Blogging: Anonymous Or Not

When I began this blog five years ago, I chose to be public. You read me, Yisrael Medad, not some anonymous shadow.

It was and is restrictive but it's all me.

I was accused actually of being 'narcissistic' because I had so many pictures of myself on the opening screen page. Gee. Imagine, a blogger who is not narcissistic.

Well, read on:

Ruling on NightJack author Richard Horton kills blogger anonymity

Thousands of bloggers who operate behind the cloak of anonymity have no right to keep their identities secret, the High Court ruled today. In a landmark decision, Mr Justice Eady refused to grant an order to protect the anonymity of a police officer who is the author of a blog called NightJack.

...His blog, which gave a behind-the-scenes insight into frontline policing, included strong views on social and political issues, including matters of “public controversy,” the judge said.

...In the first case dealing with the privacy of internet bloggers, the judge ruled that Mr Horton had no “reasonable expectation” to anonymity because “blogging is essentially a public rather than a private activity”. Coming down in favour of freedom of expression, the judge also said that even if the blogger could have claimed he had a right to anonymity, the judge would have ruled against him on public interest grounds.

...Hugh Tomlinson, QC, for the blogger, had argued that “thousands of regular bloggers who communicate nowadays via the internet under a cloak of anonymity would be horrified to think that the law would do nothing to protect their anonymity of someone carried out the necessary detective work and sought to unmask them”.

The judge said: “That may be true. I suspect that some would be very concerned and others less so.”

But “be that as it may”, he added, the blogger needed to show that he had a legally enforceable right to maintain anonymity in the absence of a genuine breach of confidence, by suppressing the fruits of detective work such as that carried out by Mr Foster.

The uniqueness of this case, nevertheless, is that the commentary in the blog is the work of a serving Lancashire detective and, therefore, being a public servant, he was in a difficult legal situation.

Bloggers Rules of Conduct

Among those calling for a bloggers' code of conduct is Tim O'Reilly - one of the web's most influential thinkers.

(Sounds like Rules of War)

He told BBC Radio Five Live that it could be time to formalise blogging behaviour.
"I do think we need some code of conduct around what is acceptable behaviour, I would hope that it doesn't come through any kind of [legal/government] regulation it would come through self-regulation."

While condemning the bloggers who issued the threats, Mr O'Reilly was keen that the whole blogosphere should not be tarred with the same brush.

"The fact that there's all these really messed-up people on the internet is not a statement about the internet. It is a statement about those people and what they do and we need to basically say that you guys are doing something unacceptable and not generalise it into a comment about this is what's happening to the blogosphere."

...Denise Howell, a US lawyer and blogger, believes that the blogosphere is no place for legal requirements.

"The tools of the Live Web have made it easier than ever for ordinary people to communicate and express views in their individual capacities, and to provide platforms, e.g. on their blogs, for others to do so," she said.

"I think anyone who enjoys any aspect of the Live Web would celebrate this fact, and agree its vitality would be impaired if the law expected or required these ordinary people to envelop themselves and their sites in elaborate legal provisos and conditions if they hope to be shielded from potential responsibility for the bad acts of others," she said.

...It has long been accepted that online behaviour differs from the behaviour people would exhibit in the real world due, largely to the anonymity it allows.

Technology blogger Sam Sethi agrees that blogging can bring out the worst in people.

"These young geek guys they feel that that they can say what they want and do it with anonymity. It can bring out the worst character behaviour because they feel that they are hidden.

On Blogging

Reflections on blogging:-

Just as Gutenberg's press unleashed knowledge from the privileged few in the 15th century and the combination of the Macintosh, PageMaker and the laser printer around 1985 turned millions into desktop publishers, the Internet and blogging is turning billions of people on the flattened, globally warmed over planet into publishers of text, audio, photos, animations and videos.

Blogging is a democratizing force on a large scale; the tools of production for personal expression are in the hands of the masses…as well as the incumbents who are struggling to figure out how to adapt to and maintain control in the changing media universe.

