I was depressed a lot as a young person and considered suicide. I’d never share these feelings offline. Online, I was able to connect with individuals that I can speak truthfully to.
Also, anonymity makes me take every post at value. For example, if you’re biased against a religion, political affiliation, race, etc, you might find that you ignore posts made by those you’re biased again. Anonymous posters don’t have this worry - I don’t know who you are. Thus, the only thing I can judge is your words. Not past words, but words here and now.
There’s positives and negatives but in this case the negatives far outweighs the positives.
Correct, but they didn't say that it was only available through that means.
This is a difficult and complex topic. I've been thinking about it for years.
Going from Plato's The Republic and the dialog about the Ring of Gyges, I don't think pure untrammelled anonymity is worth the possibility of the evil that can be done. Look at Twitter, psyops and the power of a hand full of people with programming chops, a chip on their shoulder and time on their hands. Empires will fall and millions will die because of the apparent mob of opinion that's really only a thin shell.