Google, Bing, and Naver are all
major search engines that can get someone around the world-through a
computer screen. Often, they prove to be convenient when researching. The
only glitch is that they don't just get someone to the website of the biology
research center they need for their paper. They give you the address as well,
along with the phone number and sometimes, the personnel's full names,
photos and e-mails too. Now suppose that you work at this research center.
Recently, you posted a comment on an online article about the
increasing number of immigrants under your name. One day,
you receive a disturbing e-mail from an unknown number abusively
criticizing your views. Where could the sender have found your personal
information? You are very sensitive about personal information online. You
decide to Google your name, and there it is: your name, your photo and e-mail,
available for anyone willing to type your name. For years, the beauty of
the internet and in this case, the beauty of online articles, was none
other than anonymous comments. However, more and more online news
websites are abandoning the system. They are not seeing that anonymous comments
are more of an advantage to have in the internet society than
un-anonymity. It shouldn't be going anywhere, for whatever reason.
The anonymity of the internet has
existed since almost the beginning of the internet itself. The initial
intentions were to provide people the freedom of expressing what they
felt about a topic posted online. However, vile comments started to appear, and
now, there is even a term to call the people who post abusive comments online:
trolls. To deal with this matter, many news sites including the Huffington
Post, ESPN.com, and Popular Science got rid of the anonymous system and
encouraged their readers to post comments with their real names. Taking a step
more, the Sun Chronicle newspaper launched a program on July that requires
their readers to register to their site with their names, addresses, phone
numbers, and credit card numbers. The number of people who registered from the
7th to the 19th recorded 22 people. There were 22 people who were willing to
post the majority of their personal information online to share their ideas
with another twenty or so people. Now, there's a need to remind yourself what
the initial purpose of allowing online comments was. It was to promote
diversity online. It was to allow other readers to know what other readers
think about the same article that they just read. But how diverse could 22
opinions be on the worldwide web, especially when the Sun Chronicle is a local
paper of Attleboro, Massachusetts? Not very.
An online leading commenting
service corporation called Disques discovered in a study that
contributors that were most productive online used pseudonyms. A
pseudonym is a fake name that commenters choose. Disques states in their study
that using pseudonyms online are different from being anonymous. Their study
concluded that online(Facebook, in specific) users who use pseudonyms
contribute most to the online society, noting that they were accounted for 61%
of all comments and commented 6.5 times more frequently than anonymous users
and 4.7% more than people who used their authentic name. Of course, pseudonyms
and the concept of online anonymity have their differences. Pseudonyms do have
the function of identifying someone (especially if used repeatedly), while
anonymous names do not. However, for example, if someone decided to comment on
an article under the name of 'John Doe' and on another under 'Jane Doe', there
really isn't that much of a difference between using a pseudonym and being
anonymous. So if someone did the math and counted people who used pseudonyms as
anonymous, it would be even more apparent how much anonymous comments
contribute to the online society.
The most important reason why
anonymous comments should not be banned is because it would limit the ideas and
opinions people can have when they are anonymous. William Grueskin, dean of
academic affairs at Columbia's journalism school, stated, "People who
might have something useful to say are less willing to participate in boards
where the tomatoes are being thrown." Also, Robert Bertsche, media lawyer
and representative of the New England Newspaper & Press Association said,
"By allowing anonymous comments, you're going to get things an information
that otherwise would not come to light,". Would people be as interested in
a Southwest Asian womens' rights as they are if women had not shared their
experiences in the comments below? Comments often provide useful insight
to the topic a news article is dealing with. In such cases, people who have
opinions that others should be aware of may be unwilling to post their thoughts
if their personal information is available to the public. Consequently, those
people might not post comments any longer, and the rest of the internet is left
with the less-diverse and filtered thoughts and ideas left among each
other.
Another important aspect of anonymous comments is that they
guarantee personal privacy and safety. Especially regarding sensitive topics,
people should be given the right to express what they believe in safety. The
news industry should be able to contemplate the various situations its readers
are in and respect their rights of expression or speech, with the circumstances
in mind. This can be accomplished through anonymity. Forcing people
to post comments under their real names may lead to creepy Google stalking and
if serious, violence. People who are vulnerable to discrimination, people who
are afraid of reprisals for criticism, people who have minority opinions,
people who have minority beliefs or personal practices and crime victims all
have a right to express their opinions online, and anonymity can assure their
safety along with their rights. With anonymous comments, people do not have to
worry about their bosses firing them over what they posted online (which they
had every right to), and people do not have to worry about suffering from oral
or physical violence over what they wrote online about a touchy subject.
Anonymity keeps people safe to express what they really believe.
Of course, there are always those
who claim that people should be held responsible for offensive things that they
write online. They claim that it's a matter of humanity, integrity, and respect
for others. However, if you think about it, in many cases, it is not that
people hate the person who wrote a certain comment. They disagree with the
content, which makes themselves think that they dislike the person who wrote
it. So the problem is the content, not the person. Of course, there are always
those who find pleasure in others’ pain. But that doesn’t mean that news sites
should get rid of anonymous comments unilateraly. Many websites such as the New
York Times are dealing with such problems by having people review every single
comment to filter content. A number of sites also have the function of
flagging a overly offensive comment.
Now in the world wide web, at least one person
is bound to feel offended about what another writes. One does
not necessarily have to be commenting something offensive for other
people to be offended.Thus, if news websites tried to fix the issue of nasty
anonymous comments, they will most likely fail to because different people
would still be offended by certain comments. Also, people who are under
their real names are bluntly offensive anyhow. For example, the Wall Street
Journal requires its users to comment under their really names. Nonetheless,
its comment pages are still filled with words that the majority of people find
abusive and insulting. People will always be offensive (despite how vague the
meaning is), even under their real names.
The Huffington Post and other news
websites are attempting to counter anonymous comments, and unfortunately for
them, they will most likely suffer from negative consequences. In the long
term, abandoning the anonymous commenting system just because of the minority
of people who write comments that are plain revolting cannot be seen as the
best choice. It cannot be seen so especially in the aspect that the news should
most indefinitely respect peoples' freedom of speech above all. If
news sites were to implement the anonymous commenting system, its users will be
able to post their opinions freely, and interact with one another, the
journalists, and thus the news site itself. Any other way to promote what
online news networks really exist for, and the levels of communication they are
capable of, can limit what people 'really' have to say. Inevitably news
articles, and from a larger scope, readers' perspectives on certain topics,
will be restricted. From then, who knows where 'freedom of speech' will end up?
The news might as well guarantee its readers their freedom of speech without
them having to fear for an offensive e-mail or maybe even their lives.
Bibliography
∙News Sites Rethink Anonymous Online Comments-RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/12/technology/12comments.html?_r=1&
∙ Huffington Post to Ban Anonymous Comments-Elizabeth Landers
http://edition.cnn.com/2013/08/22/tech/web/huffington-post-anonymous-comments
∙Poll: Should News Sites Allow Anonymous Comments? - Enrique Lavin
http://www.nj.com/njvoices/index.ssf/2014/01/poll_should_news_sites_continu.html
∙Disqus Pseudonym Research
https://disqus.com/research/pseudonyms/
∙News Sites Reining in Nasty User Comments-Stephanie Goldberg
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/TECH/web/07/19/commenting.on.news.sites/
