"We built a data set of 45 million comments on news articles on the Huffington Post website between January 2013 and February 2015. During this period, the site moved from a regime of easy anonymity to registered pseudonyms and finally to outsourcing their comments to Facebook. This created three distinct phases.
In the initial phase users could easily set up multiple accounts. The comment space was, at that time, a troll’s paradise. People could read an article, quickly create a username, and post whatever they wanted. If moderators blocked that username for abusive behaviour, the person (or even bot) behind it could just make another, and then another, and so on. This led to a space that was unpleasant for users. So the website began to make changes.
In the second phase, users had to authenticate their accounts, but did not have to use their real name with their comments. That meant they could be anonymous to other users but could be identified by the platform. If they behaved badly and were blocked, they couldn’t just make a new account and carry on – at least, not without creating a new authenticating account on Facebook. This made personas on this commenting space less disposable. They became “stable pseudonyms”.
In the third phase, the commenting system was outsourced to Facebook. Huffington Post usernames were replaced with user’s Facebook names and avatars. Depending on settings, comments might appear on users’ Facebook feeds. While not everyone has their own face on their profile picture, and not everyone even uses their real name on their account, many users do. This third phase therefore roughly approximates a real-name environment.
...
Our results suggest that the quality of comments was highest in the middle phase. There was a great improvement after the shift from easy or disposable anonymity to what we call “durable pseudonyms”. But instead of improving further after the shift to the real-name phase, the quality of comments actually got worse – not as bad as in the first phase, but still worse by our measure."
I guess that's a reasonable conclusion to come to based on existing websites - something like 4chan, where people are generally completely anonymous, is obviously a hellsite and attracts people that want to be able to say shit with complete impunity. Something like Facebook is also a hellsite despite your comments being directly connected to you because you know people in real life will judge you for the things you say, which makes people retreat into groups that all think the same way both via the fear of being kicked out of a community and because it forms an echo chamber. Tumblr is one of the lesser hellsites right now and it uses that middle position the article suggests. Reddit is theoretically a middle positioner, even though it is :reddit-logo: right now, because it could be used to have a legitimate dialogue between people (if it wasn't already run by literal feds and astroturfed by every thinktank and org under the sun), because saying shitty things (should) have consequences via rejection by the group (downvotes, bans) but not real-life repercussions.
I guess the most important thing it confirms is that the move to de-anonymize things is not only dangerous in terms of maintaining some level of opsec from chuds with too much free time on their hands, but it is in fact harmful to people and society generally, and so only has benefits if you think of the world from a Linkedin user's perspective, e.g. networking - truly a cursed existence. Pretty much everybody could tell you that making things fully anonymous is a bad move because we have the internet's tumor in the form of 4chan as a prime example.
Feds also fuck around on 4chan and the other anon sites too you know, especially since it's so easy to infiltrate to the point all you need to know is the culture and linguistics to blend in
"We built a data set of 45 million comments on news articles on the Huffington Post website between January 2013 and February 2015. During this period, the site moved from a regime of easy anonymity to registered pseudonyms and finally to outsourcing their comments to Facebook. This created three distinct phases.
In the initial phase users could easily set up multiple accounts. The comment space was, at that time, a troll’s paradise. People could read an article, quickly create a username, and post whatever they wanted. If moderators blocked that username for abusive behaviour, the person (or even bot) behind it could just make another, and then another, and so on. This led to a space that was unpleasant for users. So the website began to make changes.
In the second phase, users had to authenticate their accounts, but did not have to use their real name with their comments. That meant they could be anonymous to other users but could be identified by the platform. If they behaved badly and were blocked, they couldn’t just make a new account and carry on – at least, not without creating a new authenticating account on Facebook. This made personas on this commenting space less disposable. They became “stable pseudonyms”.
In the third phase, the commenting system was outsourced to Facebook. Huffington Post usernames were replaced with user’s Facebook names and avatars. Depending on settings, comments might appear on users’ Facebook feeds. While not everyone has their own face on their profile picture, and not everyone even uses their real name on their account, many users do. This third phase therefore roughly approximates a real-name environment.
...
Our results suggest that the quality of comments was highest in the middle phase. There was a great improvement after the shift from easy or disposable anonymity to what we call “durable pseudonyms”. But instead of improving further after the shift to the real-name phase, the quality of comments actually got worse – not as bad as in the first phase, but still worse by our measure."
I guess that's a reasonable conclusion to come to based on existing websites - something like 4chan, where people are generally completely anonymous, is obviously a hellsite and attracts people that want to be able to say shit with complete impunity. Something like Facebook is also a hellsite despite your comments being directly connected to you because you know people in real life will judge you for the things you say, which makes people retreat into groups that all think the same way both via the fear of being kicked out of a community and because it forms an echo chamber. Tumblr is one of the lesser hellsites right now and it uses that middle position the article suggests. Reddit is theoretically a middle positioner, even though it is :reddit-logo: right now, because it could be used to have a legitimate dialogue between people (if it wasn't already run by literal feds and astroturfed by every thinktank and org under the sun), because saying shitty things (should) have consequences via rejection by the group (downvotes, bans) but not real-life repercussions.
I guess the most important thing it confirms is that the move to de-anonymize things is not only dangerous in terms of maintaining some level of opsec from chuds with too much free time on their hands, but it is in fact harmful to people and society generally, and so only has benefits if you think of the world from a Linkedin user's perspective, e.g. networking - truly a cursed existence. Pretty much everybody could tell you that making things fully anonymous is a bad move because we have the internet's tumor in the form of 4chan as a prime example.
Feds also fuck around on 4chan and the other anon sites too you know, especially since it's so easy to infiltrate to the point all you need to know is the culture and linguistics to blend in
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