Anonymity's Influence on Internet Behavior

-- By IndraDan - 11 Oct 2023

Introduction

Negativity festers on social media platforms. This warped content is far more plentiful and hostile on the internet than in the daily lives of most of the platform’s users. More vulgar and more cutting, more purposeful (in terms of riling up its readers) and more pointless (in terms of impact off the internet).

This reality seems to imply that it is the platforms themselves that cultivate this ferocious content that exists almost nowhere else in human society. Evaluation of how these platforms organize themselves and what incentives are developed illustrate this issue. Due to the prioritization of engagement and clicks, distorted content that is more likely to push “buttons” and incite reaction are preferable. The short-form of these posts does violence to nuanced analysis. Instead, authors (and their readers) are encouraged to avoid entertaining alternative perspectives. The echo chambers that are produced from this communication style exist in every substantive realm, from sports media to politics, far-left and far-right alike.

While the inquiry into platforms' influence over human interaction on the internet provides convincing explanations for the rise of this negativity, the human contribution must also be evaluated. The darkness that these networks pull out is human.

Anonymity and Accountability

The absence of accountability seems to draw out these aspects of the human psyche. Anonymity blesses internet users with the ability to live in their fantasies. The real world holds people accountable by forcing them to face the real impact of their actions. It is in this way that many societal norms have evolved - people stop doing what others will reject them for. In turn, abrasive, offensive and malicious behavior is almost instinctively met with general disgust. By shielding provocateurs from this feedback loop, network platforms have taken away the human defense to this vulgarity - exposing internet users to the darkness. From anecdotal experience, users that embrace anonymity are propagators of much more negativity than those that are not.

Platforms user’s operate on a spectrum, with some users tying their “real lives” more tightly to their internet personas than others. Any given user’s behavior can be influenced dramatically based upon how strong the tie is. Noteworthy is that the real life connection creates an accountability for users of how other humans will perceive them. Where internet users feel they are connected to reality, their social inhibitions still persist on the internet. Where anonymity is stripped, human interaction over the internet begins to resemble that of real-world interaction.

This suggests that it may not be the actual platform’s organization that breeds the negativity as much as the mindset of the users themselves. For the anonymous users, their fearlessness is hollow. Qualifying their comments as “jokes”, there are few who are willing to attach their names and faces to the negativity produced on the internet. Anonymity empowers users to justify to themselves that their actions don’t reflect on their humanity. After all, no one thinks of themselves as evil.

A core element of social media’s success has been its ability to allow all users to play a character of themselves. Each user writes their own narrative, sharing with the world what they want and conveniently avoiding all other aspects of their realities (In this way, social media influencers are not much less anonymous than the average internet troll!). Social media users have no human accountability for the gaps in their online characters. Yet, social media culture continues to develop characters that are detached from their user’s realities. As a result, users are filled with a false sense of confidence that they are in “control” of what information they share with the world.

User’s are hyper-aware that they didn’t share the picture that breaks their fantasy. With the assurance that no one they know will see the picture, users fail to internalize just what they have shared with the platform. The ability to control what other humans perceive on the internet is the power that social media platforms provide their users. These platforms prey on the fact that their users generally only recognize accountability in contexts they are familiar with (i.e. how other humans will perceive their action). Most users in turn fail to acknowledge that these platforms are surveilling all of their behavior, from the picture they did not post to their subconscious behaviors. The exact things that would normally give rise to human’s instinctive shame are neatly collected and organized under the user’s social profile.

Conclusion

While full-accountability on the internet would likely come with its own set of dystopian consequences, the impact that the current system has on human behavior illustrates an issue that must be addressed with change. It may be necessary for humans to recognize that their actions on the internet are not so remote from their real lives for the common man to champion privacy rights.

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