Surprisingly Good Evidence That Real Name Policies Fail To Improve Comments
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
TL;DR the study found "that the proportion of negative postings has decreased on the pseudonym-based forum after the law; whereas, the law was not influential on the website in which real names were being revealed regardless of the law." It gives little insight into what happens when a site switches from being pseudyonym-based to real named.
The Real Name Verification Law of 2007 required website owners verify the identities of users but did "not force websites to reveal [their] real names". Thus, it resulted in pseudonym-based forums that can now link to a real identity if needed and sites which always used real names but can now verify them.
On the pseudonym-based forum, after switching from unlinked pseudonyms, i.e. anonymity, to linkable pseudonyms "the proportion of bad postings clearly decreased...in both short-term and long-term compared to the control group, and they are statistically significant". The switch was "not salient" on the real name board that always used real names. Plus one TechCrunch.
The study readily states that the "proportions of bad postings [on the real name forum] are smaller than those [on the pseudonym-based forum]" across the board. This suggests a real name board will contain less vulgarity.
If one is worried about switching from unlinked to linked pseudonyms, note that the "composition of user groups did not change over the period regardless of the law".
We should also qualify articulating these findings to the United States given that "South Korea’s household broadband penetration reached 95%, which was the highest rate among those of all 57 surveyed countries" and that their political culture tends to be a mark more boisterous than we have here.
[1] http://www.computer.org/csdl/proceedings/hicss/2012/4525/00/...
The point about how people eventually stop caring about cameras though is well taken. I can certainly believe that people will eventually get accustomed to the fact that their identity is out there and revert to their 'normal' behavior.
The idea wasn't to prevent trolling or bad comments--I spent enough time banning trolls and cleaning the forums every day to know that it wouldn't have helped anyway--but to add an air of credibility and, dare I say it, professionalism to the environment.
I've found that people interact more intimately when they're talking to "Bob Smith" instead of "cyberwulf555". People can picture themselves talking to a "Bob", but they can't picture a generic alphanumeric handle as well. It makes people more confident in building lasting relationships. In that respect, the policy has been a complete success.
(For my part, I use two depending on the situation. This one is the pseudonymous version, and I have another handle that is related to my real name for situations where that seems warranted.)
(a) lawyers will make more money suing people for ever bad word they write
(b) you will have problems all your life for some puberty-influenced shit you wrote when 16
(c) that people who worry about their real-life reputation do not speak up when they should.
This real name wave is the worst thing happening to web culture since aol was invented.
When someone goes looking for the most embarrassing thing you ever wrote, they often find it. But we treat them the way we'd treat someone who hired a private detective: If they don't have a good reason, we conclude that they're creepy and rude.
I kid, but this is one of the best discussions sites on the web, and few, if any, use their real names here. Clearly discussion quality is much more significantly determined by other factors: site demographics, culture, subject matter, even the UX of posting in and viewing discussion threads probably all matter more than whether people use real names or pseudonyms.
Using pseudonyms has been traditional online for a very, very long time, and it's possible that some of the unique aspects of the internet as a social medium might not exist were this not the case.
Much of this discussion revolves around anonymity, but it's important to note that people who consistently use the same pseudonyms in the same communities are not anonymous within those communities. But by using pseudonyms, they're able to de-link participation in one community from their participation in other communites - including their offline relationships - and posit a context-specific persona.
The old "on the internet no one knows you're a dog" cartoon comes to mind, and not just because of your comments about being a "white heterosexual male", and that being in other categories might expose you to certain risks; you're also able to start with a blank slate in a new community, or start over in an old one, and have your identity there be shaped entirely by the value of your participation. You don't get this anywhere else in life.
I'd be surprised if most of the people posting cogent and insightful comments here on HN aren't also posting the occasional image macro on Reddit, or posting God-knows-what to 4chan, or participating in forums, IRC channels, etc. under names that keep their identities on these disparate sites quite separate, and adhering to the cultural norms of each within its own boundaries.
It is true that requiring real names reduces the amount of unwanted noise and can thus result in a higher quality discussion, but some people are just a lot more worried than others about their reputation with their peers. Lack of anonymity will cause you to second guess yourself a lot more before clicking the reply button.
... or your sexual orientation...
... or your religion...
... or your non-gender-standard hobby...
... or your name makes you a cultural attack target online...
