Anonymity
I’m spending more time on NOSTR and less on Twitter lately. I’ve described NOSTR (a protocol, like HTTP or SMTP, not a platform) before in previous posts, so I won’t re-hash it here. While I think it’s the future, and am very glad it exists, I want to lodge a complaint about it: there are far too many anonymous accounts — my guess is north of 80 percent.
The appeal of being anonymous is obvious: It protects you from unwanted consequences, preserves your in-real-life privacy, no matter what people (or the authorities) think about the content of your self-expression.
Of course, it doesn’t protect you from all consequences, as many anonymous handles have built up large followings (and presumably monetize them in most cases), so getting cancelled or pissing off too many people still has that downside. But if you are truly anonymous, at least you won’t get fired from your day job or disowned by family and friends (yet)*.
*I’d expect AI (even though I think it’s overhyped for the important things) eventually to dox most longstanding anonymous accounts. It would be trivial to set up an experiment where everyone at a startup posts for a few months anonymously and also under their own name and have the AI learn to recognize linguistic patterns, punctuation, typos, grammatical errors and link the identities. Unless an anonymous poster had avoided posting under his real identity ever (or somehow scraped any such evidence from the internet entirely), I think he’d get found out eventually.
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Short term benefits and medium-term risks aside, I’m generally against the practice, though I wouldn’t go so far as to require platforms to KYC (Know Your Customer), and obviously doxxing people, barring proof they’ve committed a crime (a real one, not a thought crime) is wrong. In other words, I think it should be legal, but discouraged.
The problem with anonymity online is while it protects you from unjust consequences, it protects you from just ones too. That you don’t have your face and name attached to your expression means you no longer have skin in the game, so to speak, when you interact with other people. All of us get triggered at times by a harsh response or an opinion with which we strongly disagree, but even if the resulting emotion that arises is strong, we’re more likely to hold back from lashing out, if only because our real-life identities are attached. Without that deterrent, you have the power to harm without the usual built-in restraint.
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In J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord Of The Rings, the ring of Sauron which corrupted humans and hobbits alike conferred the power of invisibility. I don’t believe Tolkien chose that power by accident. Being invisible is the power to act without accountability. This particular power is irresistible, and one is ever more tempted to test its limits. Even the kindly and wise Gandalf refused the ring for that reason.
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I think it was Glenn Greenwald who first remarked on the irony that our public servants know everything about us (ostensibly private citizens), but get to hide so much of what they do by designating it as classified information. The Edward Snowden revelations about widespread (and illegal) surveillance didn’t seem to change that, either, and in the ensuing decade, their tools have improved and the aggressive collection of our private information and personal data have likely only increased.
So I understand in an environment where the powerful act with impunity either because they can hide behind large institutions or because their communications and deliberations are placed off limits it’s tempting to level the playing field. The ring quite likely saved Bilbo’s life in The Hobbit, and (temporary) anonymity enabled Snowden to go public with his revelations. In fact, the anonymity of bitcoin creator “Satoshi Nakamoto” was necessary for its resilience and almost-impossible-to-replicate immaculate conception.
So this is not an argument that anonymity is never warranted, but that it should not be the default if you’re a regular person posting what you take to be interesting, true or important in the public square. Social media posts are by their nature public — you are broadcasting your ideas to the world over the internet. There is no privacy expectation. Anonymity for these kinds of posts is really just reach without accountability, something of which we should avail ourselves only when absolutely necessary.
There are a few good reasons for this:
First, a post with a real identity attached is inherently more credible because that person’s reputation will suffer if they are dishonest, lazy or simply a poor judge of what’s happening. (That admittedly didn’t stop people during the last few years, but there is surely some added incentive to get things right.)
Second, even if the speaker were a charlatan, shill or just hopelessly brainwashed, you know who they are, and in many cases what they do, for whom they work, and can therefore evaluate their claims more informedly than you could with an anonymous poster. This makes for a better information environment generally.
But by far the most important reason anonymity in the public square should be discouraged is it sends the message that what you are expressing must only be done from the shadows, that you don’t dare put your name on it.
By only voicing your dissent anonymously you are reinforcing the frame of the censor, validating his contention that no decent person would hold your view. It’s tacitly ceding your right to free speech (I am only saying this if I can’t get identified), rather than standing up with for what you believe because it is your inalienable right.
Anonymity protects you in the event the content of your expression is banned, which implies that someone has the authority to ban it. Speech attached to identity does not pander to and enable this potential encroachment. To speak with your own identity attached is to announce to the world you are not afraid, and you are not ashamed. Accordingly, speech with your name and face attached is inherently more persuasive, more courageous and more likely to inspire courage in others. In modern parlance, posting with your identity attached is more based.
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So what to make of the fact that the world’s first decentralized, peer-to-peer content protocol is filled with anonymous handles? The optimistic view is it’s just a remnant of centralized media where someone really could throttle your reach or de-platform you for wrong-think, and anonymity were more necessary.
Hopefully people will realize in time that you really can post under your actual name on NOSTR, and no one can stop you. Perhaps this realization will reverse the damage done by cancel culture, the censorship industrial complex and the creativity-killing self-censorship resulting therefrom. The anonymous handles, then, are soon-to-be-discarded relics of centralized platforms en route to a real public square, protected by the First Amendment and enforced by an unstoppable protocol.
Toss the ring. You no longer need it.