I've been online since the 1990s. In 30 years it never occurred to me to write anonymously, yet anonymously I could be dangerously edgy, ironic, hateful, angry. I could indulge the worst vices. Therefore, writing anonymously is like a dangerous drug. Yet we encourage children to be anonymous online? - ThreadSky

krubner.bsky.social • 138 days ago

I've been online since the 1990s. In 30 years it never occurred to me to write anonymously, yet anonymously I could be dangerously edgy, ironic, hateful, angry. I could indulge the worst vices. Therefore, writing anonymously is like a dangerous drug. Yet we encourage children to be anonymous online?

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numerius.bsky.social•138 days ago

I have to disagree on this one. The key point for me is memory and publicity. In everyday life we are not anonymous, but all of our encounters, good or bad, are either private and kept to memory or public and somewhat measured. Social media post are eternal. They need to be transient.

numerius.bsky.social•138 days ago

I agree on the danger of falling for baser instincts, though.

krubner.bsky.social•138 days ago

I support all of the "right to be forgotten" bills that I've seen so far. And I understand the fears of doxxing. But I don't think our pedagogy has thought much about the potential harm to learning socialization that happens when raising a generation where anonymous expression is the default.

numerius.bsky.social•137 days ago

I don’t think bills will solve this. It’s more of a cultural thing. Social media are amazing, but also so, so different from all media before. To me that is much more the core issue, than anonymity. Even notoriously anonymous boards like 4chan had better (still bad) norms as Twitter nowadays.

numerius.bsky.social•137 days ago

And for some people anonymity is a necessity. Doxxing is an extreme case, but I know too many people with smaller issues, due to power disparities.

krubner.bsky.social•137 days ago

That's an interesting point about 4Chan.

sethn.gg•138 days ago

risk v reward of being known vs being anon online has shifted a ton within even just the past 5 years alone but really over the past 15. SWATTING, DDoSing, stalking are all real problems people have to worry about now that were frankly not really a thing for 99 percent of us online in the early 00s.

sethn.gg•138 days ago

Being able to cultivate an online persona and clout now is a lot harder than it is/was for the people who have had time to build that reputation too I think. Obviously no better time to plant a tree than right now but it's way more crowded now than it used to be

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