ago
  4chan is anonymous. Last I checked, it wasn't a horrible failure, and in some ways actually works better, since there's no "karma whoring"[1]. The Japanese equivalent of Reddit (2channel) is enormously successful, possibly even more so than reddit, and it's anonymous. [1]: http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/karma-whore http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/karma-whore
  - djent 13y ago
    Easier to read, all around better source of information: https://encyclopediadramatica.se/Likes https://encyclopediadramatica.se/Likes
- RandyRanderson 13y ago
  Yes they just need to repair the karma with a tag system. So for example a user might have multiple karma values: karma-aww=2, karma-gonewild=1, karma-actual-content=1000, etc You'd have a much better site!
  - chilldream 13y ago
    Does this require different "types" of upvotes? If so, this kind of idea runs counter to sites like YouTube that have figured out that even things like 5-star rating systems are more complicated than users want to deal with.
Mahn 13y ago
How about we let Reddit be Reddit and facebook be facebook?
bambax 13y ago
> For some reason big companies are really into real names. Actual people not so much. Totally agree with this, but I wonder why? Why does Google want me to use my real name while browsing videos on YouTube? Why do they care? It's a mystery to me.
- lazyjones 13y ago
  > Why does Google want me to use my real name while browsing videos on YouTube? Why do they care? Because you're the product, not the customer - and you're worth more to them the more they know about you, your habits, your inclinations etc..
  - Dewie 13y ago
    Thought experiment: let's say that anonymity was such an important thing to the average Google user that they would decide to use alternatives if they felt that their anonymity outside of their Google account was being compromised. Could Google know enough information about you to correlate data over a lot of your activities and preferences, but still make it so that you yourself are anonymous to them and the outside world (with a high degree of certainty)? If we are not their products, then do they really need to know enough information about us to actually make a profile that is matched to our real identities? Obvious problems are, for example if they know enough stats about your physical description to pinpoint you pretty accurately, and they also know where you live, and there are only 10 other people that live in that place. Even if they don't actively try to deduce your identity, it is very easy to do so with the available information.
    - lazyjones 13y ago
      > f we are not their products, then do they really need to know enough information about us to actually make a profile that is matched to our real identities? Yes, because they can get more information about you from other sources using your real name.
  - bambax 13y ago
    What does my real name have to do with this? What you're saying would explain why they wouldn't let one see videos on YouTube without being logged in (I don't know whether it's the case but I suspect it's not). Being logged in is one thing; using your real name is another.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
VLM 13y ago
The original article is a good solution to a small subset of the problems, as relates to this direct quote "With this no one is risking real-life relationships" The problem is the somewhat larger set of problems containing that subset, and also containing people perfectly willing to risk one of those apparently hated "real-life relationships". Not talking about dating although that's an obvious example. One big problem is this whole topic in general is rife with people analyzing their own situation and declaring their individual solution to be the universal solution for all. One specific example of this, is looking at my paragraph above, individuals are going to categorize different groups as requiring, or not requiring, anonymity in a mostly unpredictable distribution. The other problem is WRT "Pictures of Stolen Pets content" that the author makes fun of, he needs to talk to actual users of the network, and examine the above paragraph. I find it as boring as the author; however I know a lot of people occasionally enjoy a calming, simple, meaningless experience. It doesn't all have to be Shakespeare to be enjoyable, and setting the bar very high is probably an excellent way to repel most of the casual users. The advertisers and attention addicts are not going to like that, so if the casuals leave, they'll leave. Which results in an empty service. How to work around this spiral failure mode is unclear to me.
jeanbebe 13y ago
