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Comment by NovaS1X | Hacker News Reader

>“ When we see harassing behavior, we can speak up to challenge it,” the authors wrote. And that’s true. We can. But if we aren’t white men, it’s likely we won’t be heard.

Here. This doesn't make sense. Why are people, or do people feel the need to link their identity to their thoughts online. If you're pushing for equality then why are you assigning a gender, race, or political affiliation to your comments? If we are all equal then why separate yourself with labels?

This is why having your online identity linked with your real identity is a bad thing in lots of cases. This is why anonymity is important.

Every conversation I've had on 4chan I have no clue what gender the other person is, what race they are, where they live, how much money they make, what organizations they support, or what their name is real or not. The only thing that matters is what they're saying or what pictures they're posting. Even identifying yourself as a female results in "tits or GTFO" responses. You can see this as hate speech against women or the community saying in it's own fucked up way "we don't care and you shouldn't announce these labels to us". But in the end it pushes away the labels that people have such a problem with. And nobody's comments are getting downvoted so there goes the echo chamber mechanic built into Reddit.

In an ironic twist the "internet hate machine" can be far more inclusive than Reddit.

View on HN

I'm not sure how you can see "tits or GTFO" as a fair response when so many on 4chan readily identify themselves as male with no consequence. Furthermore, they also frequently identify themselves as straight based on the pictures they submit or the stories about their latest success or failure with girls. Economic status also frequently comes out, at least partially, when someone discusses the gadgets / games / toys they can or cannot afford.

So some identifiers are apparently OK. But it's beyond the pale to reveal openly as female in your anonymous paradise. "Show me your tits or shut the fuck up!" And you think this is perfectly good and inclusive?

Men on 4chan usually get called out for not being able to attract females or generally just not being masculine enough. A lot of the time the insults seem to sting almost as much (or, to be completely honest, just as much in my opinion) as the "tits or gtfo" comments. I think this comment applies to those situations as well.

Everyone gets called out on everything that might be wrong on 4chan (mostly /b/). Even a perfectly normal being will be called out on whatever, simply because they can.

"Tits or GTFO" is used because it has a lot higher success rate than one would imagine. It detracts greatly from being able to have actual discussions, but if you're on /b/ you waddle through it.

I would say the response "Tits or GTFO" is not so much as to say that "we aren't interested in your gender" as the more popular ending of a post "I'm a grill btw" was. This was a play on people that, when telling a story or asking a question, where their gender played no role at all, stated their gender for no reason other than to gather attention.

>they also frequently identify themselves as straight

They also frequently identify themselves as gay. I have seen more gay shit on 4chan without trying than any other website I have ever been to in my entire life. It's not easy for a 13 year old boy to see three men making love while dressed up like bunny rabbits. But hey, that was the internet, and that was 4chan. You had/have truly free speech. The beauty of the old internet in which OP is talking about is that everyone is discriminated against equally. No one gets a pass. If you reveal who you are, you are opening up yourself to heavy criticism. This is true in the real world, people just aren't honest about it.

And the experience is often alienating for gay people because the images are paraded as gross or weird.

Source: I'm gay as heck.

I'm sorry but I have to call you a liar. 4chan even has a board dedicated for gay people. Keep in mind this board was around way before any of the social change that's come about in the last 5 years. I used to frequent /gifs as a teenager, and there were were always tons of gay gifs. They were not 'paraded as gross or weird'. They were just gay. As a straight person, I can tell you that there were a lot more gross and weird straight gifs than there were gay ones (cough beastiality cough). I really don't know if this is just your interpretation or if you are a liar like I'm accusing you of being. But your experience certainly does not speak for all gay people. And I find it difficult to believe that someone who's gay would feel alienated like you claim.

>>But your experience certainly does not speak for all gay people.

You're right. I don't speak for all gay people and that's why I said often. I certainly have talked to a lot of gay people about this topic.

So you find it difficult to believe someone who's gay would feel alienated by 4chan. What is that belief based on exactly?

/b/ used to actively mock heterosexual guys who were weirded out by all the gay porn and general naked dudes on there. I think they've suffered a certain amount of cultural drift/rot over the last few years though.

