Anonymity in the era of social networks: what to do when your “privacy level” falls below zero

The fact that we experience paranoia does not mean that we should experience it.

Do you remember the nicknames? Perhaps it was a nickname for e-mail, and maybe for a chat or forum. In those early days of the Internet, it didn’t even occur to us to use our real names — well, you know, in case someone particularly unpleasantly became attached — and that is why we invented stupid pseudonyms that could hide behind. But Mark Zuckerberg changed everything, as is well known, declaring war on anonymity, saying that fake names are "an example of a lack of honesty and full personality." I had friends who registered with Facebook under the ridiculous nicknames that they used to use on MySpace and Friendster - and Zuckerberg immediately sent them back, insisting on real names and surnames.
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Since Facebook “shot” and leaked to all the corners and cracks of the Internet, it has become customary to comment and like the websites through it. In the meantime, the Internet has become increasingly commercial, as well as search tools for viewing our stories. Then we began to sculpt a virtual brand of something and form our network reputations. We started using Facebook and Twitter as evidence of our amazing lives and achievements. And today we often look down on those who are not highlighted in the search, on a subconscious level, it seems to us that they are not completely trustworthy.

If you are not online, it seems that you do not exist - and remember, pseudonyms are not considered.

In a sense, the war that Zuckerberg declared anonymity was a success - we are now waiting for our public profiles to reflect our privacy. Our individuality has become a currency that we exchange for convenience and additional privileges. Sign up somewhere and most likely you will at a minimum be asked to provide your name and email address.

But now we are witnessing a paradigm shift. Since many of us - especially the hyper-addicted people of the new millennium - are tired of constant publicity, the pendulum has swung towards anonymity again.

It all started with the Snapchat application, which erases the sent photos from the recipient's phone a few seconds after reading. At first, to avoid consequences, people were wary of him, considering him a dubious way of sending messages, especially of a sexual nature.



Few people believed that the application would be a success, but it did. According to Vice magazine, in the service of Snapchat every day there is an exchange of more than 150,000,000 snaps between approximately 5,000,000 users, including the majority of teenagers and students. In fact, the cost of this project soared from $ 70,000,000 to $ 500,000,000 in just six months. The idea struck a chord: we want to share something and communicate with each other without the need to attach a digital profile about ourselves.

The application owners followed in the same footsteps and decided to grab hold on the need for people to retain personal information. Whisper , for example, allows you to share your most intimate secrets, while maintaining anonymity and getting closer to other people based on common emotional experiences. Secrets are different: from serious ones like “my father raped me” to eccentric “like when I leave the hotel room, I always fold blankets so that it seems that there is a corpse”. Together, they present a fascinating picture of the whole gamut of human experience. According to Slate magazine, Whisper scored more than three billion views per month, being especially popular among visitors from 18 to 24 years old.

The Snapchat and Whisper projects are the main examples of the realization of a person’s desire for anonymity, but now there are more and more similar projects, even with a twist, but imitators. For example, the Secret service allows users and friends of their friends to anonymously share the most secret thoughts with people from the contact list on the phone. Services such as Confide and Telegram offer the possibility of sending a message that “self-destructs” after reading. Notifications from the Wut app are also anonymous.

Why are anonymous applications gaining such popularity, especially among teenagers? In short, our personal data has become burdensome and vulnerable. In addition to the fear of data tracking and breaches of confidentiality, we are also faced with the ever-present need to "observe decency."

“You are trying to paint the desired, enviable picture of your life for other people on Facebook,” said Duncan Watts, a leading Microsoft researcher, according to DigiDay magazine. "But when it comes to things that you are not very proud of, that you are ashamed of or afraid to discover, the very last people on Earth you would like to tell this to are your friends and family." The result is a lack of sincerity, which stifles the true understanding of each other and the close relationship to which we are so eager.

Watts first noticed our desire for "anonymous, but human" communication in the study of answers on the service Yahoo Answers - the portal of answers to questions. Anonymity allows people to ask sensitive questions about mental health and sex, but these answers can also be found with a simple Google search. On the contrary, it becomes clear that people are not important answers to questions, but confirmation, the feeling of being heard and understood.

“You want anonymity, but at the same time you would like to feel that you are talking to a living person who understands where you come from,” he adds. And this is exactly what all these applications promise - a mask, behind which one can hide, but feel the freedom to speak frankly and be understood.

The sudden jump in popularity of Secret and Whisper services coincides with ongoing changes in attitudes toward anonymity: we increasingly need the ability to reset our virtual personalities at least temporarily. According to a poll conducted by the Pew research center, 86% of Internet users take steps to remove or hide their online presence, and a clear majority - 59% - believe that the Internet should be used anonymously.

It is curious that the strongest desire for anonymity was manifested among the youngest users - from 18 to 29 years old - it was they, not the older generations, who were trying to hide their profiles, - as Pew reports. It seems that the generation that has spent most of its life under the rule of Facebook begins to rebel.



Anonymity - and all its derivatives, such as other guises and pseudonyms - is not just a fad of the Millennium generation, but an old cultural tradition. In the Middle Ages, writers often wrote anonymously and did not expect glory and retribution, except in heaven.

Even with the advent of the printing press — and the increasing publication of books, brochures, and other literary material — the authors still preferred to remain anonymous.