There is a place in the market for anonymous social networks. Checkout racut. (racut.com) From the site - racut is designed so you can be anonymous as you want. Choose a profile picture, craft a witty bio, and you're on your way. You don't have to tell us where you went to school, what your favorite color is and if you're in a relationship.
locofacetwice 13y ago
it's not really anonymity if everyone can see all your previous posts and threads. real example of anonymity is 4chan.
moot 13y ago
That whole anonymity thing is overrated, IMHO. Who would ever argue for such a thing?
- ActVen 13y ago
  You may have seen an extremely relevant speech on this topic :) http://www.ted.com/talks/christopher_m00t_poole_the_case_for_anonymity_online.html http://www.ted.com/talks/christopher_m00t_poole_the_case_for...
- rorrr2 13y ago
  Yet you are not using your real name.
  - Dylan16807 13y ago
    Well, you tried.
  - LukeShu 13y ago
    thatsthejoke.jpeg The username he used is "moot", the pseudonym of the long-anonymous Christopher Poole, the founder of 4chan, and privacy/anonymity advocate. Looking at his profile, he does appear to be the actual moot.
shmerl 13y ago
So does Diaspora.
ghostdiver 13y ago
Anonymity is for geeks
adambratt 13y ago
While there have been some good points brought up here, I think the author misunderstands what the purpose of Facebook is. Facebook is not in the same category as Reddit. Social network used to be a very specific category of website, now almost every consumer facing website is a social network. Reddit is a content creation and discussion community, basically a centralized version of the forums and bulletin boards of yesteryear. Facebook is a photo, link, and life sharing network. If I'm sharing pictures of my family and friends, I'm giving up anonymity by default. The whole point of Facebook is to give an online pin board of what is going on in my life, who I am as a person, and what I think and I enjoy. It's the online identity of my human self. Reddit is an open platform for all types of discussion and interaction at a macro scale. What happens on Reddit will rarely if ever affect my actual day to day life. The phrase "hive mind" is all too true when you consider the mass amount of meaningless content there is. It's the brain vomit of millions of people and that's what makes it awesome and interesting. For every thought or idea I have, I can find someone else who agrees with me and someone who doesn't. Saying Facebook should learn from Reddit doesn't make much sense to me. Reddit not a new concept or idea. Historically, social interaction online had always been "anonymous" in one form or another. Facebook was the first truly successful community that did away with usernames and forced people to use their real names. To get a billion people to do that is an incredible feat. In my humble opinion, Reddit is not revolutionary at all. The "moat" around the site/business is not near as big as Facebooks. All it would take for a Reddit killer to emerge is for a site to hit critical mass in terms of content and provide a better more targeted form of curation to the user than subreddits and karma. In contrary, Facebook has built a massive moat. Your friend list, your photo history, your about page, your Facebook connected sites and apps...this is a huge fucking moat. I'm not saying it would be easy for a Reddit killer to surface, I'm just pointing out that it's more likely than a Facebook killer. I think it's important for us to recognize that Reddit's social network is not Twitter's social network which is not Facebook's social network and to understand this when making comparisons between them.
- baq 13y ago
  > In my humble opinion, Reddit is not revolutionary at all. This a thousand times. Reddit is a more user friendly, server-side usenet without most of its hard to grasp features (but with css, which actually matters way more than it seems with all those content: tricks.) PS. I was on usenet for a couple of years, then slashdot, then reddit, then here. Nothing of substance changed except a few abbreviations.
arikrak 13y ago
One of the reasons Facebook beat MySpace was because Facebook insisted on real-names. (See Quora for more discussion http://www.quora.com/Facebook-1/Why-did-Facebook-succeed-where-MySpace-and-Friendster-did-not http://www.quora.com/Facebook-1/Why-did-Facebook-succeed-whe... )
- RandyRanderson 13y ago
  So you have to login to fb or g+ to see this... hilarious!
vph 13y ago
It's a bit naive to think Facebook doesn't care about people. Broadly speaking, there are introverts and there are extroverts. Introverts love Reddit, 4Chan, etc. for their anonymity. Extroverts love Facebook, Twitter, etc. And those in the middle belong to both.
amerika_blog 13y ago
Without trolls, the internet would be a barren place. Oh wait, maybe not :)