> Here. This doesn't make sense. Why are people, or do people feel the need to link their identity to their thoughts online.

Some people cannot conceive of handling the thoughts of another without an identity attached to them. Thus, the need for all thoughts to have identity attached. It is believed that linking a certain identity to certain thoughts lends them weight and credibility, and linking a different identity to the same thoughts saps them of any credibility.

In either case, some people choose not to deal with ideas as separate from identity.

Interesting form of appeal-to-authority fallacy.

Some people consider the person conveying a message an inextricable part of the message.

I, personally, don't particularly agree. I think it's far more common for identity to be used as a cognitive shortcut by people looking to avoid engaging with and thinking about a message.

> Every conversation I've had on 4chan I have no clue what gender the other person is,

And yet I'm pretty sure that most people interacting with other anonymous people on 4chan assume that they are interacting with a male until proven otherwise, hence memes like:

* There Are No Girls On The Internet[1]

* "Internet, where men are men, women are also men, and children are FBI agent"

> Even identifying yourself as a female results in "tits or GTFO" responses.

I'm not sure if you realize it, but "Tits or GTFO" responses do not mean "We don't care what your gender is, so don't bother to reveal it to us." If you believe that "Tits or GTFO" is an inclusive phrase, then you're either a massive troll, or I've got a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn...

That response traces its origins to the proliferation of attention-seeking "camwhores," and the idea that Anonymous is male until proven female. Neither of these things has anything to do with 4chan being a gender-neutral inclusive community.

[1] http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/there-are-no-girls-on-the-inte...

I actually think that comes more from the fact that a lot of people post pretending to be a women to either get attention or to trick people into going along with whatever ploy they have going.

EDIT: I'm commenting on the quotes specifically. I think the first part is probably correct.

No I completely understand it and know where it came from. I've been around for 8+ years on a daily basis on many boards.

You're not seeing the side of this where identity is seen as a negative thing. This shows itself in the response to tripfags on almost every board that's not /o/ or /p/. Regardless of the use of the meme (it was an example, not gospel) it boils down to the same roots which implies "this is an anonymous site, you are not to be identified and if you out yourself then we will troll you". This happens to anyone of any identification. Identification is not important to the community and thus your interactions with others are judged on content and message and not identity.

Ok, so if 4chan is a gender-neutral site, then why is the assumption that everyone is male until proven otherwise?

You can see this as hate speech against women or the community saying in it's own fucked up way "we don't care and you shouldn't announce these labels to us"

Generous interpretation

This was more of the case when they first started doing it. More recently its devolved into actually being hate speech in accordance to poe's law. You really only see it on /b/ though.

It's an honest interpretation on a lot of boards. Of course this is a trend, not the rule. I can't speak for everyone. This wouldn't be true on places like /pol/ or /b/

> Every conversation I've had on 4chan I have no clue what gender the other person is, what race they are, where they live, how much money they make, what organizations they support, or what their name is real or not.

Yes, but these are assumed to be male, white, American (or European), not poverty and right-wing ones, respectively. If you intentionally or unintentionally reveal that you are not one of these, you're in trouble.

>Yes, but these are assumed to be male, white, American (or European), not poverty and right-wing ones, respectively.

You're defeating your own argument. Assumption doesn't mean it's the rule or it's true. There's no census on 4chan and there's no reason to assume that the assumption is correct.

I could argue against your views by citing the 4chan conventions which had quite a number of women and minorities. Obviously the largest group was 18-25 white males but this was by no means a significant majority.

I can also cite my own experiences in 4chan IRC channels where a lot of our members were located outside of Europe and America.

Or how about doing a census on /cgl/? It's well known among experienced users that the vast majority of users there are women.

You're not stating a fact.

> You're defeating your own argument. Assumption doesn't mean it's the rule or it's true. There's no census on 4chan and there's no reason to assume that the assumption is correct.

Whether the assumption is correct or not is immaterial to the point I am making.

> I could argue against your views by citing the 4chan conventions which had quite a number of women and minorities.

That doesn't go against what I'm saying. Re-read my comment.

> Yes, but these are assumed to be male, white, American (or European), not poverty and right-wing ones, respectively. If you intentionally or unintentionally reveal that you are not one of these, you're in trouble.

