Sometimes it seems as though the only people who benefit from online anonymity are trolls. Has the time come to ditch it?
ANONYMOUS trolls. The phrase has become commonplace in accounts of online abuse. It can seem as if anonymity protects only scoundrels. Has the time come to abandon it?
The very idea will be anathema to some. Anonymity promises invaluable freedom from social, professional and political constraints. Without it, how readily would critics and whistle-blowers speak up? Would the Arab Spring have happened? If you believe in free speech, there are clear reasons to defend it.
Nonetheless, many of us have already given up our anonymity as our physical and digital lives have become entangled. That suits internet companies, who want real people as their customers, not shadowy aliases and sock puppets. They also hope we will behave better if we are readily identifiable.
That seems a forlorn hope. True online anonymity is hard to achieve, but technically savvy internet users can get close to it – and some will continue to hide behind it as they savage others. And there will always be some people who will simply shrug if they are unmasked.
Perhaps we are focusing on the wrong target. In every society there are a few sociopaths. What makes the internet variety particularly hard to deal with is their knack for duping others into joining their campaigns.
Many of these supporters are just jumping on a bandwagon, or have been misled about the nature of a purported dispute. Exactly why we are so quick to rush to judgement online, and to dehumanise the subject of our ire, is worth looking into further. But regardless of the reasons, the resulting mob greatly amplifies the effect on the target.
As to limiting such behaviour, a more effective approach may be to induce a sense that our actions are being watched. This seems to encourage people to behave in line with prevailing social norms, and turns out to be surprisingly easy to achieve (see "The end of anonymity: A way to stop online abuse?").
This is not without its Orwellian aspects. But social norms do not have to be imposed: they can be created by mutual agreement. Appealing for greater civility may seem naive, and certainly can't by itself solve online abuse – but it's a start. Perhaps we could all do with thinking twice before we click.
This article appeared in print under the headline "The many, not the few"
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