Sunday, December 18, 2016
Are Anti-Anonymity Measures Even Effective?
To the surprise of many, history has shown that removing anonymity doesn't silence trolls. The online community expert, Annemarie Dooling, argues that anonymity has been incorrectly misconstrued as the enemy in her article, "Forcing Commenters To Use Real Names Won't Root Out The Trolls". Dooling mentions how many sites have attempted to enforce commenters to 'verify' their identity by linking with Facebook accounts, only to see trolls to create imposter accounts with fake names(4). In addition, she points out that forcing users to use their real names "[makes] it very easy for predatory and argumentative users to find their targets offline"(3) in her article, "Don't Identify by Names but by Knowledge". Therefore, not only has the removal of anonymity on these sites proved to be ineffective, they may even bloom into newer and more severe problems. Can you think of a practical compromise?
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Removing anonymity will not get rid of trolls. I agree with all the points that Dooling made about linking names. Displaying names can cause even more serious problems because they can track down their victims. There is also people out there who don't care if their identity is known when making nasty hurtful comments. I don't think there is a real solution to trolling. People just need to be more respectful.
ReplyDeleteFrom my observations, it seems like the best way to deal with trolls and other unruly commentors is to disable comments entirely. I've seen this decision made by YouTube channels. When they disable comments, no one can post anything good, and at the same time, trolls can't post anything either.
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