On the other hand, you also get a white male middle-class privilege by default, don't you?

Identity is part of the message, and that is the challenge we all face as we try to communicate and be a part of a community (and in Reddit's case, build such a community).

This is why when communication is anonymous, not only does it change the message, it also breaks it in many ways. If we hear Obama say something, we will hear something else than if Trump said it, even if the words are exactly the same. And what if either said something anonymously? We would certainly care less, if at all.

It is only natural to consider the source of the utterance together with the utterance, and vice versa. When we speak, we skip a lot of what is included in our identity and the context we bring along with it. The kicker being, even if our identity is not part of the message, the message is still signed with it. We think of you when you speak, even if you're talking about someone else.

Not quite anonymity, but body language and tone also provides bandwidth. That is why emails can be dangerous when sent to someone who infers emotions from words that would otherwise not have been communicated in person.

Communication is complicated.

Identity doesn't have to be part of the message. Sometimes people want to send a message stripped of identity. This is a good and necessary thing.

It doesn't break the message to lack identity. It forces you to consider the message on its own, stripped of whatever cultural context or baggage you might attach to it.

Who decides identity? The speaker can implicitly mark their words anonymous, but what does that do for the recipient? Slashdot automatically labels anonymous comments as being from "anonymous coward". But they have a point. If someone is posting anonymously, we can infer they must be hiding something, or that they must be protecting something, or that their true identity is inconvenient. Possibilities are real enough to alter our reception. So anonymous caries consequences of its own. It carries it's unique plot lines.

Though it can take practice, we can and do make use of anonymous messages. It is merely a new "mode" of communication, and it gives rise to certain types of communities. However, anonymity must be consensual for it to work. Law enforcement will still come after your identity depending on what you say, and that is a case where the consent is broken (or never acknowledged according to them). Messages become drive-by shootings, and this has an effect on the exchange.

Also, user names are not the equivalent of anonymity. On HN, karma is a feature of each identity, and baggage can be attached just as easily. And if someone says anything interesting, we can read their other comments to learn more about them. As we read more of what they've said, their user name will begin to have a unique aura. Now if we happen to read a new comment and recognize the name, it will ring a bell automatically, and we will already be working with more information than what was included in the utterance alone. At this point, we are not forced to consider the message on its own. We are working with identities that just may or may not be real.

Identity is a complex thing. It's an interplay of what a person declares about themselves and what society is prepared to accept as an identity. Who gets to decide identity is thus a mix of you and everyone else, and the weighting is dependent upon parts of your identity.

It's kind of a mess, and it's really not fair to anyone.

Anyway. Yes, anonymity carries its own baggage. But it's a separate sort of baggage, out there to be assumed by anyone at any time. There's a long and proud history of anonymous authors affecting politics or writing biting satire that would have been impossible without anonymity.

I like that you at least admit to the bias, certainly an important stepping stone. However, I don't think you can ever have it both ways, you can't believe that the 'identity' should be part of the message and all identities should be treated equally, not if you believe it's natural to consider something like identity in the first place. I mean the whole point is to choose an identity, thus you can't be all of them, and you don't need all of them anyway, just yours.

'Identity' really isn't necessary, anyone and everyone can see the logic in something (or perhaps lack thereof). I guess what I'm saying is identity is tied to things that are often controversial like sex or race, but also issues that should be universal (like respect for all races and sexes), but it doesn't take an identity to make those things true, those things are true because (hopefully) we believe people deserve to live and live as they chose.

"I like that you" is already references to two identities. You as yourself, and I, who did something you liked. Maybe you don't consider this exchange anonymous, but when we have conversations, we instinctively associate something which, however slight, is still shaped by what was said, and this becomes part of the collage associated with the source.

Identity is mostly shaped by reputation and by impression, both of which are not in our full control, and both of which just happen. So there isn't anything to believe. Identity is already part of every message, and the lack of identity is already consequential, unless one deliberately dismisses those consequences. At this point, anonymous exchanges require skill, and this is a new skill that, for example, my parents would not ever be comfortable with. The idea that "no one is talking" is new and quite novel actually. And has only become possible at large scales (as communities) with the internet.

