The Identity and Deception article analyzes user identity in virtual communities such as Usenet newsgroups. Usenet is essentially a structured online bulletin board comprised of different interest groups. User identity within Usenet, or any online community for that matter, plays a major role with regard to how a user wants to utilize such platform. Some may choose to genuinely be helpful or some may do so to simply gain attention. It also highlights the difference of identity in the physical world vs identity in an online community. In the physical world, the implied rule is one body hence one identity; our physical body providing a type of anchor with respect to our identity. However, that premise doesn’t hold in the virtual world. Like the article states a man can pretend to be a female while a high school student can claim to be an expert in medicine thus creating false interactions.
The “4chan and /b/” reading is a study that concentrates on how /b/ is particularly successful despite its core principals are that of anonymity and ephemerality. One way the writers studied ephemerality was to time how long a thread maintained itself on the first page and in doing so the researchers discovered that the median thread spent about five seconds on the first page over its lifetime.
Anonymity has its advantages and disadvantages, one being that users feel more comfortable expressing their true opinions while the other is that sometimes users can use it to troll or be harmful to others. I’ve seen this first hand on Reddit in particular when people post about their experience working for XYZ company. A lot of insightful and valuable comments still exist but if you try to click on the user the site will direct you to an error page meaning they deleted their account. As a user I understand their concern especially if you’re an employee and perhaps the comments you want to make, though true, may not necessarily reflect well on the company so you want to avoid any type of repercussions. Reddit has yet to add a feature that can allow users to comment or perhaps even posts as anonymous but the challenge is to filter out trolls or negative users.
How can online communities go about verifying people are who they say they are? This doesn’t apply to athletes, actors, etc. but more on the educational side of the spectrum
What can social media platforms do to promote anonymity, in hopes to get more genuine responses/comments, while maintaining a safe and positive community?