140 points by RandyRanderson 13y ago

This blog describes how reddit is the solution to facebook fatigue.

A quote: "For some reason big companies are really into real names." Yes, and increasingly so. The reason? People are forced to be more serious as well as more polite in their comments if they must post under their real names. The primary reason for the juvenile atmosphere in many Reddit threads is the fact that contributors mostly post anonymously. Huffington Post recently changed its policy, now requiring commenters to post under their real names: http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/22/tech/web/huffington-post-anonymous-comments http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/22/tech/web/huffington-post-anony... Quote: "Arianna Huffington is fed up with the trolls." Well put. I've been posting under my real name since the days of Usenet, twenty years ago, when anonymous posting was almost universal. Now it seems the rest of the world is catching up.

throwaway2048 13y ago
Sorry, but the idea that real name policies are all about improving discourse is nothing but a load of self serving bullshit from the companies that push it. They (and their advertisers) stand to benefit massively the easier people are identified and profiled.
- lhnz 13y ago
  > They (and their advertisers) stand to benefit massively the easier people are identified and profiled. How? Surely people are just easily matched on a pseudonyms?
  - TimSAstro 13y ago
    Not when they choose a different pseudonym for each site. You only have one real name (usually).
    - lhnz 13y ago
      It's pretty easy to link psuedonyms together so I don't think you're right.
- ars 13y ago
  Tell me something - would you say the sentence exactly like that in person? (Not to close friends, but people you only sort-of know.) Or would you tone it down a bit? I hope you get my point.
  - fosap 13y ago
    I'm not the person you addressed, but I would. And just a single glimpse at facebook (or twitter or a newspaper comment column) shows people will show horrible, socially absolutely unacceptable behavior on the internet, even if their real name is attaced. I think facebook has worse manners than reddit. The believe that real names would increase the quality of the content or the manners is IMO back up by nothing but wishful thinking.
  - RandyRanderson 13y ago
    I think what I was trying to say in my piece is that if you have anonymity AND a reputation you get the best of both worlds. Trolls will be modded down by other users (assuming a reasonable reputation system) and people will be free to speak BOTH respectably and openly. Note that you can always use your real name as your handle if you choose.
- lutusp 13y ago
  > They (and their advertisers) stand to benefit massively the easier people are identified and profiled. I agree that predatory advertisers are the scourge of the modern Internet, but one can profile a nickname as easily as a real name. On the other hand, it is certainly true that a person posts more carefully if his real name is attached to the result. From the perspective of a website operator, a nickname has an associated IP, and a real name has an IP -- they're the same, both easily tracked. A nickname arises in a browser indexed with cookies, as does a real name. > ... nothing but a load of self serving bullshit ... And the tone of your reply proves my point.
  - mindslight 13y ago
    > it is certainly true that a person posts more carefully if his real name is attached to the result It's pretty easy to agree on this. What's up for debate is what carefully implies. And there's no shortage of people who will still post stupid inane comments under their real name, so you've still got to rank them somehow.
eksith 13y ago
I disagree. Pseudonyms have in no way hindered polite, serious discussions on any forum I've ever seen. The only way to ensure the atmosphere you seek is through curated and carefully moderated discourse. Heavy or light-handedness in handling discussion will kill the atmosphere and dissuade any honesty, politeness or even truth (for fear of reprisal) even if real names are enforced. Reddit is the way it is because its founders and moderators wish it so. Every community gets the users it deserves. Edit: Some cleanups (not enough coffee... also it's 5:13AM here)
- aninhumer 13y ago
  Obviously good moderation works better, but that doesn't mean real names can't help.
  - edwintorok 13y ago
    And how do you know if someone actually used their real name, or just something generated by a tool like rig?
GauntletWizard 13y ago
Look at Twitter; Almost everyone uses their real name. Even terrible trolls. Discourse is as uncivil as you can get on the internet. Moderation makes communities; Real Names do not.
- camus 13y ago
  I 100% agree,it is all about the kind of community one wants to build. If your content is trash like in some sub reddits or 50% of the huffpo articles, you'll get the trolls. Some more serious sub-reddits are totally clean of trolls.

yuhong 13y ago

I am not a fan of real name policies, but anonymity should not be a long term solution if possible. Better solutions should be sought.