Equality doesn't mean hiding the parts of your identity. You may want that total anonymity where I can't even tell if you're a human or a very smart dog but some people enjoy bringing in parts of their identity to conversations and that isn't wrong or anti-equality. It is akin to saying "I don't want to see race". Well that may seem equal but you're really just ignoring something that many people find very important to their identity.

And there are plenty of times on 4chan when people identify as male without any aversion to the label. It sounds like some people just don't want the "others" to identify themselves.

We will never have perfect equality, there will always be discrimination upon some sort of vector. At that point anonymity is vastly better than an endless hamster wheel of trying to eradicate increasingly irrational and engrained biases.

Even anonymous-online-presence doesn't protect you from those people though.

If you're a woman online trying to hide your gender from bigots/sexists/perverts, you have to make sure you don't say anything that'll give you away. You can't talk about being pregnant or morning sickness or any kind of events in your life that are female exclusive... or near exclusive. And online videogames that have realtime audio/visual with other players? Those features are pretty much off limit since your appearance/voice will most likely reveal your gender... most of the time.

If you're a minority online trying to hide your identity from bigots/racists, you have to avoid talking too much about your family history or parts of your childhood growing up because usually those contain events that'll give strong hints to your nationality. For example, if I wanted to hide the fact that my family is from Nigeria... I can't talk about my trips to visit my family in Nigeria. I can't talk about the fact that my wedding was in Nigeria since I know what most people would assume and/or ask once they learned that fact. I can't tell you how/where I first saw my wife. I probably can't tell you some of my favorite meals. Sure, on some sites like HN that's mostly tech focused I can probably go a pretty long time without anyone figuring out I'm black. But sites that aren't tech focused, sites that are more... i dunno... human focused, with topics all about life in general, not bringing up my background will be harder if I want to partake in conversation.

Historically discriminated-against sectors of our society shouldn't have to double-think every statement they make online or offline to keep some part of their identity a secret. If we go that route, then the those sectors are on constant defense and the bigots are on constant offense... and eventually, bigots win because their biases will only grow. This is equiv to the military's "Don't-ask-don't-tell" position on Homosexuality. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don't_ask,_don't_tell ...at best, it's a temporary "solution"(BIG quotes here) but it did not solve the problem at all.

been lurking here for years. finally created an account just to upvote this.

I disagree partly on a few points and I'll give a short anecdote as example.

As an increasingly global conversation on the internet is taking place with people in places and groups that didn't have a place or a voice before we're muddying the waters of stereotypes and accurate attempts of guessing someone's background.

Anecdote 1: I have a friend I met online. I've known him for about 6 years. We never talked about our families, shared pictures of each-other, shared real names, or shared anything personally identifiable apart for similar interests and vague references. After about two years of talking to this friend every day, I knew a few things: his family wasn't rich, he lived in a crime filled area Richmond, he smoked weed every day, he loves hip-hop, and he's not a fan of school. Now, most people with their biases and stereotypes would say "oh he's probably a young black male" and they'd have a good chance of being right. Around this time we all started talking about our personal lives. I then find out that this guy is a 25y/o white male studying a masters degree in physics who sports and amazing beard. My initial image of him is gone completely.

By anonymizing interests, beliefs, and political standings we can then apply them to anyone of any race of any gender because we don't know the truth. Our guesses could be wrong, and often are, and the ability to stereotype breaks down. Comments could suddenly be from anyone and we are forced to pay attention to the argument and not who's arguing.

Parent poster wrote, "if I, a Nigerian, want to avoid the bigots and racists online, I can't talk about a lot of stuff."

You replied with an anecdote that illustrates how you got someone else's race wrong, but telling the parent poster that you disagree with his personal experience and coping mechanisms? That doesn't sit right with me.

I don't think you meant it to sound like "you're wrong about how you've learned to deal with bigots"--which would be a pretty awful thing to tell him!--but it did sound that way.

I wonder if there's a way to rephrase your rebuttal with more empathy and understanding.

>You replied with an anecdote that illustrates how you got someone else's race wrong

Yes true. However his race didn't ultimately affect how I viewed our friendship or how I interact with him. It's an example that anonymity can break the stereotypes that we put on activities and people by removing identity. If I was wrong in my assumption about him then I may be wrong in my assumption about smtddr after learning things about his life.

