It's certainly not universal. But the effect on Facebook is generally to imagine this: all of your contacts are in a room, and every time you comment, you're g

It's certainly not universal. But the effect on Facebook is generally to imagine this: all of your contacts are in a room, and every time you comment, you're getting up on stage and saying something. No catcalling from the audience. You're walking all the way to the raised floor and taking the mike and looking out into that sea of people like James who saw you naked in high school during that pool party and Gina who still believes that we should have committed more troops to Iraq and Joe who doesn't really care about anything other than free beer, though if you ever bring up the mutual coworker he dated, he'll rip you a new one. It's this complete cacophony of context--context that matters, that's important to you--and it's not actually possible to manage it as is. Do people post about Important Issues and Discuss Things Maturely and Deeply on Facebook? Of course they do. They do it everywhere. They do it face to face. They do it on the phone. They do it on national TV. They do it over email. They do it on Twitter. They probably do it on Snapchat, but I don't pay enough attention to notice. What's the trick to getting that kind of conversation on Facebook? Same as any other place. Would you talk about your intimacy with James while Joe's around? Unlikely. But if you went and got a coffee. Or if you started a Facebook Group of some kind, or a private message, or whatever: anything to limit the contexts that invade into a conversation. (Alternately, there are actually super-public spaces on Facebook that get into reddit-style arguments.) Anonymity, of course, does this automatically, because context is attached to some identity. But that doesn't mean anonymity is the actual mechanism. It's the hand holding the hammer, not the hammer itself. At the end of the day, anonymity doesn't actually do anything.