bandushrew 13y ago
You can take my online anonymity when you pry it from my cold, dead hands. With a few very carefully selected exceptions, there is absolutely no upside for me in being recognised online, and there is a lot of possible downside - from being 'targeted' for advertising, to having my habits tracked, to being hounded and hunted in real life by people who have nothing better to do. All the reasons for wanting to take my anonymity away come from people who have something to gain by doing so. I do get it - you would rather not have anonymous people posting on your website, fine. You get paid more if you can provide identified 'consumers', thats awesome. Nothing in it for me though.
- yuhong 13y ago
  I did say I am not a fan of real name policies.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- rtpg 13y ago
  you seem to feel strongly about it, so I'll ask you: what's the downside to targeted advertising? I've honestly never figured it out, and honestly if I'm going to have ads shoved in my face, I like it better when it's for things I might actually want. Not trying to be snarky
  - VLM 13y ago
    "downside to targeted advertising" Mode shifting. When I'm in "work mode" I don't want to see ads for my daughter's birthday gift shopping research, and vice versa, its kind of jarring and probably the near opposite of the "smooth personalized engagement" the advertisers were promised. Heck, if I'm not at work, and work is stressful, I don't wanna see anything about work when I'm not at work. Or if I'm going on vacation I don't need the distraction of vacation ads while I'm theoretically working. Another jarring impact is related to the current sorta-anonymous way the internet presently works where what I looked for on ebay has very little to do with what I looked for on amazon so ads based solely on one or the other are going to be an epic fail. If you google for the term "uncanny valley" what I'm claiming is 2013 era state of the art targeted advertising is very near a local minima or whatever of the uncanny valley. Less personal and it wouldn't be so creepy, and more personal and it would actually be in at least some danger of occasionally being useful... "things I might actually want" - things I might actually want At This Moment. One fundamental problem is "targeted ads" usually mean target to one identity. If they were ever implemented as one identity AND simultaneous activity, well OK. This is before we hit process issues. Don't spam me with car ads after I've signed the papers and driven away in something else. Yes I researched heavily online so you think I'd be a great advertising victim, but you're too late, the project is done. Why can't I see ads relevant to what I'm interested in Now as opposed to what I was interested in the past? I buy a new video card every 2-3 years. Advertising would be almost useful for a couple weeks every hundred or so weeks. Most of the ads will be after I make a purchase, probably viewed at work where I'm theoretically not supposed to be doing home computing projects.

angersock 13y ago

This is why the most interesting OC on the 'net seems to come from the swamps of 4chan and reddit (and SA and YTMD and the like). There is very little to gain (other than targeted advertising and srs bznz) from giving up anonymity online, and if you make friends somehow you can always coordinate out-of-band. I'm really sad that so many places want me to integrate my gmail or my real name or my birthday or whatever other bit of personal info I claim into their registers. We're still recoiling from the NSA stuff: why the fuck should we accept companies that want to do the same things to us? EDIT: I'll go one step further. An author I'd read in some scifi story or something similar had suggested that the mark of our era was the relentless pursuit and shaming of hypocrisy. The idea was that, having embraced moral relativism and given up any attempt at judging people on a cultural basis, nerds and soon the rest of people flocked to the last bastion of the judgemental: chiding others for doing something other than what they'd preached, or saying something different at different points in time. Without anonymity, it can be very difficult to conduct useful intellectual discourse, especially if you aren't strong-willed enough to deal with trolls and jerks who say "But aha! Yesterday you claimed A, but today B; which is it?".

dageshi 13y ago
Or "your future prospective employer is going to google your name when you apply for a job" In which case I'd suggest you've got a very strong motivation for not posting anything remotely controversial under a real name account.
- angersock 13y ago
  At this point, even with my handles and nicks, that cat is out of the bag. I look at it this way: if they wouldn't hire me over something I said online, I don't want to work there anyways.
  - dageshi 13y ago
    That assumes you'll always have the luxury of being able to pick and choose your job. For you perhaps that's the case, for others it won't always be the case.

idexterous 13y ago

And it has "downvote" button

smtddr 13y ago
So does HN, but you need 500 Karma before the downvote button appears.
- adamnemecek 13y ago
  I'm assuming that he's comparing it with FB.

