- Judith S. Donath. “Identity and Deception in the Virtual Community.”
- Michael S. Bernstein, Andrés Monroy-Hernández, Drew Harry, Paul André, Katrina Panovich, Greg Vargas. “4chan and /b/: An Analysis of Anonymity and Ephemerality in a Large Online Community.”
The two papers approach identity in online communities with some diverging focus: Bernstein’s on ephemerality and Donath on reputation. The value in their contribution in our estimation, is in how much in common they have, and the implications their observations have (had) in present and future online communities. Thus, the summary and the reflection will cover both papers in an intertwining fashion.
Brief:
What currency is considered important in a given community? (Does this importance scale across other communities?)
Two major online communities are covered by these papers: Donath’s being an earlier paper considers Usenet, and Bernstein et al., 4Chan. Both these communities involve users starting threads for a given reason, and other members in the community are given leave to chime in with their views/support/comments – these comments subjectively given different weight as far as how useful they are. Community members (speaking of both the platform as a whole and considering specific groups), have different means of establishing and weighing identity and credibility to then make decisions on whether to trust the posts.
The papers diverge from this point: Donath proceeds to argue on the importance of a poster proving their identity overtly, and/or users determining the authority based on previous posts, while Bernstein et al. proceeds to consider how the /b/ forum continue to flourish with some sort of order while at the same time over 90% of the users preferring to remain anonymous.
Reflection
We presently have the advantage of back-sight that the authors of the pair of papers did not have at the time, and thus can judge the papers based on both prescience and longevity. While Usenet has been usurped by other — more efficient groups, the cultural behaviors remain prescient. 4chan and /b/ are alive and ever active, and we can also use recent events as a lens by which to reflect on Bernstein’s work.
Q1: Anonymity == Deception?
According to both papers, no.
But it’s not quite that straightforward: Oh to be a fly on the wall when both /b/ and Usenet was born! Both papers presented the cultures expected of users in both communities as a given. A new user is expected to first observe, learn and then participate in adherence to the communities’ culture. Watching the birth and evolution would’ve been invaluable. Thus giving rise to interesting questions:
- But how did the consensus on how to behave come to be?
- Does this convergence to a consensus scale to other social media?
- What does this tell us about how we self-organize on the web?
The early days of Twitter for example, was filled with exquisitely minute descriptions of users’ daily lives, which evolved as the platform gained popularity, and the users adjusted their behaviors to match. The blue check-mark for example a more recent addition to the service Twitter offers, serves as an identity verification. In contrast to Donath’s work, this Twitter’s mark of authenticity serves to decouple authority from identity. Just because you say you are who you are, does not mean that you are then to be trusted. Yet, there is still space for anonymity with reputation established as Donath described: by users concluding based on previous posts, that the given user is to be trusted: Case in point: @NYCSouthPaw, whose reputation with providing a legal view on politics can be considered trusted (the user revealed his identity very recently). 4Chan, according to Bernstein’s view, necessitates a much faster means of establishing “credibility” (given how fast posts expire). This serves to narrow the focus towards using in-culture lingo – not as a measure of reputation, but rather as a measure of belonging — this being of a higher importance over identity and outright reputation measures .
The question on credibility on 4chan has also been prescient – given the rise of QAnon, and how tripcodes are used to prove that the poster is indeed 4chan and not an usurper, which while granting an irrefutable identity to the poster, also allows (an illusion of) credibility, and expansion to other online communities.
Q2: Ephemerality vs Archiving: Which is best?
This is touched upon by Donath, who importantly notes the fact that ephemerality matches the real-world right of forgiving and forgetting, and where the move towards “internet is forever” is an anti-thesis to this. The larger question, beyond remembering data is attribution, the fact that a verified (identified) user is attributed to a certain content that would live perpetually online raises the question on both the usefulness of enforcing identification and the rise of the “Right to be Forgotten” movement.
Both 4chan and Usenet members have/had an archival tool available to store information they consider important in some ways. Beyond how they store and re-incarnate favorite/popular posts:
- What considerations goes (beyond popularity) into making the decisions to archive a post?
- How often did the archived content got requested/re-upped?
- Does this have a larger implication on how users curate information?
Q3: What are the implication of online behavior on the real world?
The use of Facebook and Twitter as organizing platforms is widely known, and so is the overflow of ideas from one online community to the world at large. Considering more recent phenomnea: QAnon (a 4Chan creation) was a rallying point and a major point of discussion at a real-world venue.
The more things change…
Considering more recent online communities: Facebook, Twitter and StackOverflow, reputation is important for all of these platforms, and an explicit measure and action is provided: by likes, by follows, or by vote. These measures have a factor on trust, and leads users by default to act towards establishing reputation — without necessarily establishing identity.
Apart from Facebook and Twitter – when considering blue check marks, identity is not as important: privacy and anonymity is more understood and appreciated.
Ephemerality has been adopted – at least in the social context as a means of offering a choice: Snapchat as a platform allows posts to expire and deleted forever (there are apps that offer a mitigation from this feature) and in Instagram and Facebook on stories. But also archiving is provided by default, accommodating both the need to be forgotten and the need to remember on demand.
How about the use of multiple online aliases, the motivation behind their creation, and the effect they have, as presented by Donath? this is still an open and very interesting question.
