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, 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. 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.
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