6ren 13y ago

Not necessarily - if you verify your account with (your real) email, that can be used to connect to the rest of your network. I don't believe reddit is doing this right now... but the future is long. (Of course, you can simply not verify, or use a fake email.)

astrobe_ 13y ago
Yes, indeed. I started to build my digital safe ~20 years ago ex nihilo. I think it's still possible today. Build a second identity with which you can really speak your mind. The funny thing is that your "real name" identity is, as the OP points out, a bit less representative of your real-self than your "fake name" identity.

espeed 13y ago

Your ability to conceal your identity on Reddit, and in public forums in general, is an illusion. Your identity can be revealed by your writing, regardless if you use a nym or not. Text analysis algorithms can detect and match you by your writing style and reveal characteristics about your personality that you have no idea you're leaking (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-secret-language-code http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-secret-...). Even your use of pronouns provide clues. It's like your fingerprint, or your gate (http://www.cs.umd.edu/~chiraz/icpr02.pdf http://www.cs.umd.edu/~chiraz/icpr02.pdf). "The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say About Us" (http://www.amazon.com/Secret-Life-Pronouns-Words-About/dp/1608194965/ http://www.amazon.com/Secret-Life-Pronouns-Words-About/dp/16...), by Dr. James Pennabaker (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_W._Pennebaker http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_W._Pennebaker).

Dewie 13y ago
What if one writes in English under a pseudonym but only in another language under ones real name?
petera 13y ago
True, but you need an identity and written material to compare it to.
DennisP 13y ago
Seems like it'd be reasonably easy to run those same algorithms in reverse and change your writing style to someone else's.
LordHumungous 13y ago
I think most people on reddit realize this, and it is actually not a totally bad thing- it prevents people from engaging in excessively nasty behavior (at least with their primary accounts)

buro9 13y ago

I'm working on a hosted forum/community platform, and the feedback we received when asking customers (site admins) and users was strong, and unequivocal: They want to present themselves as an alias and not have their interactions with their interests be tied or related to their real identity. When asked why, various reasons were given: People view their hobbies and pastimes as a sanctuary from real life, home, family, a safe space, and they don't want that safe space ruined by being forced to use real identity. People distinguish themselves in ways that their real identity might not allow. Their work or social position might not grant them the ability to express themselves fully as an avatar in an online world, or as someone into tap-dancing, but a constructed alias allows them to immerse themselves more fully. People fear that engagement in their interests/pastimes will lead to them being judged by future employers/partners/others. Aliases allow people to really engage with their interests, and from that it becomes more likely that the experts in a community will congregate and share information. That the value for a community is realised. And if you need to cite an example of that: Hacker News For all this, the downside is that you have to have ways to deal with trolls and spammers that do not use the very easy and simple mechanism of "who are you?". That's harder to do, and so you either allow it (4chan) or you create complex flagging/reporting/moderating layers. The really interesting part for me is how active/engaged and in-your-face that moderation is, or how invisible it is, and where the line of transparency is (the more transparent the easier to game, the less transparent the harder to trust). tl:dr People want anonymity so that they can share freely, but the price you have to pay is managing spammers and trolls.

superuser2 13y ago
I don't see anyone arguing against pseudonyms for forums, internet communities, or anything else that's separate from your real life. Hobbies are indeed sacred. Google's stance with Google+ is pretty clear: this isn't the place for internet lives and internet friends. This isn't a forum, or Reddit, or HN, or any of those things. It's a place, like Facebook, for people's real identities to engage with each other.

thewarrior 13y ago

Well Quora does this. You can go anonymous for some answers. So is Quora the next big thing ?

losethos 13y ago

They give you markers to write on prison walls. God is just. God says... forgottest slipped fasting in-breathing ships laying Receive manfully play currents whit Difficulty Circus exceeded partaker mule having nobility mysteriously hungry wallowed So legal raised viper arisen Onesiphorus wherein covenanted Ordainer Danae's facts concupiscences Greenland preacher panted desired pole heavily Israel animate aught centre antecedent overcome you_shouldn't_have Ivory_Coast ghetto Happy intelligence fog Clearly Intelligences rudiments helping deridedst oblation healing requited Soon redeem well-formed stripes meekness -nor twins celebrated forgetteth Blessed earliest sights belongs reverence condensed groaning deeps contrary richer fast flee whirlpool gifts sceptre better sit title 20 plausibility sick sayest undertake Angels stealth conquering page loveth reacheth privacy new-born dotages derived offer shed begannest persistence bath yikes undergo conveying created commander envenomed risen wayward working pronunciation hadst transferring qualities abandon First mangled heal ungodly On distracted hello something we universal wearisome 'Gainst achieve unexpected lightened reclaim

zmmmmm 13y ago

Actually it is not anonymity that makes Reddit (or HN) successful. It is pseudonymity. You still have an identity, and the identity has value - karma. It is just disconnected from your biometric, "real life" identity. The desire to protect the value of the pseudonymous identity is a powerful motivating force for making positive contributions. In many ways it is even more motivating than for your real life identity, because your real life, "biometric" identity is so precious that you will almost always favor low-zero risk contributions which are incredibly boring. If Reddit was only anonymous it would be a horrible failure.