... or any one of a hundred things that are personal that other people have no business knowing. Sure, using your real name is great if you're strong-willed, relatively safe, and part of the safest demographic on the web.
This argument that privacy is only important to those who have something horrible to hide should be well and truly debunked by now.
Of course I do agree that moderation is important anywhere. Forcing users to identify themselves may have an adverse selection bias. People with anything to lose may comment much less, and the trolls may be proud of their provocative opinions.
I wouldn't be so quick to say that. Your data is only based on last names. Yes, it is true that Korean last names are an order of magnitude less distinctive than American ones. However, you failed to consider the entire name. While American names are chosen from a handful of common first names (e.g., John, Megan...), Korean first names are much more complex and less likely to collide with others [1] - at least not as much as English names.
Additionally, the Korean law mandates that websites collect people's social security number, not just "real names", so if I were to sue an online commenter for defamation, the court just needs to pick up the phone, call the site administrator, match the user account with SSN, and SSN with whatever the government has. So distinctiveness of names don't really have any meaning in this context. Also note that when you register for a website, you can't simply enter a SSN that passes the parity test; in addition to that, the SSN you entered goes through a service provided by the government that matches the entered SSN and name with actual data from financial institutions.
http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/06/techcrunch-facebook-comment...
And from a glance at the CMU paper: Our findings suggest that the enhanced identification process shows significant effects on reducing uninhibited behaviors at the aggregate level, but there is no significant impact regarding a particular user’s behavioral shift.[2]
These actually indicate an improvement in general, and in fact the first reason listed in for scrapping the real-name registration was that it increased "cyber hacking" rather than the ineffectiveness of using real names.[1] I haven't read through the paper, but I'm interested in the contexts where changes occur. For example, if HN and reddit and YouTube all switched to real-name logins, which site would have the most improvement? Are sites that discuss primarily controversial topics more likely to resist improvements in comment quality after a switch to real-name login? (These are rhetorical.)
1: http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2011/12/30/2011...
2: http://www.computer.org/csdl/proceedings/hicss/2012/4525/00/...
Seems pretty compelling (and positive) to me.
/dramatic
Plus, with more real names then we have less of that uppity anti-establishment talk. That stuff is so annoying when it drowns out my stream of pictures of cats and plates of food.
And history clearly shows us that the only times important works were published pseudonymously those works were attacking their betters and upsetting the status quo. Like these hooligans: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pseudonyms_used_in_the_...
As long as free expression is legal and there is a free market, there will be an outlet for free, anonymous expression. It just doesn't have to be every single one.
I do think it is reasonable to wonder if real names on YouTube is too restrictive. Yet in the same vein it is ludicrous to confuse the issue with the extreme worry that the US constitution could not be debated in YouTube videos--possibly arguing if LMFAO's Party Rock Anthem should be our bro-national bro-anthem.
I'll speak more plainly just in case it was the former:
Anonymous speech being widespread and common instead of just "available" is extremely important for a healthy society.
Anyone who thinks that removing anonymity is good because it cuts down on curse words is an idiot.
Anyone who doesn't own stock or work for the big players is acting against their own interests for supporting those trying to win the current fight to be the first online identity monopoly, especially since they are both trying to tie them to real names.
Youtube is a great example when using hyperbole because it has famously stupid comments that will not be improved by a reduction in curse words. The other paragraphs were not necessarily about youtube just because it was mentioned in a sarcastic opening comment.
For what it is worth I like this comment more than your previous because it gets to an actual problem. The problem isn't YouTube's editorial choices since there are good competitors; but rathe that there is a limited market of large scale identity providers that many other sites are becoming dependent on.
However I still disagree it is a big problem. It's the same privacy problem of credit cards versus cash. As long as cash is legal and privacy laws are strong enough I think it will be ok. People will make efficient choices depending on the context. Most people don't want anonymity most of the time as it turns out, and those who do can still get it.
> People will make efficient choices depending on the context
Except they won't and don't. I know it's nitpicky but this kind of economics pseudoscience of rational actors and market utopianism is not based on evidence. It is, in fact, in direct conflict with the evidence. People will choose the option with the best marketing, with very little consideration of their own interests. Anonymity is too far removed from direct consequences for people to make this decision rationally.
That's why setting a strong social norm that anonymity is strongly tied to free speech is important. It's both true and it might be effective since even though most people don't actually want free speech they at least think they do.
"anti-normative behaviour" is just an extreemly faux-elitist word for what business calls out of the box thinking.
