Throughout the years technological innovations have brought to us many great things. One of the most important and widely used today is the Internet. It allows us to look for anything by typing into a search engine and getting millions of results under a minute, communicate with others anywhere in the world, get the latest news, along with many other great things. Although there are all of these good things that have come along due to the Internet there are also bad things. With the help of the Internet people known as “trolls” have found that attacking others through a computer screen is very easy. About tech defines the word troll as “[a person who] actively goes out of their way to cause trouble on the Internet” (about.com). These trolls have been perpetrators to many online bullying incidents which in some cases lead to the victim committing suicide. In a lot of these cases those trolls were using websites which allow anonymity so that the victim would not know who they really are. Like in the case of Rebecca Sedwick a twelve year old girl who on September 9, 2013 committed suicide by jumping from a tower after being cyberbullied through anonymous websites such as Ask.fm along with Instagram and Kik Messenger (abcnews.com, theledger.com). This is only one of many other similar cases in which people are attacked and threatened through the use of the Internet. Which brings into question whether anonymity on social media websites and platforms should be allowed or not. 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. In order to do this I will be looking at three texts. The first text I will be taking a look 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. In his text Adams talks more about the problems with anonymity but also hints at some benefits it could have. The second text I will be looking at is “Where Anonymity Breeds Contempt” by Julie Zhuo who is a product design manager at Facebook. In her text she talks about the origins of anonymity and morality, and how these apply now with the existence of the Internet. Finally the last text I will be examine 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. In this text Thompson gives examples on situations where anonymity has not proven to be a problem but rather a positive environment for people to exchange comments. By analyzing these three texts I will take a look at what these authors believe is causing online bullying, what solutions they believe can work to solve this issue, and finally I will be providing my own input on what I think about the issue of anonymity and what I believe should be done about it.
Tim Adams text starts off by introducing a comedian by the name of Stewart Lee. Lee decided that he would collect comments made about him over the course of six months by going on Google for about ten minutes most days of the week. He collected over dozens of comments that said rude things about him, at first he was worried by these comments but after according to Lee himself, “You can see a lot of them seem to be the same people posting the same stuff under different names in different places,…,abusing you under barely effective pseudonyms” (Adams). Lee is not the only one who receives this type of hate victims include celebrities along with many other people especially politicians. The problem with these commenters is that a lot of them tend to be anonymous. Psychologist have came up with a term called “deindividuation”, which “happens when social norms are withdrawn because identities are concealed” (Adams). These people who are commenting through their computers have the courage to say all of those things because they know no one will ever know it was actually them. This happens in many cases such as when one is in a car and you feel like you can scream anything to another driver whose driving skills you do not like. Trolls live to cause outrage and they want to be held credible for it so they aspire for people to recognize their work or style of trolling and since they are anonymous it is risk-free. Some of these trolls become so popular that they catch the eye of the people whose work is being commented on. Adams introduces Jeffrey Wells in his text, he is “author of Hollywood Elsewhere, is a former columnist on the LA Times who has been blogging inside stories about movies for 15 years” (Adams).On his blog, Wells had seen various comments by a character going under the name of LexG and dressed him directly. They met up once and Wells asked him to write a column, but LexG refused. Wells does not want to get rid of anonymity on his blog because he believes that the comments section on his page would dry up and thinks that “anonymity makes for livelier writing” (Adams). Adams goes on to talk about a woman by the name of Sarah Bee who decided to take matters in her own hands and began to moderate comments herself by confronting those who wrote rude things. Taking the same route as Bee is Jimmy Wales, the creator of Wikipedia. Wales has people working around the clock to moderate the pages posted so that no trolls are able to ruin information which can actually be useful. Others who oppose the ban of anonymity take a political approach to it, that it conflicts with the freedom of speech along with many other things. Overall Adams believes that people should have to put their names on everything that they post online, and to those who do not that they should not be listened to.
Julie Zhuo starts her text off by providing a definition for trolling which is “the act of posting inflammatory, derogatory or provocative messages in public forums” (Zhuo). Trolling has been a problem since the Internet came into existence but its roots go way back. Plato talked about anonymity in the 4th century B.C., in his parable of the ring of Gyges. This ring gave is owner the power of invisibility and Plato noticed that even the most truthful man would become a thief because they knew they would not be caught. Zhuo goes on to give an example of a girl by the name of Alexis Pilkington, a 17 year old girl who committed suicide, trolls descended on her tribute page and posted tons of hateful comments and pictures of nooses. Another example is that of Nicole Catsouras, an 18 year old, who died in a car crash. Pictures of her disfigured body were posted on the Internet and were also sent to her family. A lot of psychological research has been done and over and over again they have proven that anonymity causes people to promote unethical behavior. Many people are already trying to find ways to combat these trolls, some of them shut down their commenting systems and others turn to the law. Unfortunately the law can not do a lot to deactivate them but the content providers should be the ones who should not allow or discourage anonymity. Reuters, a news agency, recently decided that they would block those people who commented anonymously. Many people argue that the abolishment of anonymity goes against their rights established in the Untied States Constitution but before the Internet anonymity was very rare. Those who said something were held accountable for it because every one would know who said it. Raising barriers to prevent those bad comments from being posted is a the very firs step to completely eradicate anonymity and that is where this process should start. Zhou gives some examples of content providers who are trying to combat these trolls such as Gizmodo who is “trying an audition system for new commenters, under which their first few comments would be approved by a moderator or a trusted commenter to ensure quality before anybody else could see them. After a successful audition, commenters can freely post” (Zhuo). Along with Disqus who “has experimented with allowing users to rate one another’s comments and feed those ratings into a global reputation system called Clout. Moderators can use a commenter’s Clout score to “help separate top commenters from trolls”” (Zhuo). These content providers need to stop allowing for people to post anonymously and to moderate their comments. This will begin to lift “the veil of anonymity” and we will be able to see those trolls for who they really are, and that is human, just like everyone else.
Clive Thompson’s excerpt he begins by talking about how the people who the abuse is typically directed at is at women especially if they talk about politics or anything controversial and it is also directed to minorities in the United States. It is hardly every directed at white men. We cannot completely get rid of this abuse because it has always been present, the Internet just made it easier but there are techniques to reduce online abuse. People are already finding ways in learning not only how to manage online conversations but how to improve them also. Thompson gives the example of a man by the name of Ta-Nahesi Coates, a senior editor at The Atlantic Monthly. Coates used to run a personal blog for many years until he moved it to the Atlantic, he posts about many subjects such as race, TV shows, sports, politics, movies, etc. Surprisingly enough the comments on his forum are abuse-free. Coates achieved this by noticing back when he was not a blogger that people would comment terrible things on his favorite blogs so he decided he would change it. When he started his own blog he would go out of his way to encourage those who had something good to say to continue posting and those who would post abusive things would get their comments deleted and if they continued they would get banned. Coates still has arguments with people who challenge him but it is done in a civil manner without any abuse. People need to be the ones who have to take action first if they want to see change in the way people engage online. The problem with cites, such as YouTube, whose comments section are a cesspool is that there is no one there to moderate them. Coates has found that a conversation works better when it is smaller, which is also a huge problem for moderating sites such as YouTube or newspapers because they are always trying to get bigger. All in all everyone should learn and be taught how to behave online. Every one must know that when it comes to the Internet there is always going to be good things about it and a lot of bad, which we have to learn to accept.
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