YEEEEEEEEEEHAA!

I'M DONE (:

Final Draft

We Are Anonymous

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. Anonymous comments on news websites shouldn't be going anywhere, for whatever reason.

             The anonymity of the internet has existed since almost the beginning of the internet itself (or at least when it actually started to matter). Since 1999, AOL chat rooms were crowded with anonymous users, and then Myspace and numerous news websites including the Huffington Post in 2005 (Landers, 2012), followed the trend (Livefyre, 2014). The initial intentions of anonymous comments were to provide people the freedom of expressing what they felt about a topic posted online. However, vile comments started to appear, and now, to deal with this matter, many news sites including the Huffington Post, ESPN.com, and Popular Science got rid of the anonymous system altogether and encouraged their readers to post comments with their real names. Taking a step more, the Sun Chronicle newspaper with a circulation of 15,000 launched a program in 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 according to Stephanie Goldberg. 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 new opinions be on the worldwide web, especially when the Sun Chronicle is a local paper in Attleboro, Massachusetts? Not very.

             An online leading commenting service corporation, 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 about the risks of banning anonymity, "People who might have something useful to say are less willing to participate in boards where the tomatoes are being thrown." Thus, he is stating that people restrain from expressing their true, 'useful' opinions when their identity can be shown. Similarly, 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 because the most articles that people post on anonymously are general news, politics (Livefyre Survey, 2014) and thus 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. CNN user 'Yank in France' wrote in response to the article Huffington Post to Ban Anonymous Comments like so: 'When I expressed early opposition to Bush's push for the Iraq War in late 2002, I received online threats to my life from self-described "patriots". '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. ‘Take away their anonymity and then see if he or she can say the same thing’, they may say. ‘Trolls, are upsetting too much people’, they may argue (Internet Trolls, according to the Urban Dictionary are: 'People whose sole purpose in life is to seek out people to argue with on the internet over extremely trivial issues'). However, 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 by getting rid of the anonymous system, they will most likely fail to because different people would still be offended by certain comments. Some online news websites are giving efforts to promote diverse opinions through their comments. There are moderation strategies for the concerns. Alternatives exist. The New York Times, for example, are dealing with such problems by having people review every comment to filter content. Most sites also have the function of flagging an overly offensive comment or the right to delete horrendous comments that no one really wants to see. 

             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 ‘trolls’who write offensive comments 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? I conclude quoting Oscar Wilde: 'Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.'

References

Perez-Peña, Richard (2010). News Sites Rethink Anonymous Online Comments. Retrieved from 

          http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/12/technology/12comments.html?_r=1&

Landers, Elizabeth (2013).  Huffington Post to Ban Anonymous Comments. Retrieved from

         http://edition.cnn.com/2013/08/22/tech/web/huffington-post-anonymous-comments

Lavin, Enrique (2014). Poll: Should News Sites Allow Anonymous Comments? Retrieved from

         http://www.nj.com/njvoices/index.ssf/2014/01/poll_should_news_sites_continu.html

Disqus Pseudonym Research (2012)

         https://disqus.com/research/pseudonyms/

Goldberg, Stephanie (2010). .News Sites Reining in Nasty User Comments- Retrieved from

          http://edition.cnn.com/2010/TECH/web/07/19/commenting.on.news.sites/
Livefyre (2014). Is anonymity destroying or fostering the world's online communities? Retrieved from
          http://blog.livefyre.com/anon/
Urban Dictionary. Definition of 'Internet Trolls'. Retrieved from
         http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Internet%20Troll

Research (December the 5th)

1. Online anonymity: An essential tactic for protecting human rights

Mohamad Najem

http://igmena.org/Online-anonymity-An-essential-tactic-for-protecting-human-rights

Thoughts: Didn't have accurate data. Who directly cites from Wicki.? Mohamad Najem does. Anyways, this wasn't much help except for the fact that anonymity has existed for a long time and thus contributed to today's community. But I don't think I'll put that in my essay because 1) Not enough info. on that, and 2) No evidence. It is pretty cool though.

2..Livefyre Research

Is anonymity destroying or fostering the world's online communities?

http://blog.livefyre.com/anon/

Thoughts: This. Is. Great. Wow. Where have you been this whole time, my dearie? This is great because it has information on the history of anonymous comments. Now I can know where to start to look for when news sites started allowing anonymous comments. Yay. Survey statistics are also very useful and enlightening.  Hurray!