Allegra Frank: “hi i’m allegra and this is my horror story”
Talk Summary and Resources by Alex Turvy
Talk Summary:
Beginning with her own middle school embarrassment, Daily Beast Deputy Editor Allegra Frank adds some nuance to the conversation about online anonymity via her own taxonomy that highlights the different ways that someone might be anonymous and how they might be used
Key Insights and Questions:
Norms about privacy and PII on blogs and social media have really fundamentally changed, of course, but even in the Xanga and Live Journal days – people exploited times when people didn’t realize that they were not anonymous.
We ought to have more granularity when we’re talking about anonymity.
This taxonomy is helpful, but it’s important to acknowledge when intentions/expectations about anonymity are breached (e.g. doxxing, even a ‘soft’ dox).
Chan boards are an extreme example of anonymity culture, where identifying users in any of these ways is literally impossible by design.
Talk Notes and Resources:
This account is a great demonstration of how little anonymity is actually possible online as soon as you start sharing anything at all. This user is an expert at using tiny bits of information to find any user’s real-life identity and location and does this in an educational way, not a threatening one.
Understanding Online Anonymity
“By taking into account both technical and social dimensions, we argue that online anonymity should not be conceptualized in absolute terms but as an inherently fluid and transitional condition that characterizes any kind of social interaction online.”
Effects of anonymity, invisibility, and lack of eye-contact on toxic online disinhibition
I like this taxonomy specifically because it challenges any kind of moral or even functional claim on the purpose/value of anonymity like the one below -- sometimes, anonymity itself has a function.
4chan and /b/: An Analysis of Anonymity and Ephemerality in a Large Online Community
“Although researchers and practitioners often assume that user identity and data permanence are central tools in the design of online communities, we explore how /b/ succeeds despite being almost entirely anonymous and extremely ephemeral.”
“Anonymity alone is not adequate to induce antisocial behaviour: it requires the motivation to act in that manner”
BEING YOUR SELVES: IDENTITY R&D ON THE PSEUDONYMOUS INTERNET
“Alt Twitter accounts, to quote Sherry Turkle, “stand betwixt and between, both in and not in real life … Their boundaries are more fuzzy; the routine of playing them become part of their players' real lives. The virtual reality becomes not so much an alternative as a parallel life.”
“We grow closer to each other by learning about each other’s parallel lives. Following someone’s pseudonymous account(s) gives you a very multi-dimensional sense of who they are and how they see themselves. Many alts are more like masquerade half-masks than fully anonymous face masks. They’re loosely tied to a person’s main account, which helps to create the “layered identity” effect. Some especially active users even manage a collection of alts that respond to one another. It’s like the social media version of watching a film with the director’s commentary on. These alt collectives bring the back stage to the front stage and offer an intimate portrait of a person’s inner life. Their thought processes and internal conflicts are laid bare — transformed into content for the masses.”