Online Anonymity
Three posts in one day?! Yeah, I know.
I belong to the school of thought that considers online anonymity a precious, non-renewable resource that will very soon be gone forever. The anonymity that the internet currently affords plays a big part in the sheer fantastic dynamism of online culture. It's part of why we, as in fandom, are able to have nice things like fanfic, RPs, vids, banners, meta, stupid memes and all the rest.
Anonymity is one of the bedrocks of internet culture, and it pains me to say that governments and corporations all over the world are making steady inroads on one of the precious few spaces we, as in the people, have left to speak and think and act freely. The end of anonymity will be justified as part of a larger effort to 'clean up' the Wild West of the internet, thus making it 'family friendly.' It will be justified as necessary for national security, in an age of increasing dependence on networked defense technology. It will be justified as necessary for the smooth function of international commerce.
Increasingly, we are seeing a convergence of governmental and commercial interests, around reproducing real-world power structures online. The logic being that:
a) “Any market, virtual or real, requires societal infrastructure to function. It ‘…relies on a set of goods that it cannot itself provide: property rights, predictability, safety, nomenclature, and so on’."
b) "There cannot be two different sets of rules for the real and virtual worlds." *
What it's also about, though it's not usually framed this way, is reasserting social control - in essence, hegemonic culture maintenance. And because most users see the internet as an apolitical space (after all, what do You Porn and Amazon.com have to do with politics?) hegemonic ideology is reproduced online without question and notice. It's only normal and natural, right?
I firmly believe that every society needs a space for misfits, malcontents and jerks. We need to be able to misbehave, to test the limits of social control, to toy with the possibility of bad behaviour, for the sake of bad behaviour. We need the freedom to be morons, like we need air. It would be nice, if we all backed away from the edge of online idiocy, but none of us can say that we've managed to, without exception, play nice with others. It would be nice, but that's not humanity.
I also firmly believe that the existence of assholes on the internet, does not suggest a need to regulate their asshole behaviour out of existence. I can sit in my corner and disapprove to my heart's content, I can flame them right back, but what I will never do is suggest that anonymity is itself a problem. I will never try to manage or moderate their behaviour, outside of the online spaces which I, or others claim as our own. Some examples:
a) My journal. This is my online space and in it, I make the rules. I am queen bee of schmevil and moderate my space as such. I have anon commenting turned off, because I was tired of the trolls. In the past, I have banned users, asked users to refrain from commenting, and intervened in discussions I found inappropriate or trollish.
b) Eljay. Livejournal has a publicly posted set of rules, their Terms of Service, which govern the use of their online space. If I see someone violating the ToS, I'm within my rights, and in fact encouraged, to report them. On occasion, I've reminded users of the ToS.
c) Scans Daily. This community has a publicly posted set of rules, which governs the use of its online space. There is a moderator, but she has a light touch. The community is largely self-governing, for all but the worst of offenses. Users regularly remind each other of the rules.
d) Fandom Wank. This community has a publicly posted set of rules, which governs the use of its online space. It also has a large group of moderators, who feel no compunction about banning offenders. In addition, it has a culture of vicious self-moderation. "We eat our own."
In all of these cases it's ok to remind users of the rules and to demand they conform to the community's standard of behaviour. However, in a community in which there are no rules, you do not have the right, no matter how hurt your feelings are, to demand that they obey your standard of behaviour. There exists no normal and natural, universally agreed upon standard of online behaviour. At best we have a short list of things it's uncool to do, which we call netiquette.
At this point you can probably guess that it's the whole Bandflesh SNAFU that got me thinking about this. So, bandflesh.
This community does not have a publicly posted set of rules, at least not one that is clear. There is no moderator. No one's in charge. And that's the way they like it. I'm no expert on the community but if it occasionally descends into anonyhate, that's only to be expected. Even were I to be flamed by members of the comm, I don't think that I would have the moral authority to demand 'stricter' moderation or 'better' behaviour. I can ask that they play nice. I can rant about their obvious assholery. I can report them to JournalFen, should their behaviour violate that site's ToS. That's really all I can do.
And that's the way I like it.
In an age where freedom is being managed out of existence, in service to the panic fear which seems to grip our collective unconscious, I have no interest in denouncing the 'misuse' of internet anonymity, because it isn't nice.
* The dude I quoted above is Steven J. Korbin, from Territoriality and the Governance of Cyberspace.
***
I've been waiting for this! synecdochic has announced the creation of Dreamwidth Studios, a kind of alternative to eljay. Way back during Strikethrough, I said that we wouldn't see fandom as a whole leave eljay until something better came along. Is this, or OTW the something better?
Of the good:
We have a list of what we want to do that's enough to keep us busy for the next decade, but there are a few we think are important enough to put first. We're splitting the "friend" system into "reading people" and "trusting people to read me". We're integrating your OpenID identities and RSS feeds into your core account, to make it easy to manage your identity across the Internet. We're making it easy for you to use us to display all of your creative work. (We're fixing the memories system.)
We're updating the LJ code to run on modern versions of Apache, mod_perl, and MySQL, so you don't have to downgrade your system to install our version. We're working to document the process, so you don't have to be a technical genius to install and maintain the code. We're working to make it easy for you to install as much or as little of the code as you need, so you can run a version for just you, for you and your friends, or for thousands of people.
