It Is Time to End Anonymous Commenting

We are almost 30 years in to this social experiment called The Internet -- when a web page was first created[1] -- and it is time to clean the petri dish and end anonymous commenting.

“But Freedom of Speech!” the crowds roar. “But what about whistleblowers!?” proclaim the earnest. “It’s a fundamental right,” yell the libertarians.

Let’s just step back a minute and look at the state of the experiment.

Has the Internet raised the level of discourse? Have there been anonymous comments that have been vital to a story or led to a productive outcome? Have anonymous comments contributed positively to society? I would answer no to all counts.

I have seen people, both friends and professional acquaintances, be devastated by anonymous commenting. To be clear, these commenters are not always trolls, sometimes it can be genuine vitriol.

I have seen people that I don’t have any particular affinity with be destroyed by anonymous commenters. Maybe in a corner of the Internet, someone is blasting me personally (20 years in advertising[2] . . . surely this is the case!)

There have even been times, and I am sure I am not alone, when I had to stop myself from disagreeing vehemently with someone because I wasn’t prepared to put my name to my thoughts, as my argument was a touch weak. But many people don’t stop.

There is genuine suffering. It has probably happened to you, or someone you know.

Unfortunately, people tend to be more anti-social when their name is not attached to their words or deeds[3] and the level of negativity becomes heightened.

With mental health being adversely affected by many elements of the Internet[4], we owe it to society, especially tomorrow’s society, to start fixing what is broken.

Anonymous commenting is not a default setting that can’t be changed. We made the decision to allow it in the hope it would spur debate and perhaps move humanity forward.

But we are moving in the wrong direction. We have destroyed the notion of accountability. Yes, if someone breaks the law they can, in theory be accountable through their IP address, but laws rarely fix discourse -- values do.

We wanted to allow anonymity because we thought the value of such comments would outweigh the negatives. We were clearly, utterly wrong.

The weight of (brief) history now tells us that the value to society of anonymous commenting is far outweighed by the negative consequences.

If indeed there are important stories that can only be told under the veil of anonymity, they can still be told[5]. There are multiple ways for anyone to go to a publisher and have their story told with their identity protected.

Somehow, we’ve conflated this vital process with commenting. I have yet to read an argument that shows how the positives of anonymous commenting outweigh the negatives.

If we remove all anonymous commenting, and yes I also include pseudonyms, who suffers? And please, before you name a group, think about the word suffer.

Those with conviction will put their name to their posts, resulting in more tempered words. By all means, we need to encourage those who fear negative consequences to have their stories told, and indeed many publications do just that.

If the main argument against the removal of anonymous commenting is a technical one, citing people using bogus identification methods, then we aren’t trying hard enough. No technology is perfect, but there is a need for a single persona for each of us across the internet – for so many reasons. If the digital world and physical world are indeed to be given the same weighting and are indistinguishable, which judging by some valuations may be the case[6], it makes no sense that we would have one persona in the physical world but many in the digital world.

Publishers who are worried that their traffic and hence revenues will go down with less inflammatory rhetoric needn’t worry – reliance on ad revenue for a publisher is a one-way ticket to oblivion and those that choose the path of quality rather than volume will win (and there are far better revenue streams to be had).

Not to mention people are being conditioned to the dopamine hits that result from reading disturbing comments, which then means the level of commenting becomes even more heightened, resulting in a vicious cycle. It will simply become harder and harder for publishers to squeeze the juice. Many publishers already know this[7].

You want loyalty that transfers into revenue? You want less low quality traffic? You want people to respect your brand? Remove anonymous commenting, give it three months and watch what happens.

So how do we do this? My suggestion is that brave publishers take the first steps, and in particular, Facebook (yes, they will now admit they are a publisher[8]. Why Facebook? Simply because they have become the default social operating system, and also a symbol of much ire for many[9]. Imagine if Facebook led the charge, what would that say about them, given the events of the past?

But if Facebook doesn’t (though they should), plenty of other publishers can start walking down the path. Start off by at least giving anonymous commenters less weighting and exposure. If you can’t work out the best way to ensure people identify themselves, then start working on one. I am convinced that a shift to “i-dentification” is inevitable. Lack of technology is not a good excuse.

So who is brave enough to start fixing things and risk the wrath of, well, the anonymous commenters?

Let's start respecting real people’s emotions more than an anonymous person's need to let the world know how they feel. The days of people just having to “toughen up” and accept anonymous commenting should be over[10].

Please, share this if you agree and definitely share if you disagree, and maybe, just maybe, a publisher will step up, and above.

@peterbray https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/peteralexbray

Footnotes

1. https://www.history.com/news/the-worlds-first-web-site

2. https://linkedin.com/in/peteralexbray It’s is actually but more than 20 but there may be some shame attached

3. Zimbardo, P. (2007). The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil". The Journal of The American Medical Association. 298 (11): 1338–1340.

4. Pantic, I. (2014) Online Social Networking and Mental Health https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4183915/

5. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/14/reader-center/how-the-times-uses-anonymous-sources.html

6. https://www.thestreet.com/markets/ipos/how-much-is-uber-stock-really-worth--14957874

7. https://adexchanger.com/platforms/header-bidding-unleashed-huge-infrastructure-problem-ad-tech-will-either-sink-swim/

8. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/02/facebook-mark-zuckerberg-platform-publisher-lawsuit

9. https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/27/18149215/facebook-monopoly-regulation-data-big-picture

10. There is another issue at play here(which warrants far more discussion for another day, I hope in the near future), and that is the fact the women are less likely to contribute comments with their names due to the fear of retribution. But that furthers the need for accountability, and much of the online retribution towards women is anonymous. One has to ask, is the internet’s very structure biased?