>I don't think you meant it to sound like "you're wrong about how you've learned to deal with bigots"--which would be a pretty awful thing to tell him!--but it did sound that way.

You're correct here. I did not intend that. I'm going to read over both posts again and see why you think that and how I can better phrase my arguments in the future.

>That doesn't sit right with me.

Well thank you for expressing it without resorting to personal attacks and anger.

Why would you care what some anonymous person says about you on the Internet? I've been called sand n---er, paki, etc, but that's just ignorant people being ignorant. I'm sure some of the people I interact with on a daily basis think the same thoughts. But again, it doesn't really affect me.

Ironically, the kind of Internet you push for is flawed because it will make everyone self-censor and "doublethink; which is dangerous. We must protect unabridged free speech, even if it is ugly, lest we fall into the trap of an Internet where a lot of people are speaking but are not really saying anything.

It's not anonymity if you have a name attached to your posts. That's pseudonymity. By doing that you have essentially created another identity which can still be linked back to your real identity. If you have true anonymity you can post about your pregnancy and just stop replying to the post chain. Nobody will know your gender in the next post you make.

So ... inclusivity via nobody talking about themselves or their background?

("We will never ship a product without bugs, there will always be bugs somewhere." OK, so which bugs are we going to fix? Well thats a judgement about how serious the bugs are. And people affected by different bugs will give different judegments there.)

Anonymity only means that everyone is assumed to be the majority, which means that it effectively silences the minority that will be immediately outed if they speak a different experience than the majority.

e.g. a conversation about bra quality; one can talk about how sexy they look, and if someone brings up "but lacy bras can often be overpriced and underfunctional" they more or less out themselves as a person who may know much about bras. Similarly if someone wanted to talk about mythologies, if someone goes "actually nowadays people utilize this in their traditions; I was visiting family in P region where they still practice this and they just use B now" clearly outs them.

Anonymity also tends to just have everyone assumed to be default, which is white/male and breaking out of that is assumed to be "breaking anonymity" when in reality it's merely... not being the default.

>Why are people, or do people feel the need to link their identity to their thoughts online.

Because a person's identity informs their thoughts. Knowing who someone is allows a reader to evaluate the validity of what they're saying. This is a primary component of information analaysis: source evaluation.

Correct, however, in online communities invites bigots to target individuals based on the source and not the information.

Source criticism turns into individual criticism which turns into bigotry by certain individuals.

Depending on the topic of conversation, this would often be considered incredibly sexist or racist. (Which has never made sense to me, but that seems to be the case with a lot of people.)

I really don't know why you are being downvoted - but this is pretty spot on. I know one of the science subreddits started to add flair for people who proved they had X degree or background. Which I think it great - you know you are talking to a biochemist working with real science and not just some guy who spent 5 minutes on the wikipedia page.

I know a lot of people want to be anonymous on the internet - and that's fine but it's depressing to see someone pretend to be an authority figure on a subject just to find out the person is a high school student (trolling or not). And it's usually pretty easy to spot.

If this [1] person was actually experienced they would know that the menu setups change depending on how you answered the question when Visual Studio first runs (at least it used to) - and menus/buttons may be missing/moved depending on that answer (I've seen this first hand and it's quite annoying trying to explain to click on something that doesn't exist). But instead he degrades the person asking for help.

[1] http://i.imgur.com/5fmcFUh.png

That's exactly right. Anonymity has its place, but it lacks the context that comes with identity.

How often have I wished I could at least see the age of someone when reading through comments.

> How often have I wished I could at least see the age of someone when reading through comments.

I don't know if age is as useful as something like list of projects, publications, or contributions. Something to denote saying "yes - this guy has been down the path I have and released it's a dead end" rather than just spewing what he learned in class or some random article on the internet.

Someone laughed at me on reddit when I told them you didn't need a lot of money to make a good game (as you can outsource if you need to - trust me there is someone in India who is willing to create that sprite sheet for less than $20 versus your artist friend would charge $200+). They claimed you needed like $X million. An obvious counter-example would be Terraria - I know not everyone likes it but I think it's a pretty successful and well put together game. It was made by 2 guys sitting in a home office somewhere. I asked him how many games he worked on - I believe he responded with, if I remember correctly, 3.

