The core problem here is ironically the effectiveness of online media to broadcast personal opinions. An "offensive"/"revolting" message can be spread exponenti

The core problem here is ironically the effectiveness of online media to broadcast personal opinions. An "offensive"/"revolting" message can be spread exponentially quickly with only a small effort by each participant. Add to that the statistical tendency of a small group of people to be extremely offended by certain innocuous messages without the opposing effect: people are usually either offended or simply don't care -- guess what effect always prevails! To illustrate, if your message randomly spread to cause a response to 100k people, and on average each person dedicates 1 minute on it due to offense/indignation/etc, collectively ~1600 hours or 70 days will be spent on it. If a single person is the target of this effort, it can be disastrous. I don't think we're going to have any less effective social media in the future (nor should we); neither do I believe in the near term people will be much more enlightened as to collectively avoid strong reactions directed at individuals. So the only way to be strongly opinionated in public online is through anonymity (or through being a "brand" -- a celebrity, a comic, etc, but not the case for the average person). Major companies (facebook,google,...) fail to see this fundamental aspect of the internet: anonimity is a basic tool. We need the hierarchy where our personal communications are more transparent and the more public they become the more anonymous we can be.