As technology has developed more and more over the years we have seen many great things come about such as smart phones, portable laptops, along with many other things. But these advancements in technology have not always brought on good things. Many websites that are available for public use on the world wide web have been home to many bullying incidents, and have become more and more common over the years. The ability for the so called ‘trolls’ to hide behind a computer knowing that their identity is hidden due to anonymity has allowed for them to make even more attacks very easily. In a lot cases those who are being cyber bullied have went to drastic measures to end those attacks by committing suicide, this has become such a problem that even our current president Barack Obama has addressed the issue. This paper will take a look at the problems that many people believe anonymity enabled websites and cyber bullying can bring on to people who are common users of the Internet and their websites. I will be taking a look at three texts one of them being ““Real Names” Policies Are an Abuse of Power” by Danah Boyd who is a Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research, a Research Assistant Professor in Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University, and a Fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society. Another text I will be looking at is “How the Internet created an age of rage” an article posted on The Guardian by Tim Adams who is a staff writer for the Observer. The last text I will look at is an excerpt from Smarter Thank You Think: How Technology Is Changing Our Minds or the Better a book written by Clive Thompson who is a Canadian freelance journalist, blogger and science and technology writer. By analyzing these three texts I will look at what many writers believe is causing online bullying and what can be done to change it to see if their solutions to these problems seem effective.
Many of the attacks that happen on the Internet are done by those who use websites that allow anonymity or those who use pseudonyms. A lot of people believe that if websites did not allow for users of their websites to chose to be anonymous or have the ability to go under a different name that they would not say the mean things that they do. It is obvious that no one is safe from these types of attacks from the common person to entertainers and especially politicians. Psychologist came up with the terms deindividuation which happens when “social norms are withdrawn because identities are concealed” (Adams). In other words that means that people are more prone to do or say bad things when they know no one else will now who said or did such things. An experiment was done with trick-or-treaters who were invited into a house to take sweets and right next to it there was also a large sum of money “When children arrived singly, and not wearing masks, only 8% of them stole any of the money. When they were in larger groups, with their identities concealed by fancy dress, that number rose to 80%” (Adams). This experiment shows the same thing that happens in a online social media situation because people know that their identities are concealed and they are in large groups they encourage one another attack people. On the other hand a man by the name of Jeffrey Wells who is the author of author of Hollywood Elsewhere, a former columnist on the LA Times, and a blogger believes that “anonymity makes for livelier writing” (Adams). Wells has had many encounters with a man who uses the name LexG, a man who constantly comments on Wells’ work, Wells believes that LexG is a great writer and does not agree with others to enforce a “real name” policy. Adams writes, “He [Wells] has resisted insisting that people write under their own name because that would kill the comments instantly”. If everyone, according to Wells, was forced to use their real names on all social media websites it would ruin the feedback that they get whether it be positive or negative.
A website that attempted to fix the problem was Google. Google listened to the peoples pleas to enforce a “real name” policy which basically means that people who do not sign up with a real name will not be allowed continued access to their website or their profiles will be deleted. Googles attempt at trying to enforce this “real name” policy got many people fired up so they decided, then, to change their policy to allow pseudonyms just not nicknames and no longer suspending any of the accounts who did not follow the rules. Those who are for the “real name” policy constantly use Facebook as an example but what they do not know is that many Facebook users do not use their real names. According to Boyd,
“…countless black and Latino youth signed up to Facebook using handles.…Likewise, people from outside of the US started signing up to Facebook and using alternate names. Again, no one noticed because names transliterated from Arabic or Malaysian or containing phrases in Portuguese weren’t particularly visible to the real name enforcers. Real names are by no means universal on Facebook, but it’s the importance of real names is a myth that Facebook likes to shill out. And, for the most part, privileged white Americans use their real name on Facebook. So it “looks” right.”
What many people fail to notice is that the people who chose to sign up under pseudonyms do so because they want their names to “look” right while white people do not need to because their names already “fill” that requirement. Many times these people do this to protect themselves because “many people are far LESS safe when they are identifiable” (Boyd). Interestingly enough those who spoke up against the “real name” policy are privileged white folks who are the ones who least likely to be affected by the policy, but they are actually being listened to because they have much more power than minorities. Overall attempting to force social media users to use their real names has proven ineffective because many people are safer going under different names.
The types of threats that arise can range from just a plain disagreement statement to rape threats, when the person being attacked is a woman. According to Thompson, “…abuse isn’t evenly distributed. It’s much less often directed at men, particularly white men like me. In contrast, many women I know—probably most—find that being public online inevitably attracts a wave of comments”. When women along with minorities or any subordinated group have opinions on topics which are controversial, politics, or even something intellectual they are most likely to be attacked online. Although many people blame the Internet for creating these types of prejudices they did not, they only created a new stage for them according to Thompson. A good example on how the Internet can once again become a good place where people can receive and give positive or constructive feedback is that of Ta-Nahesi Coates. He is a “…senior editor at The Atlantic Monthly, a magazine of politics and culture…” (Thompson 78). Coates was a blogger himself before moving it over to the Atlantic and noticed large amounts of terrible comments left on the pages of his favorite political bloggers. He noticed that when a lot of people would post negative things that they would “…poison the atmosphere, chasing off productive posters” (Thompson 78). So Coates decided that his blog would be different, that those who had an opinions that were written in an intelligent manner and not meant to hurt anyone would actually be allowed to stay. According to Thompson, “The instant he [Coates] saw something abusive, he’d delete it, banning repeating offenders… he went out of his way to encourage the smart folks, responding to them personally and publicly, so they’d be encouraged to stay and talk” (78). What Coates did was a very smart thing because it forced out those “trolls” and welcomed the intellectuals. Many social media websites should look at what Coates did and learn to moderate their sites comment section so that it will not be such a cesspool.
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