>This is why anonymity is important.

It's been a while since I've messed about on here: http://turing.gatech.edu/ (I don't even remember if it's the same thing I was involved in)

People are pretty good at guessing whether someone is telling the truth about their identity on the internet. Anonymity adds unnecessary obfuscation, makes for a game of trying to guess the other person's perspective. Non-anonymity should be a choice, and I believe that it adds value to a person's perspective.

We need to be comfortable with the differences between persons, we do not need some cosmic blur sweeping across our identities.

>We need to be comfortable with the differences between persons, we do not need some cosmic blur sweeping across our identities.

I agree. Anonymity is a tool, not a solution. I think it can help change opinions but it needs to be used properly. It's not an easy problem to solve.

In many places online, if you don't announce your race/gender/location, many people will just assume you are a white male living in the US, and respond to you accordingly. Sometimes this is just annoying but other times it results in responses which are nonsensical or a waste of time.

People keep focusing on Pao's gender, but IMHO the main reason Pao was not liked in reddit is not her gender or race, but rather that she was too old for the role. Plus her business background was not really exciting. She could barely inspire the rebelious youngsters that frequent reddit. I believe a younger asian hipster girl would be a much easier sell for the changes she wanted to bring about.

Pao had a rough time because she was labeled as an SJW by many people and other weren't happy with her management practices. We're in a turbulent time regarding gender relations with angry and militant people on both sides of the equation and Pao was an easy target by trolls and others caught in the mob mentality of events like gamergate. Pao was treated horribly but it's not something I'm suprised to see.

The way women are treated online is horrific but Pao gave people ammunition and stoked the fires and the worst time to do so. You don't beat people with a stick when they're angry and expect to remain unscathed.

In other words, she deserved it, in your opinion?

I'm not sure if I agree with the other poster's point. But just the same, your logic is: So if I get into a fight with a drunk concealed carry holder, I deserve to get shot? Of course not. Would it have been wise of me to consider that some of the possible outcomes go beyond a few fists thrown at the pub? Absolutely.

The massive leap you're making to bait the other commenter is tacky.

> People keep focusing on Pao's gender, but IMHO the main reason Pao was not liked in reddit is not her gender or race, but rather that she was too old for the role. Plus her business background was not really exciting.

Grasping at straws. She was met with a massive, organised campaign of hatred. This isn't explained by being "old" or having a "poor business background".

But being a 1) female, 2) asian person who had 3) recently lost a highly-publicised gender discrimination lawsuit and 4) enacted an anti-harassment policy would explain the hatred. There is a large number of people who are misogynist, racist and/or openly hostile to what they view as "political correctness". And a much larger number of people who will listen to and possibly be pursuaded their lies.

That's one way to see it , but one's truth is somebody else's lie. Pao was particularly bad at communicating her intentions - even a white male would be met with rage in this case. She made her position worse by bringing identity politics into it and playing the victim card. I think if she had used a better style of communication she could have stayed. Also, i m not convinced from what i read that there was some global conspiracy against her. Herd mentality is not organized.

> Also, i m not convinced from what i read that there was some global conspiracy against her.

The word "organised" was a poor choice on my part. "Mass" might be more accurate.

Though I know it wasn't an entirely disorganised thing.

Pedantic, but: while 1, 3, and 4 may have had much to do with it, I think her being Asian was completely irrelevant. Reddit isn't exactly anti-Asian.

The previous (interim) CEO, Yishan, was also Asian and did not receive any kind of negative sentiment due to it or even any mention of it.

#3 and #4, yeah. A lot of people (myself included) felt she was the wrong person for the job. Not everyone is receptive to the constant speech policing that invariably results when you put an SJW in charge.

>IMHO the main reason Pao was not liked in reddit is not her gender or race, but rather that she was too old

You think that's any better?

Having followed the whole situation fairly closely, this is literally the first time I've heard anyone suggest that it was about her age. Meanwhile, reddit's top posts were filled with racist and sexist insults for days.

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