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Who shall remain nameless?
-- By MortonBast - 06 Dec 2016
Anonymity is for…
In an era when maintaining an online presence is so ubiquitous – for professionals, students, and a non-negligible number of dogs – there is a shadow of suspicion attached to anonymity. As the overshared, personally branded presence becomes normalized, the media increasingly portrays anonymity as the province of bullies and wrongdoers. Anonymity is a mask too easily worn in service of abuse, insists the popular narrative, particularly against the vulnerable and the marginalized. This narrative, while grounded in legitimate concerns about the very real harassment that anonymous online speech can enable, ignores the reality that anonymity is an even more important protection for the bullied than it is an invitation to bully. Those who care about protecting marginalized voices are often at the forefront of efforts to unmask, but might better achieve their goals by focusing on anonymity as a safeguard.
Trolls
The anonymous online comment has gotten a bad rap as fertile ground for the worst of human nature to thrive, and both media and government have tried to do their part to salt the ground. The proposed New York State bill to identify anonymous posters in 2012 was followed in quick succession by Huffington Post’s replacement of its own very popular anonymity-friendly commenting system with Facebook comments, and Popular Science’s decision to eliminate comments altogether. A 2013 New Yorker article, “The Psychology of Online Comments,” looked at the social science research behind these efforts. Even the popular practice among young Facebook users of changing their names to funny pseudonyms while job-hunting or applying to schools – and then, naturally, changing them right back again – promotes the idea that anonymity should be employed only when needed to cover up misbehavior like underage drinking.
Chupacabras
This culture of anti-anonymity is excellent for the data collection giants like Google and Facebook, which scatter their services with anti-anonymity imagery. Most obvious is the coveted check mark of verification to be obtained on Facebook and Twitter, which elevates to rock star status the assurance that one is exactly who one claims to be. Less obvious is Facebook’s default profile picture that encourages a passport photo-clarity close-up as the representation of you available to all. Least obvious is the way that Google tries to make a joke out of anonymity when it deigns to offer it: the “incognito mode” on Chrome that says it doesn’t store a browser or search history is symbolized by a cute little spy; anonymous viewers of Google docs are identified by hilarious real and mythical animals. Even aside from the data they actually collect, these companies actively encourage the disparagement of anonymity as a cultural value.
Little guys
A major driver behind the popular urge to unmask anonymity is the premise that exposure of identity can be used to punch up. In his book So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, journalist Jon Ronson details how Twitter in particular has spawned a vigilante justice culture devoted to revealing the address, employer, and other personal details of users deemed to be abusing others, especially from a place of privilege – but also how the victims of this mob justice tend to be average people, whose lives are often ruined while the mob moves gleefully on. One of the stories Ronson tells is that of Adria Richards, who famously called out the developers behind her at a tech conference for making a sexual joke, resulting in one of them being fired, only to be fired herself, and receive a stream of death and rape threats along with it. (p. 111-21) Adria’s intention to pull Hank and Alex out of the crowd-created anonymity on which they had relied in making their jokes backfired – Hank was fired as a result of his exposure to a social justice mob, but Adria’s bodily safety was threatened as a result of her exposure to a misogynist mob.
Exposure of identity can even more effectively be used to punch down, because it is always easier to punch down. The Supreme Court recognized this in McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission, 514 U.S. 334 (1995) (holding that the First Amendment did not permit Ohio to require distributors of election pamphlets to identify themselves). The Court noted that the shield of anonymity was most critical to protecting the disadvantaged – everyone from the persecuted to the merely unpopular. Id., at 342. The Court does not dismiss Ohio’s interests in preserving accountability and detecting fraud, but insists that it find other, more tailored means of doing so without seriously compromising the anonymity of pamphleteers. Id., at 357. Anonymity is an essential condition for the proliferation of vulnerable voices, and the accountability interests served by exposure can, and must, be advanced in other ways.
Everybody
Anonymity as an important value for protecting marginalized voices is a difficult concept to embrace because anonymity looks, on its surface, a lot like invisibility. Women, racial minorities, LGBT people, and other groups that have had to be invisible for a long time understandably want their voices not only heard but attributed. But what the anti-anonymity culture obscures is that the ability to control one’s own visibility – remaining anonymous when needed, and identifying oneself when needed – is the more effective antidote to a history of invisibility. Exposure by mob is dangerous, forcing readers to link their whole identities to every comment is dangerous, and the association of desire for anonymity with wrongdoing is the most dangerous of all.
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