Anonymity And The Evolution Of Online Identity
Anonymity And The Evolution Of Online Identity

Anonymity And The Evolution Of Online Identity

When I was younger, I was inspired by The Mentor’s last words.  They even made it into a dissertation I wrote before anybody was really sure where this whole world wide web thing was really going.  I’m not particularly old, but I’ve been online for 20-odd years now, and some days, I feel like a relic of a more anarchic internet.

One of the most notable changes for me, (apart from things like everybody (and frequently his dog) being online), is the drive toward real and verifiable identity.  I’m always reminded of Heinlein who, in The Notebooks of Lazarus Long, wrote:

When a place gets crowded enough to require ID’s, social collapse is not far away.

Not that I’m expecting the immanent collapse of the online society, but it sure has gotten crowded in here.

The Internet & The Other

See, in those days, the internet was an “other” place.  It wasn’t where you went to be recognised, to congregate with people you knew, or share or participate in the latest craze.  It was an unreal sort of place.  A place where you could be whatever you wanted to be, do whatever you wanted to do.  There was no accountability.  But there was also no fear of what people would think or say or do in response to what you said or thought or did.

It was a voluntary Coventry, first for seeking out information, and soon after for seeking out like minds of one description or another.  There was a sense of being on some hitherto undiscovered frontier, and we paid a lot more attention to what we could do, than to what other people would eventually do.  (Or how quickly “eventually” would come to pass.)

You could build a reputation there every bit as real as your real life one, and every bit as fragile.  Yes, if you destroyed it you could try again with a different identity.  But it’s surprising how often that didn’t work.  Because behind every identity is the real person.  Any problems with it are usually the person’s problem.  And those problems don’t go away when you change your screen name.

The Evolution Of Identity

In some senses of course, the shift toward verifiable identity is a symptom of the growing maturity of the net.  An evolution if you will, from playground to workplace.  I mean, I understand it.  As the net became ever more ubiquitous, and more people started to use its advantages with more practical intentions, it became inevitable that this would change.

While the underlying purpose of the internet as a whole remained the same, (the storage, connection and retrieval of information), the public face of it was nonetheless being shaped by market forces to an extent that only became obvious in retrospect.  You can’t do business with somebody whose name you don’t know.  And nobody is going to do business with you if they don’t know your name.  And so, from the original extreme of advising people to keep their personal details to themselves, it became important to be able to identify people accurately.

I understand that.  I can even see that it is essential in many ways, as the “real” world and the “digital” world continue to integrate with each other.  I don’t always like it though.

As more and more people shifted their leisure, social and business activities online, it became almost counter-productive to maintain pseudonymous identities.  It made it harder to maintain connections across platforms, or to transition between activities or interests. And it made it effectively impossible to buy things from people if you didn’t give them your real name.

anonymous

Thankfully (for change-averse neo-luddites like me) we’re still in the relatively early stages of this in some ways.  It is still possible to maintain different accounts for different platforms, and that means a continuing separation of data (even if into fewer, denser streams) for the moment.  Competition between service providers means we’re still a way from a single online identity for everything.  But for the younger generation, the real name bias is nothing unusual.

Of course, it has its drawbacks too.   Nowadays it’s pretty standard for recruiters to check a candidates Facebook profile as part of the recruitment process, for example. And the net abounds with stories of people who have found to their chagrin that it neither forgives nor forgets.  As the move online intensifies, as the tech and knowledge barriers to participation fall, (and they have fallen), peoples mistakes as they come to terms with this environment can follow them around for a long time, if they’re tagged with their real name.

In Favour Of An Anonymous Net

With the intrusion of reality into the net, we can see why knowing who people are can be an important thing.  But anonymity has its advantages.  And I’m not even talking about the obvious ones like reporting on oppressive circumstances or overcoming censorship and similar instances where we’ve seen things like the TOR project provide an essential service.

A frequent argument in favour of personal identifiability is that it will help “civilise” the net.  If you’ve ever wandered through the comment sections on many a site, you’ll understand that of course.  Safe behind their perceived anonymity, (and in almost all cases it is only perceived, because if somebody cares enough, they can find you), you’ll often see the crudest, most insensitive and misanthropic statements hurled.  And people argue that it wouldn’t happen if you had to take responsibility for them.

In a sense, that’s true enough.  But it’s only because of that fear I mentioned earlier.  My argument is that the way one represents themselves when anonymous is a lot closer to how they probably really are, than the public face they display when repercussions are possible.

The nom de plume has a long and respectable history in both literature and journalism.  Indeed, without it, many works both important and well loved would probably never have seen the light of day.

Of course, I’m not saying that I want a literal return everything about those days. (High-speed connections are pretty damn nice.)  Nor do I expect everybody to go back to being completely anonymous, even if it were possible.  But I am in favour of a web that at least supports the option of online anonymity.

Luckily It Still Does

I’m in the very fortunate position of not wanting to become well known or authoritative, and not wanting to try and sell anybody anything.  That means I don’t have to worry about whether people will perceive me as trustworthy or not. (Although I totally am, I promise. ;) )   It also means that I’m free to indulge in this social experiment without entirely having to break all of my deeply engrained habits.

I was relieved to see somebody very clever say recently that it doesn’t really matter.  Google does not care what you call yourself.  It only cares that you are consistent.  The reasoning behind the drive toward real names wasn’t about verifiability per se.  It was about tying user signals together into a coherent (and trustworthy) whole.

I was glad to hear that.  Because I know from experience that it is perfectly possible to form real connections with people on the basis of their personality and behaviour, rather than on the basis of what they call themselves.  Hell, for most of 20 years people online didn’t know who they were talking to.  And it didn’t matter.  Because you relate to people according to how they treat you and others in your presence.  And that isn’t going to change.

Authority and credibility are important things online today, and are probably getting even more important.  But engagement doesn’t depend on them.  As in the real world, we take people at face value.  Online, as nowhere else, we have the opportunity to be judged by our thoughts and our words, and not any other superficial criteria that your audience may (consciously or not) judge you by. It is an environment of equality where (as should always be the case) it is your actions (and yes, writing is an action) that largely determine how people will view you.

Afterall, as the immortal bard once wrote:

What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;