More than 80% of all novels published in Great Britain between 1750 and 1790 were published under pseudonyms, ” says book historian James Raven, a journalist from the Los Angeles Times. Anonymity, of course, has its pluses, according to John Mullan, author of Anonymity: The Secret History of English Literature, anonymity played the role of a cloak that defended satirists who ridiculed the political system, such as Alexander Pope or Jonathan Swift , from the arrest and legal or political consequences of their caustic satyr and remarks. Young journalists publish articles and editorials without specifying the name of the author for the same reason - this is a tradition that continues in such publications as The Economist.

The ability to publish without a signature helped women to gain a foothold in early literary history: writers such as Jane Austen, sisters Bronte and George Eliot — alias Mary Ann Evans — did it at the very beginning of the literary path anonymously at the beginning of their work. Such a shield gave them the opportunity to speak the truth, express disagreement on sensitive political issues and publish scandalous, but innovative works without fear of punishment for disturbing public order.

Freedom to speak sincerely, without the need to designate your identity, is preserved today. That's why therapeutic groups like the anonymous alcoholic or drug addict club help so much - and that's why many were so outraged when a member of the anonymous club of drug addicts told the New York Times about the personal remarks that actor Philip Seymour Hoffman made before his death.

Legally, we guarantee the anonymity of informants, who often give information to journalists that is not subject to publicity. And in the case of the Nixon and Watergate scandal, the identity of the agent, nicknamed “Deep Throat” - one of the most famous and discussed cases of anonymity in US political history - has remained a secret for decades.

On a personal and political level, anonymity is often a shelter or refuge that protects our freedom to speak without fear of punishment. But the concept of freedom has become more complicated with the advent of the Internet, which of all made potential publishers. Today, even a random tweet or photo can be seen by millions.

But some, taking advantage of all the advantages of anonymity, spill gallness and hatred, which they restrain in real life. Online trolls, for example, often spread a negative, hiding behind a wall of fake names and personalities. But even a normal person writes vulgar, racist, hateful comments, when no one knows what it is he who does it. According to a University of Houston study , 53% of anonymous comments on a newspaper site contain vulgar, racist or, in one way or another, malicious overtones - a striking contrast with 29% of those comments that require revealing a person. In all, almost half of the 137 largest newspapers ask for a name in order to avoid the impact of the barbaric nature of anonymity.

Some researchers believe that the problem lies not in anonymity, but in group thinking and the culture of the communities into which people write. According to a study of teenagers in Singapore, cheating in online games has greatly influenced how a player is identified with gaming communities. We cheat and troll because we think everyone else is doing it, and in a group this is considered acceptable behavior. In the same way, if a group demonstrates fair play, players are likely to follow these standards, even if they play anonymously.

Anonymity actually downplayed the importance of individuality and forced the influence of groups, obliging those who want to be in them to follow the rules. It turns out that if you focus more on clarifying and strengthening proper behavior, and less on anonymity, the problems of cyber violence and rough exchange of opinions will be better regulated.

"In the long term, the formation of healthy moral standards, culture and relationships in gaming communities will help prevent deviant behavior," Vivan Chen reports to Polygon magazine. Eliminating anonymity will not create a healthy atmosphere in online communities and cultures - tough moderation, enforced rules and the willingness of its members to speak openly - this is what will work effectively.

Secret and Whisper take this responsibility seriously and watch it to prevent attacks with criticism and cyber-hooliganism. According to Forbes , Secret plans to release an update to monitor security and privacy, and Whisper, in turn, hired employees to monitor and moderate content and discussions.

“You are who you are when no one is looking at you,” said Whisper founder Michael Heyward to Business Insider. “Anonymity is a very powerful tool. It seems to us that it is like the superpower of Spider-Man, because with great power comes great responsibility. ”

Despite the fresh interest in anonymity, it is almost impossible due to the huge coverage of the Internet. It's hard to hide the digital data trails that we leave behind. Almost everything can be identified and any comment can be tracked to its source.

The riots in Vancouver or London, the bombings in Boston showed that we can find out who was there and what he was doing, and all because of the endless possibilities of the smartphone, systematic review photo intelligence and the Internet. The facial recognition system is improved in detail and use, giving another challenge to privacy and anonymity.

Perhaps we can never be completely anonymous.

But technology companies are starting to change their minds about the concept of privacy, recognizing that the requirement of a name and e-mail can take conscious users too far from respecting privacy rights. According to Business Week , Facebook is developing applications that allow anonymous guests to increase traffic and increase advertising revenue, respectively. Some information will still be correlated with an anonymous ID in order to create some personalization, but this will make it possible to use the site without having to enter personal data - the best that can be done.

Zuckerberg himself - once having acted as a champion of the rigorous registration of real names - softened his attitude towards anonymity. “If you are constantly under pressure from a real person, it seems to me a heavy burden,” he told Business Week.

We feel this when we log in to Facebook - the need to portray life in a certain way, publish only those things that can entertain friends and collect more “likes”. So, we leave the unvarnished, sometimes harsh truth of life and thoughts with us, creating a false image and superficial ideas to keep up. This puts pressure on us after some time, and it seems to us that this is the basis of our complaints about social networks.

So is it any wonder the popularity of Whisper and Secret? In these anonymous networks, we share not with interests, but with emotions, hidden thoughts and almost forbidden ideas. They are not always good-looking - and yes, some of them may be fictitious, but all this goes beyond the usual superficial conversations in most social networks. This kind of genuine, open exchange is at the heart of real, stable communities — and often the reason we live half our lives online.

It takes courage to open up, whether in life or on the Internet. But sometimes, we want to hide behind the stupid nicknames in order to take a break from the heavy burden of our individuality and free our consciousness.