Within a decade blogging has became mainstream, by virtue of the fact that bloggers are highly influential in forming public opinions, although not necessarily canonical truths. Every entity, from newspapers and political campaigns to corporate executives and PR pros, has adopted blogging as a communications medium, many from a defensive posture. So-called citizen journalists and notions of participatory journalism are reshaping, in fits and starts, how news is gathered and disseminated.

Along with the millions of voices churning out blog posts and the long tail of conversations spawned by them comes the noise, and the noise to signal ratio is way out of whack. But, the unacceptable, illogical alternative is going back to old world, with the concentration of power and expression in the hands of a few rather than spread out to reach the edges of the network.

And there's a new book coming out:

The Cult of the Amateur: how the democratization of the digital world is assaulting our economy, our culture, and our values.

He argues that unfettered blogging and social media is a kind of curse on culture, threatening the quality of public discourse, stifling creativity and encouraging plagiarism and intellectual property theft.

He posits that citizen journalists don't have the resources to provide reliable news, lacking the filters of traditional media, and that the hordes of amateur journalists often distort the news. In the introductory chapter of his book, Andrew writes:

…instead of creating masterpieces, these millions and millions of exuberant monkeys [Internet users]–many with no more talent in the creative arts than our primate cousins–are creating an endless digital forest of mediocrity.

Andrew of course isn't wrong about the noise to signal ratio problem and issues related to establishing trust, professional standards or creating a more safe online environment for kids. On the other hand, his elitist stance stance on the digital forest of mediocrity isn't a solution to filtering out the noise or even a possibility.

In fact, as Doc said during the Public Media Conference, we have an "embarrassment of riches," with people from any part of the world who bring knowledge about water quality, roads, religions or other subjects to inform the conversations.

During his presentation, Dave called the blogosphere the "unbundling of all sources." He added all the people stifled in getting ideas into the mainstream are doing blogs. "They are not all gadflies or flaky–some of them are scientists, economists, professors, ex-captains in the Air Force. They can be knowledgeable people, and you have to figure out how to qualify them, but they are now making themselves known."

The genie is out of the bottle. It's not a battle to the death of mainstream media versus the blogosphere. Over time, better filters and search mechanisms; measures of authority and trust; and natural selection will improve the noise to signal ratio, potentially for every individual's preferences, and change perceptions about what constitutes mainstream media.

Reflecting on OrthMom's Predicament

I have pointed out OrthoMom's predicament in getting involved in a possible legal hassle over a supposed anonymous comment on her blog (seems now not to have been and the litigant is ending up with egg, or omlette, on her face).

I left my comments at her site - about supervisory responsibility - but them I came across
this:-

The hallmark of the flame is precisely what Jett lamented: thoughts expressed while sitting alone at the keyboard would be put more diplomatically — or go unmentioned — face to face.

Flaming has a technical name, the “online disinhibition effect,” which psychologists apply to the many ways people behave with less restraint in cyberspace.

In a 2004 article in the journal CyberPsychology & Behavior, John Suler, a psychologist at Rider University in Lawrenceville, N.J., suggested that several psychological factors lead to online disinhibition: the anonymity of a Web pseudonym; invisibility to others; the time lag between sending an e-mail message and getting feedback; the exaggerated sense of self from being alone; and the lack of any online authority figure. Dr. Suler notes that disinhibition can be either benign — when a shy person feels free to open up online — or toxic, as in flaming.

The emerging field of social neuroscience, the study of what goes on in the brains and bodies of two interacting people, offers clues into the neural mechanics behind flaming.

This work points to a design flaw inherent in the interface between the brain’s social circuitry and the online world. In face-to-face interaction, the brain reads a continual cascade of emotional signs and social cues, instantaneously using them to guide our next move so that the encounter goes well. Much of this social guidance occurs in circuitry centered on the orbitofrontal cortex, a center for empathy. This cortex uses that social scan to help make sure that what we do next will keep the interaction on track.

Appropriate, no?