It can be good or it can be bad, but a simple reduction to the mean (which is what it implies) is nearly by definition bad. Societies that are chaotic and disorderly may seem worse of than societies that march in lock-step and where everybody wears the same uniform and everybody is the same, but the latter society is guaranteed never to advance, no matter how far ahead its present state is.
Some people do wolf-whistle at women, or shout things at them from moving vehicles.
Some people do stare at disabled people; or laugh at the learning disabled, or mock those with facial disfigurement.
Some people do chant abuse at those of a different race or ethnicity.
Some people deny others jobs (or equal pay) because of the sexual preference or gender or disability or race or religion or age of the employee - even though many countries have had anti-discrimination laws for years.
Here's examples of real people, in the real world, with real identities attached ("The licence plate was ..." or "the company was...") with real penalties attached (sometimes) and yet these people are still being dicks.
I'm not convinced that asking someone to pick a realistic sounding name is going to stop someone from being a dick.
Even when throwing around 'devil's advocate' stuff, people get scared when there are potential ramifications for what they said. Often it doesn't come out.
It's when what you write gets broadcasted to people you know, it starts to have an effect.
But IMHO nothing beats a strong debate culture with strong pre-emptive moderation, clear rules and an intelligent crowd.
As a particularly dramatic example, which was so bad it was almost art, we had a debate in a Norwegian newspaper about what to do with the traveling Romani people who put up their tents everywhere. One commenter said: "Why not put Anders Behring Breivik on the case? He cleaned up a camping site in an hour", referring to the Utøya massacre where 69 camping teenagers were killed.
If someone's able to post that with their full name and photo, I don't really think there's any hope of solving the comment problem without old-fashioned moderation.
I've read plenty of mailing lists where real names are used and people behave appallingly. See also fidonet; Usenet; some wikis; some web forums.
And do they actually want a real name, or just something that sounds like a real name?
"Ivor Trotts" only makes YouTube videos about bowels?
That, and as a coder the way the law was worded made it very difficult to actually comply with securely. Politicians are the last people you want to have writing a data retention policy for you.
Do they?
You own your words
In other news, TC editors still found to be ineffective.
- Alma Whitten, Director of Privacy, Product and Engineering, Google
http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2011/02/freedom-to-be...
It's neat that this didn't work in Korea, but that doesn't mean it won't work elsewhere.
God forbid people could freely say what they think. This obviously has to be prevented or our civilisation might collapse.
I'm strictly pro anonymity. If prude people don't like something they read on the internet they probably shouldn't read it ... or visit the internet at all.
We've gone thousands of years with certain social norms (e.g. not being anonymous most of the time), and so far replicating those social interactions faithfully online has been difficult. There's nothing wrong with free speech unrestrained by social expectations, but there's similarly nothing wrong with wanting to avoid that sometimes. Why should you get the internet all to yourself?
Things have changed and people who want to force down some old model of social interaction on the internet are dinosaurs who couldn't differentiate a paradigm shift from a potato - just like said music labels with their shiny plastic discs.
We can have both anonymous and non-anonymous communities on the web. It's a pretty big place.
Being required to use your real name on a site where you would reach your readers (the same as a newspaper or mail except the conversation can move in both directions) removes your option of being anonymous.
And that requires forced real names for everyone... why? The whole point of anonymity is that you can opt-out of it if you want. Just partially, or fully. It's all up to you.
Anonymity is a fundamental right every human should have. You're of course not required to be anonymous at all times, but you should be able to be if and when you chose to. Anonymity is hard to gain when you don't have it to start with. Voluntarily giving it away is easy, though.
The problem is that if even a few users are anonymous, the entire community takes on a different character. You might not care, but some people, at least some of the time, might want to avoid places like that. This requires a website to force you to give up your anonymity. If you don't want to join a community like that it's your choice. If a website you're already a part of wants to become like that you can yell at them. That doesn't make it inherently bad though; it's just a preference.
If there were legislation being passed about it, that's another matter entirely.
The Internet is a free market. There are two billion people on it in 190+ countries and who knows how many non-sovereign entities. It is incredibly diverse and it is designed to let diversity reign. Not everyone has to agree because you can just not hang out with each other.
Why would people who don't like anonymity have to leave the Internet? Can't they build a space that fits their ideals? If you don't like it you don't have to use it; in fact you can compete with your own space that is possibly better.