I'm excited to see how these projects turn out.
I belong to the school of thought that considers online anonymity a precious, non-renewable resource that will very soon be gone forever. The anonymity that the internet currently affords plays a big part in the sheer fantastic dynamism of online culture. It's part of why we, as in fandom, are able to have nice things like fanfic, RPs, vids, banners, meta, stupid memes and all the rest.
Anonymity is one of the bedrocks of internet culture, and it pains me to say that governments and corporations all over the world are making steady inroads on one of the precious few spaces we, as in the people, have left to speak and think and act freely. The end of anonymity will be justified as part of a larger effort to 'clean up' the Wild West of the internet, thus making it 'family friendly.' It will be justified as necessary for national security, in an age of increasing dependence on networked defense technology. It will be justified as necessary for the smooth function of international commerce.
Increasingly, we are seeing a convergence of governmental and commercial interests, around reproducing real-world power structures online. The logic being that:
a) “Any market, virtual or real, requires societal infrastructure to function. It ‘…relies on a set of goods that it cannot itself provide: property rights, predictability, safety, nomenclature, and so on’."
b) "There cannot be two different sets of rules for the real and virtual worlds." *
What it's also about, though it's not usually framed this way, is reasserting social control - in essence, hegemonic culture maintenance. And because most users see the internet as an apolitical space (after all, what do You Porn and Amazon.com have to do with politics?) hegemonic ideology is reproduced online without question and notice. It's only normal and natural, right?
I firmly believe that every society needs a space for misfits, malcontents and jerks. We need to be able to misbehave, to test the limits of social control, to toy with the possibility of bad behaviour, for the sake of bad behaviour. We need the freedom to be morons, like we need air. It would be nice, if we all backed away from the edge of online idiocy, but none of us can say that we've managed to, without exception, play nice with others. It would be nice, but that's not humanity.
I also firmly believe that the existence of assholes on the internet, does not suggest a need to regulate their asshole behaviour out of existence. I can sit in my corner and disapprove to my heart's content, I can flame them right back, but what I will never do is suggest that anonymity is itself a problem. I will never try to manage or moderate their behaviour, outside of the online spaces which I, or others claim as our own. Some examples:
a) My journal. This is my online space and in it, I make the rules. I am queen bee of schmevil and moderate my space as such. I have anon commenting turned off, because I was tired of the trolls. In the past, I have banned users, asked users to refrain from commenting, and intervened in discussions I found inappropriate or trollish.
b) Eljay. Livejournal has a publicly posted set of rules, their Terms of Service, which govern the use of their online space. If I see someone violating the ToS, I'm within my rights, and in fact encouraged, to report them. On occasion, I've reminded users of the ToS.
c) Scans Daily. This community has a publicly posted set of rules, which governs the use of its online space. There is a moderator, but she has a light touch. The community is largely self-governing, for all but the worst of offenses. Users regularly remind each other of the rules.
d) Fandom Wank. This community has a publicly posted set of rules, which governs the use of its online space. It also has a large group of moderators, who feel no compunction about banning offenders. In addition, it has a culture of vicious self-moderation. "We eat our own."
In all of these cases it's ok to remind users of the rules and to demand they conform to the community's standard of behaviour. However, in a community in which there are no rules, you do not have the right, no matter how hurt your feelings are, to demand that they obey your standard of behaviour. There exists no normal and natural, universally agreed upon standard of online behaviour. At best we have a short list of things it's uncool to do, which we call netiquette.
At this point you can probably guess that it's the whole Bandflesh SNAFU that got me thinking about this. So, bandflesh.
This community does not have a publicly posted set of rules, at least not one that is clear. There is no moderator. No one's in charge. And that's the way they like it. I'm no expert on the community but if it occasionally descends into anonyhate, that's only to be expected. Even were I to be flamed by members of the comm, I don't think that I would have the moral authority to demand 'stricter' moderation or 'better' behaviour. I can ask that they play nice. I can rant about their obvious assholery. I can report them to JournalFen, should their behaviour violate that site's ToS. That's really all I can do.
And that's the way I like it.
In an age where freedom is being managed out of existence, in service to the panic fear which seems to grip our collective unconscious, I have no interest in denouncing the 'misuse' of internet anonymity, because it isn't nice.
* The dude I quoted above is Steven J. Korbin, from Territoriality and the Governance of Cyberspace.
***
I've been waiting for this! synecdochic has announced the creation of Dreamwidth Studios, a kind of alternative to eljay. Way back during Strikethrough, I said that we wouldn't see fandom as a whole leave eljay until something better came along. Is this, or OTW the something better?
Of the good:
We have a list of what we want to do that's enough to keep us busy for the next decade, but there are a few we think are important enough to put first. We're splitting the "friend" system into "reading people" and "trusting people to read me". We're integrating your OpenID identities and RSS feeds into your core account, to make it easy to manage your identity across the Internet. We're making it easy for you to use us to display all of your creative work. (We're fixing the memories system.)
We're updating the LJ code to run on modern versions of Apache, mod_perl, and MySQL, so you don't have to downgrade your system to install our version. We're working to document the process, so you don't have to be a technical genius to install and maintain the code. We're working to make it easy for you to install as much or as little of the code as you need, so you can run a version for just you, for you and your friends, or for thousands of people.
I'm excited to see how these projects turn out.