Anonymity hypocrisy

One of the myths about this blog is that it recently disallowed all anonymous commenting. This blog actually allows it, as long as you post under the screen name of a particular account. The account name doesn't have to reveal your own name.

I've been dumbfounded for years by the amount of hypocrisy surrounding Internet anonymity. For years, Usenet posts have required an easily traceable IP number. Big ISP's and Usenet admins wanted it that way, and in the martial law of Usenet, their word was binding. Yet, when people abused anonymous remailers to illegally and fraudulently impersonate others, the originating IP number was nowhere to be found - because they claimed that would violate their "rights."

For a long time, message board services always publicly displayed users' IP numbers when they posted a message. At the same time, however, somebody kept signing me up for a bunch of spam I didn't want - and their IP numbers were nowhere on the confirmation messages, so I couldn't track who was behind it.

Around the mid-2000s, the practice of displaying IP numbers on message forums other than Usenet pretty much vanished. I guess they finally became hip to privacy concerns. But it was years too late for many folks.

Now journalists are starting to question whether allowing anonymous commenting on news websites is a good idea.

Then why don't they stop quoting anonymous sources in their articles? I'm not talking about whistleblowers who need protection. I'm talking about government officials who remain anonymous because they don't want to accept responsibility for their policies.

It's been argued that disallowing anon posts will increase the level of maturity and civility on news websites. But I doubt that. Even in print newspapers that use the real names of readers who write letters to the editor, there's enough class-baiting and other illogical right-wing garbledygoop to make Phil Gramm blush.

I think the push to abolish anonymity is actually a gimmick by the corporate media to reclaim their hegemony over public opinion that's been whittled away at lately. Until about 5 years ago, they had succeeded at consolidating their control over public sensibilities. But that trend began reversing when more people began learning how to use the Internet more effectively.

The corporatists don't want the current trends to continue. They want a fully controlled media, like that which the 1996 Telecommunications Act attempted to grant them. The free flow of ideas is the enemy of those who long for a corporate command state.

(Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/12/technology/12comments.html)