Weighing the pros and cons of abandoning anonymity on social networks

In its July 5, 1993 issue, The New Yorker carried a cartoon by Peter Steiner, which showed two dogs sitting in front of a computer. One of the dogs sagely tells the other, “On the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.” The internet until then was only a work of technology that concerned academics, the government and the military. Steiner’s cartoon brought it into public consciousness, and soon achieved cult status.

Steiner later admitted that he had attached no profound meaning to the cartoon. But he did manage to identify that one characteristic which would play a major role in spurring dialogue via the medium — through discussion boards, blogs, comments, social networks, and, as we have seen off late, whistle-blowing websites such as WikiLeaks.

But governments and the companies that profit from the internet have always been uneasy with anonymity and the use of pseudonyms. The issue has flared up off late after Google+ suspended accounts of users who didn’t have real-sounding names, including that of Blake Ross, co-founder of Firefox and currently Facebook’s product manager. Facebook itself has asked some users for identity proof, such as driver’s license, or face suspension. If statements by senior executives at Facebook and Google+ are anything to go by, social networking sites are drawing up a different vision of the internet, one that has no place for anonymity.

“I think anonymity on the internet has to go away... I think people hide behind anonymity and they feel like they can say whatever they want behind closed doors,” said Randi Zuckerberg, marketing director, Facebook, at a panel discussion recently.

Zuckerberg’s arguments do make sense. “Just go to YouTube. You will find people writing all sorts of racist comments. This is not allowed in the real world. And pseudonyms allow users to get away with it,” says Apar Gupta, a Delhi-based lawyer.

But promoting good behaviour is not the sole factor for social networking giants to adopt real-name policies, points out Gupta. “Identity is the price users pay for using their service. Social networking sites want to profile a user’s likes and dislikes, which helps them push ads,” he says. Internet pundit Dave Winer put it succinctly on his blog where he writes that social networks are particular about real names “to provide identity in a commerce-ready way. And to give them information about what you do on the internet, without obfuscation of pseudonyms.”

By themselves these reasons are valid. Moreover, companies like Facebook and Google+ are free to set their own terms. But their popularity, the needs they fulfill, and the changes they have helped bring about recently make social networking companies accountable to the public. Anonymity is no longer a feature you can remove without involving all stakeholders.

Stakeholders like Wael Ghonim started the Facebook page ‘We Are All Khaled Said’ under a pseudonym in mid 2010, much before the protests that took place this January. The page, which became the rallying point for Egyptians, was taken down temporarily because it was being operated by a person using a pseudonym. Ghonim, an employee with Google, appealed to Facebook and the page was put back up online. If the real-name policy had been enforced and Ghonim not been savvy with social networking, the page would have remained suspended, and the Arab Spring may have never come to Egypt.

Such issues cannot be ignored by social networks. They will also have to take into account cultural differences while enforcing the real-name policy. An Indian name may well sound ‘unreal’ to the name-scanning algorithm. Artists like to interact with people using their pen names. Homosexuals who are not ready to come out operate under a pseudonym to connect and interact with other homosexuals.

Krishnakumar Venkachala, for example, started with two Facebook accounts — one with his real name, the other using the pseudonym Kris Bass, which he used to connect with gays.

The two accounts were mutually exclusive. “Kris Bass was my gay activist identity. I have now connected the two accounts, but Kris Bass has become part of my life. And it will be very disappointing if social networks were to suspend that account because the name sounds fake,” he says.

Given these arguments, the question is whether the upsides of real-name policies outweigh the downsides. In a blog post, Jillian C York, director for International Freedom of Expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, writes that people who support real-name policies need “to demonstrate that these benefits (of real-name policies) outweigh some very serious drawbacks.”

As we become increasingly dependant on the internet, the use of real names will certainly solve some important problems. But is anonymity worth protecting, even if you find the occasional dog that barks?