On the Internet, does anonymity invite incivility?
When my friend Laura started blogging for a high-profile website a few years ago, her fellow bloggers shared their first rule of survival: Don’t read the comments. Topics that seemed innocuous managed to spark rage. “It was bewildering,” Laura says. Then she wrote a post questioning whether a large technology conference should still have “booth babes” – scantily clad women who promote exhibitors’ products and services. An anonymous commenter became unhinged, ranting in all caps and concluding by telling Laura to die. “I had trouble sleeping,” she says.
What if the commenter hadn’t been nameless and faceless? Would he or she have uttered those words? Definitely not, Laura says: “Anonymity allows people to do and say things they normally wouldn’t.”
Back in olden times – a.k.a. pre-Internet – it took some effort to hurl an insult. You had to look your target in the eye, hear your voice spewing bile, or at least dig up a postage stamp for your hate mail. Although incivility, unlike the proliferation of cat videos, is not an Internet creation, online anonymity has brought a high level of vitriol to public discourse. When you are known not by your name, but as SnarkNinja99, you shed the burden of accountability.
According to a Pew poll last year, 25 percent of Internet users have posted comments without including their real names, and evidence suggests that anonymous commenting does allow for greater incivility. A University of Houston communications professor analyzed 900 randomly chosen user comments on articles about immigration – half from newspaper sites that permitted anonymous comments and half from ones that didn’t. Of the anonymous commenters, 53 percent were uncivil, compared with 29 percent on sites that forbid anonymity.
Why does this matter? It’s not about comporting ourselves in a genteel fashion; it’s about meaningful communication and rational decision making. University of Wisconsin researchers conducted an experiment in which people read an article on a fictitious blog about nanotechnology. Half of them saw rude comments following the post, and the other half saw civil comments. The researchers found that the tone of the comments affected readers’ perception of the technology described: Those who saw the rude comments were more likely to express a polarized view. As one of the researchers noted in a New York Times article, “Simply including an ad hominem attack in a reader comment was enough to make study participants think the downside of the reported technology was greater than they’d previously thought.”
This was not lost on Popular Science. In September 2013, it shut down all online comments. In explaining the decision, one editor noted that most Popular Science commenters are not “shrill, boorish specimens of the lower Internet phyla.” Unfortunately, it takes only a few boors to skew debate.
The power conferred by anonymity – and its effect on character – is a topic that preceded the Internet age. In The Republic, Plato explores it with the mythical Ring of Gyges tale. Gyges was a shepherd, and probably a stand-up guy, right up until he discovered a ring that rendered the wearer invisible. After that, Gyges decided to make a few changes. He seduced the queen, murdered the king, and claimed the throne. J.R.R. Tolkien wrote about an invisibility ring too, as a metaphor for power and a catalyst for hobbits behaving badly.
In Tolkien’s work, readers will find other creatures that dwell online: trolls. That’s the name given to commenters who deliberately offend others. But what about the people who don’t strive to torment others online but end up doing so anyway? Is there something about anonymous communication that can amplify our inner jerk?
Like Gyges’ ring, anonymity does lend invisibility that’s easy to abuse. For two decades, John Suler, professor of psychology at Rider University, has been studying the psychology of cyberspace, including anonymity. As he describes it: “You don’t know who I am, therefore I can disown any responsibility for what I’m doing, and there’s no real-world consequence for me being a nasty person.”
Other factors conspire to make online discussions treacherous. When people use a different name online, they sometimes view their comments as separate from their “real” selves. That falls under a broad category of behavior that psychologists call dissociation. It creates the mental and emotional space for users to say bad things while still firmly believing they are “good” people.
Another online communication problem is “solipsistic introjection,” as Suler calls it. It’s a fancy way of saying that when we communicate by typing, we can end up having a conversation with ourselves. While we’re interacting online, he says, “on one level, we know that this is a person on the Internet, typing replies to me. On another level, it’s a dialogue inside our head. And inside your head, your imagination can run wild.” As a result, the commenter loses perspective. Instead of responding to someone online, he starts to envision the person on the receiving end – which may unleash an emotional torrent if that person unwittingly triggers a reminder of a family member the commenter isn’t speaking to, or an ex who broke his heart.
The best strategy for fighting online incivility, Suler says, is the one that sites often fail to employ: good moderators. “They mediate fights, they help people tone it down, but it takes interpersonal skills to do that, and time and effort,” he says. “A lot of online communities just don’t want to do that.”
Some sites are trying to squelch rude comments by prohibiting anonymity. ESPN, USA Today, and the Chicago Tribune now require commenters to log in through their Facebook accounts. The Huffington Post took the same approach in December, citing the change as necessary to preserve civility.
Others are relying on the wisdom of the masses. That’s the system at Reddit, which has more than 100 million unique visitors each month and fiercely protects anonymity. Reddit bills itself as “the front page of the Internet”: Users post links to articles or photos, and then other users vote those links up or down. Links with more votes get more prominent placement on the site. The same goes for comments: A voting system makes them more or less visible.
Randy Olson, a doctoral student in computer science at Michigan State University, has participated in Reddit’s discussion forums for three years. Some people still manage to abuse the self-policing voting approach, he notes: “Even if you’re making a valid point, people can down-vote your comment.” But the system mimics the social pressure that would exist if all participants were in the room together. When mean or rude comments are voted down, it’s similar to receiving glares. “Everyone is looking at them and thinking, ‘Why did you say that?’” Olson says. “Generally you will see that the better, more insightful comments are the ones that get voted highly.”
It’s not a perfect system. Reddit has not managed to eliminate sexism, racism, or bullying. But anonymous altruism thrives on Reddit too. One section of the site, called Random Acts of Pizza, is devoted to people who anonymously give away pizzas.
Anonymity predates the Internet, of course. Thomas Paine, credited with helping to inspire the American colonies’ fight for independence, didn’t sign his name to the pamphlets he wrote – including the famous line “These are the times that try men’s souls.” With no easy answers for online anonymity – an excuse to sling ad hominem attacks, but also a vital part of free speech – those words feel very 21st century. — S. A. Swanson