bluefinity 13y ago
4chan is anonymous. Last I checked, it wasn't a horrible failure, and in some ways actually works better, since there's no "karma whoring"[1]. The Japanese equivalent of Reddit (2channel) is enormously successful, possibly even more so than reddit, and it's anonymous. [1]: http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/karma-whore http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/karma-whore
- djent 13y ago
  Easier to read, all around better source of information: https://encyclopediadramatica.se/Likes https://encyclopediadramatica.se/Likes
RandyRanderson 13y ago
Yes they just need to repair the karma with a tag system. So for example a user might have multiple karma values: karma-aww=2, karma-gonewild=1, karma-actual-content=1000, etc You'd have a much better site!
- chilldream 13y ago
  Does this require different "types" of upvotes? If so, this kind of idea runs counter to sites like YouTube that have figured out that even things like 5-star rating systems are more complicated than users want to deal with.

Mahn 13y ago

How about we let Reddit be Reddit and facebook be facebook?

bambax 13y ago

> For some reason big companies are really into real names. Actual people not so much. Totally agree with this, but I wonder why? Why does Google want me to use my real name while browsing videos on YouTube? Why do they care? It's a mystery to me.

lazyjones 13y ago
> Why does Google want me to use my real name while browsing videos on YouTube? Why do they care? Because you're the product, not the customer - and you're worth more to them the more they know about you, your habits, your inclinations etc..
- Dewie 13y ago
  Thought experiment: let's say that anonymity was such an important thing to the average Google user that they would decide to use alternatives if they felt that their anonymity outside of their Google account was being compromised. Could Google know enough information about you to correlate data over a lot of your activities and preferences, but still make it so that you yourself are anonymous to them and the outside world (with a high degree of certainty)? If we are not their products, then do they really need to know enough information about us to actually make a profile that is matched to our real identities? Obvious problems are, for example if they know enough stats about your physical description to pinpoint you pretty accurately, and they also know where you live, and there are only 10 other people that live in that place. Even if they don't actively try to deduce your identity, it is very easy to do so with the available information.
  - lazyjones 13y ago
    > f we are not their products, then do they really need to know enough information about us to actually make a profile that is matched to our real identities? Yes, because they can get more information about you from other sources using your real name.
- bambax 13y ago
  What does my real name have to do with this? What you're saying would explain why they wouldn't let one see videos on YouTube without being logged in (I don't know whether it's the case but I suspect it's not). Being logged in is one thing; using your real name is another.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

VLM 13y ago

The original article is a good solution to a small subset of the problems, as relates to this direct quote "With this no one is risking real-life relationships" The problem is the somewhat larger set of problems containing that subset, and also containing people perfectly willing to risk one of those apparently hated "real-life relationships". Not talking about dating although that's an obvious example. One big problem is this whole topic in general is rife with people analyzing their own situation and declaring their individual solution to be the universal solution for all. One specific example of this, is looking at my paragraph above, individuals are going to categorize different groups as requiring, or not requiring, anonymity in a mostly unpredictable distribution. The other problem is WRT "Pictures of Stolen Pets content" that the author makes fun of, he needs to talk to actual users of the network, and examine the above paragraph. I find it as boring as the author; however I know a lot of people occasionally enjoy a calming, simple, meaningless experience. It doesn't all have to be Shakespeare to be enjoyable, and setting the bar very high is probably an excellent way to repel most of the casual users. The advertisers and attention addicts are not going to like that, so if the casuals leave, they'll leave. Which results in an empty service. How to work around this spiral failure mode is unclear to me.

jeanbebe 13y ago

There is a place in the market for anonymous social networks. Checkout racut. (racut.com) From the site - racut is designed so you can be anonymous as you want. Choose a profile picture, craft a witty bio, and you're on your way. You don't have to tell us where you went to school, what your favorite color is and if you're in a relationship.

locofacetwice 13y ago

it's not really anonymity if everyone can see all your previous posts and threads. real example of anonymity is 4chan.

moot 13y ago

That whole anonymity thing is overrated, IMHO. Who would ever argue for such a thing?

