Judith S. Donath, “Identity and Deception in the Virtual Community”
Michael S. Bernstein et al., “4chan and /b/: An Analysis of Anonymity and Ephemerality in a Large Online Community”
Both the aforementioned papers both look closely into identity in social media platforms. The second paper also deals with ephemerality, a discussion the first paper doesn’t go into. While both these papers are dealing with similar topics they are both presenting wildly different views. As I read Donath’s work, I was convinced that in a virtual community, trust is a huge issue. Despite being given some information about the identity of someone on social media, we still cannot be sure. Donath goes on to classify signals that we receive from users on platforms into conventional and assessment signals. I was able to tie this beautifully with several instances in an online community called ‘Adopt a Pet’ on Facebook. In India, there are very few pedigree dogs (abandoned/require rehoming) up for adoption. They are also very much in demand. Whenever a pedigree dog is up for adoption, we have to go through a very stringent vetting process. This is because many members of our group are backyard breeders impersonating animal rescuers or pet parents. Their conventional signals are on point as they’ve watched us discuss and argue on our page. We are finding it difficult to find any assessment signals to verify their identity online. For now, we have resorted to doing physical house-checks. However, logistics become an issue if an offer of adoption comes from a different town. Is there an assessment signal that could help our group rehome dogs safely with no hassles?
Donath’s paper is quite dated but the issues that she has outlined is very much our reality as well. We may have come leaps and bounds in improving the quality of our social media systems, but does impersonation now have more adverse effects than it ever has in the past? People we don’t know, pages we cannot verify are prescribing cures to stubborn diseases, superfoods, and whole lifestyle changes that other users in a social media platform are willing to subscribe to. Many times for a cost.
The second paper tackles the culture of 4chan’s /b/ discussion board and the effect of anonymity and ephemerality on it. When I paid this discussion board a visit, I was taken aback at the nature of the posts. Granted, I did enjoy some of the dark jokes that I came across but I wasn’t comfortable thinking a child could come across this website. Ofcourse, the vile and insensitive nature of the discussion board can be attributed to the complete anonymity of posts. As I progressed through the paper, it is pretty clear that 4chan has been the origin of some of the internet’s most viral content. However, I am inclined to argue that Reddit (more identity based, less anonymous platform) has also been the origin of some pretty popular memes. This is backed up by this research paper ‘On the Origins of Memes by Means of Fringe Web Communities’ by Zannettou, S et al. This further raises two questions –
- If Reddit and 4chan can both produce this kind of creative content, what more does the complete anonymity of 4chan bring to the table? Is it only the degree of darkness of the content created here?
- Is the trade-off between safe and accurate exchange of useful information versus the ‘creative’ (read dark) content worth it? Is this ‘creativity’ essential?
I also noticed that in 4chan, the user is given the illusion of an identity. I could be posting under a certain pseudonym that could very easily be poached from me and misused by another person. It seems like one would rather move to a different platform than go through these elaborate measures that users have to take in order to establish identity (like pictures of themselves with timestamps) on 4chan. Using Reddit when you wish for your post to be attributed to you and 4chan when you are posting things you don’t really care for seems to be an option.
When it comes to a choice between purely anonymous posts versus posts with some form of identity, the purpose of the social media platform would play a major role. For instance, on a platform like StackOverflow, it is useful to keep yourself identifiable so that your contributions can stand testimony to your qualifications in maybe a job interview. In the case of a discussion board where most of the discussions are inconsequential and ephemeral, does it really matter who is posting?
While I am inclined to be against the anonymity of 4chan, its ephemerality is wonderfully refreshing. Only posts that the community deems truly engaging stays on top and other posts simply die away. In a world where Facebook reminds me of that incredibly embarrassing post from 5 years ago, the ephemerality is welcome. However, the lack of persistence of their data renders anything that you post onto their platform inconsequential in the long run. I find it difficult to comprehend why someone would go through the trouble of posting things on a platform that it will almost immediately disappear from. Is any useful discussion going to ever transpire on such a platform?