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>It's abundantly clear now that there are more than enough people who are willing to be jerks under their real names. I hate this argument, because the argumen
by rtpg 13y ago
>It's abundantly clear now that there are more than enough people who are willing to be jerks under their real names.
I hate this argument, because the argument has never been that no person would be rude under their name, it's that there would be less rudeness:
I think axiomatically we can assume that real-name policies won't make people more rude (except maybe on the topic of real-name policies). Here by rude I mean the stupidity of the sort you basically only find in online comments.
So we can then say that there just as many (or less) people being rude on the same site with real-name policies as a site without. I feel less incentive to be rude when my name is next to the comment. I use YouTube. Therefore there is less rudeness thanks to this policy.
For every website I use that has a real-name policy, it has been effective in reducing the amount of rudeness by 1 person's worth.
I would really hope for some scientific studies on how much awfulness we could avoid by people owning up to what they say.
- rsl7 13y agoBut now all those people who don't care about trolling with their real names now know your real name, too. So, win-win?
- king_jester 13y ago> I hate this argument, because the argument has never been that no person would be rude under their name, it's that there would be less rudeness: I disagree. For myself personally, I have always believed that real name comment policies will do nothing to reduce rudeness or trolling. The primary reason is that the visibility of rudeness and trolls is what counts, not the raw number of trolls. Even if there are less actual people being rude as often, as long as those trolling kinds of comments surface it has the same net effect and doesn't change anything.
- cbhl 13y ago> I hate this argument, because the argument has never been that no person would be rude under their name, it's that there would be less rudeness: The counter-argument to this is that real names policies oppress the very people that were enabled by pseudonyms on the internet: women (especially in tech), minorities, and whistleblowers, because they're at risk of being ostracized in real life based on their online comments if their real names are associated with said comments. That said, I think the Real Names argument here is a red herring -- hundreds of employees at Facebook and Google have rehashed this argument over and over again to death. The real uproar here is the change in the "social contract" between users and YouTube; similar to people being upset about ads being added to Twitter or about developer APIs being shut down or when a free service goes to a paid model.
- ksk 13y agoOn the other hand, real names have the potential of 'outing' someones gender, ethnicity, etc allowing people to 'google stalk' you and/or be sexist/racist towards you which would not have happened if they didn't know your info.
- sesqu 13y ago> I feel less incentive to be rude when my name is next to the comment. Are you one of those people who used to post rude comments on YouTube? No? Then nobody fucking cares about you.