ActVen 13y ago
You may have seen an extremely relevant speech on this topic :) http://www.ted.com/talks/christopher_m00t_poole_the_case_for_anonymity_online.html http://www.ted.com/talks/christopher_m00t_poole_the_case_for...
rorrr2 13y ago
Yet you are not using your real name.
- Dylan16807 13y ago
  Well, you tried.
- LukeShu 13y ago
  thatsthejoke.jpeg The username he used is "moot", the pseudonym of the long-anonymous Christopher Poole, the founder of 4chan, and privacy/anonymity advocate. Looking at his profile, he does appear to be the actual moot.

shmerl 13y ago

So does Diaspora.

ghostdiver 13y ago

Anonymity is for geeks

adambratt 13y ago

While there have been some good points brought up here, I think the author misunderstands what the purpose of Facebook is. Facebook is not in the same category as Reddit. Social network used to be a very specific category of website, now almost every consumer facing website is a social network. Reddit is a content creation and discussion community, basically a centralized version of the forums and bulletin boards of yesteryear. Facebook is a photo, link, and life sharing network. If I'm sharing pictures of my family and friends, I'm giving up anonymity by default. The whole point of Facebook is to give an online pin board of what is going on in my life, who I am as a person, and what I think and I enjoy. It's the online identity of my human self. Reddit is an open platform for all types of discussion and interaction at a macro scale. What happens on Reddit will rarely if ever affect my actual day to day life. The phrase "hive mind" is all too true when you consider the mass amount of meaningless content there is. It's the brain vomit of millions of people and that's what makes it awesome and interesting. For every thought or idea I have, I can find someone else who agrees with me and someone who doesn't. Saying Facebook should learn from Reddit doesn't make much sense to me. Reddit not a new concept or idea. Historically, social interaction online had always been "anonymous" in one form or another. Facebook was the first truly successful community that did away with usernames and forced people to use their real names. To get a billion people to do that is an incredible feat. In my humble opinion, Reddit is not revolutionary at all. The "moat" around the site/business is not near as big as Facebooks. All it would take for a Reddit killer to emerge is for a site to hit critical mass in terms of content and provide a better more targeted form of curation to the user than subreddits and karma. In contrary, Facebook has built a massive moat. Your friend list, your photo history, your about page, your Facebook connected sites and apps...this is a huge fucking moat. I'm not saying it would be easy for a Reddit killer to surface, I'm just pointing out that it's more likely than a Facebook killer. I think it's important for us to recognize that Reddit's social network is not Twitter's social network which is not Facebook's social network and to understand this when making comparisons between them.

baq 13y ago
> In my humble opinion, Reddit is not revolutionary at all. This a thousand times. Reddit is a more user friendly, server-side usenet without most of its hard to grasp features (but with css, which actually matters way more than it seems with all those content: tricks.) PS. I was on usenet for a couple of years, then slashdot, then reddit, then here. Nothing of substance changed except a few abbreviations.

arikrak 13y ago

One of the reasons Facebook beat MySpace was because Facebook insisted on real-names. (See Quora for more discussion http://www.quora.com/Facebook-1/Why-did-Facebook-succeed-where-MySpace-and-Friendster-did-not http://www.quora.com/Facebook-1/Why-did-Facebook-succeed-whe... )

RandyRanderson 13y ago
So you have to login to fb or g+ to see this... hilarious!

vph 13y ago

It's a bit naive to think Facebook doesn't care about people. Broadly speaking, there are introverts and there are extroverts. Introverts love Reddit, 4Chan, etc. for their anonymity. Extroverts love Facebook, Twitter, etc. And those in the middle belong to both.

amerika_blog 13y ago

Without trolls, the internet would be a barren place. Oh wait, maybe not :)