Summary:
In the paper “Identity and Deception in the Virtual Community” the author, Judith S. Donath, addresses the points of how modern culture has come to establish identity and use the ambiguous nature of virtual communities to create a community where identity amongst the virtual world is deceiving. The author focuses around a study of the virtual community Usenet, where users can post about news and events they find to be relevant and worth discussing. This online community provides users with a username, signature, email link, and unique writing style that can help other users track and know who an individual users is. This creates a sense of community because the anonymousness of each user is slightly taken away. Now the author shows how that even in a community where users accounts mean something and throwing away an account is an action with consequences, there are still those who abuse the system and deceive other users. Trolling is a major issue, where trolls create fake accounts and use them to spread lies or just be annoyances to others for their own enjoyment. Other users go as far as they can to conceal their identities in the hopes that they can post controversial ideas or incite issues where none are just for fun. The main point was to show that even very open and identify communities can be breached and trolls can hurt the communities sense of security.
The second paper “4chan and /b/: An Analysis of Anonymity and Ephemerality in a Large Online Community” focuses much more heavily on the side of the virtual world that rejoices in the anonymousness that all the users can have. 4chan is a site created so that users can post ideas, topics, and pictures using the identity of “anonymous” if they so should please. This is exactly what most of the users choose to do with over 90% of all posts for the entire site being posted as anonymous. 4chan works under the system that posts, when posted, are pushed to the top of the first page of topics but can only remain there or even remain active if other users comment and add to the post. This creates a system where the most “popular” posts are kept alive and near the top of the topic thread. This system was made to allow people to freely express opinions and ideas without any fear of backlash and retaliation in the hopes that new ideas and conversations would arise. This has worked some but has also allowed users to post very horrible topics and pictures that do not help anyone or incite any useful conversations.
Reflection:
I found the two articles to be very insightful in showing that the virtual space that we all flock to so regularly can be a breading ground for deceit and nastiness if we let it be. Its good that certain communities are trying their best to give people an identifiable username and person because that way people feel less free to go off on a whim and do or say things that they wouldn’t do/say normally. After reading both of these articles and from my own experience I feel that anonymity can be a very important and useful tool for people and I in no way feel that there shouldn’t be a place where people can go to get that true anonymous experience. It can have benefits for people in areas that aren’t friendly to their beliefs or rights. But I also feel that there should be areas of the virtual space that impose upon its users a more strict user face so that people feel the same social pressure they feel when they speak using their own mouths. Anonymity can be a very useful tool and a way for people in need to escape and be safe but I feel that it also needs its checks and balances. Creating a virtual space where every sector is anonymous would not be good for the virtual community that we are all a part of.
Questions:
- Are there any effective ways of controlling trolling or identity concealing?
- How much anonymity is good for people/ when does it go too far?
- What do people who abuse anonymity hope to gain from their actions?
- Would linking user accounts from virtual communities to much larger social communities(i.e. Facebook) have a positive impact on those communities?
- Is it healthy for us as virtual citizens for places such as 4chan to exist and flourish?
