Technology and Anonymity: A Match Made in Hell
In the 18th century, educated and prominent citizens and subjects routinely wrote “letters to the editors” of newspapers under pseudonyms. Most of them were really essays, not letters, intended for a wide audience, and usually concerned with the public good. The tone of these missives, though, was frequently what we might call “quite spicy,” and some of them are what we would call “libelous,” and would, in our world, open the author up to litigation. Again, though, these were written under pseudonyms.
Those of us who were adults pre-internet grew up with newspapers and magazines and television news programs staffed by people whose names were on their work (“bylines”). We still have those, and reporters still put their names on their work. They are, then, generally careful about the accuracy of what they report. Letters to the editor to a modern newspaper require the author’s real name.
When I was a kid, “crank calls” were common—short phone calls to either someone in particular or to a random number for the purpose of pranking or abuse. Repeated calls of that nature might result in a police trace, but that wasn’t going to happen to your average teenager goofing around with friends on a Friday night. The darker side of that was the anonymous communication of threats. Bomb threats to schools and businesses were common. Most of us were at one point or another suddenly evacuated from a building after a called-in bomb threat, until the police could check things out.
When people have the means to communicate anonymously with people they don’t know, the usual social constraints are removed. Some of us have the integrity and character and sense of decency not to abuse that. But a whole lot of us don’t. A whole lot of people only behave because we have constraints in place to make them behave. Those constraints range from criminal law to serious public shaming to mild approbation. If you commit a felony and they know who you are, arresting and charging you will be relatively straightforward. You will face prison or execution. If you make an outrageously-offensive video and post it on your personal social media account, you are likely to experience a public shaming that could ruin your life. If you audibly fart in an elevator, you may well get some looks from the people next to you.
These highly-likely outcomes of behavior tend to be effective constraints on those people who do not have the quality of character to act with basic consideration of others—people who do not have an internal sense of social obligation, but must be coerced into observing those obligations.
Those intending to commit felonies usually go to some trouble to disguise themselves and what they have done. Those who want to subject people they don’t know to egregious abuse on the internet don’t have to. And that is why it is ubiquitous. This technology was not invented for the purpose of enabling antisocial cowards to abuse other people at will—it’s a classic result of the law of unintended consequences that basically rules the history of technology. But it could not be better-suited to that low purpose had it been purposefully designed for it.
If I post abusive and probably libelous comments about you on the internet and I put my name, address, and phone number next to them, I am not a coward. I may be stupid, and sadistic, but I am not a coward. If, on the other hand, I post those same comments under the user name “PiecesOfFeces1234,” I am a coward. To trace those comments back to me would require the combined effort of at least one tech company and one law enforcement agency. Someone for whom that user name would be appropriate knows this, and is thus unconstrained from taking advantage of it, just as a letter-writer in 1782 might have.
This hiding behind anonymity is one of the two main ingredients in the dehumanization of the abuser’s target. The other is the target’s physical removal from the abuser. Internet abusers may watch video clips of their target—even clips that reveal the “real person’s” real thoughts and feelings and experiences. But it’s still easier for them to withhold empathy—even if they are capable of it—than it would be if they were in the physical presence of the target. In a “live” person-to-person situation, either empathy, cowardice, or a combination of both would likely constrain the abuser’s behavior—that, and the wish to avoid real consequences for their actions.
There is no real accountability for the internet abuser, and that’s why this antisocial behavior is so rampant. Technology that removes an attacker from a victim makes violence easier. High-flying bombers, guided missiles, even rifles. Even 18th-century newspapers.
Any informed person in our society knows that abuse-via-the-internet causes widespread serious harm. We are grappling with that, from our own home offices to the halls of our legislatures, as we should be. But as long as the internet permits anonymity, the problem will persist. Until we can genetically-engineer antisocial behavior out of our species, we must maintain strict social constraints on behavior, so that those without internal restraint can be externally restrained.
There should be no online anonymity. My “user name” should be my actual name. Any abuse I commit online should be immediately traceable to me—not just by the law, but by anybody—just like looking up someone in the phone book. If you don’t know what a “phone book” is, it’s the directory of everyone’s name, address, and phone number in your town or city. Everyone had one.
The main objection to what I just called for is that it would expose me to harm from strangers on the internet. The irony of that is that it is internet anonymity (and the devil’s algorithms) that make this concern as prominent as it is. Eliminating anonymity as well as reforming the algorithms will markedly reduce the odds of someone’s internet antisocial behavior spilling over into what they do in the “real world.”
Accountability is as important as some people say it is, and technology that allows the commission of destructive behavior anonymously is something we want to avoid as much as we possibly can. We are “living” online now, not just in physical space, and we require the same rules and constraints online as we have in the public square.