- What's up, you guys?
You know, one of my favorite things about the internet
is that it's easy to be anonymous.
You can just hop online right now
if you're not already online,
and say pretty much whatever you want
in almost total anonymity.
Nobody will know it was you,
probably won't be any consequences
unless you did something stupid illegal.
This is how to controversial group Anonymous
got started back in the day.
They've attempted to take on powerful entities
to varying degrees of success.
But the idea of allowing people to operate behind a curtain
is a little unnerving.
Some people have argued that anonymity
makes it easier for bad actors
to spread hate online or to organize crimes.
In my sex ed days, I often heard people argue
that a lot of the trolling and bad behavior online
would probably go away
if everyone was just forced to use their real name.
But would it really?
On today's "Indirect Message,"
the right to remain anonymous:
the good, the bad, and the ugly.
(upbeat music)
Last week, Scott Alexander became a target
of "The New York Times."
It started out on a high note:
the paper is writing an article
about his blog, "Slate Star Codex."
I'd describe his blog as a sort of skeptical,
rationalist approach to philosophy, politics, science.
Worth noting, Scott's a psychiatrist.
Also worth noting, Scott isn't his real name.
So, after being interviewed,
"The New York Times" says to him,
"Hey look, we know your real name,
"and we're gonna include it in the article."
The paper insists that real names are policy,
likely as a matter of public interest.
Faced with being doxed by the biggest paper in the country,
he decided to delete his whole blog.
He didn't want to record audio,
so we had a little chat over email.
- [Scott] I have a lot of reasons for staying pseudonymous.
First, I'm a psychiatrist.
I think it's plausible that,
if I became a national news figure under my real name,
my patients, who run the gamut from far left to far right,
wouldn't be able to engage with me
in a normal, therapeutic way.
The second reason is more prosaic:
some people want to kill me or ruin my life,
and I'd prefer not to make it too easy.
I've never been shy about any of the things
that people might want to know about me:
my age, my profession, where I live.
All that knowing my real name would add
would be how to find my house and how to get me fired.
I don't see why either of those two things
are in the public interest.
On the other hand, I think it's hugely
in the public interest for people to be able to write blogs
without worrying about their jobs or their safety.
- His point made me think
about the debate over cancel culture.
Should people lose their jobs
or be socially ostracized for being offensive?
- [Scott] This is a tough one.
There are certainly some opinions abhorrent enough
that it's hard for me to tolerate them,
but I also worry that this would be a loophole
big enough to drive a truck through.
Nobody agrees what a racist or sexist opinion is.
Is Christianity sexist?
It certainly has some pretty strong opinions
about gender roles.
Is supporting Trump racist?
I would rather say that,
if someone has bad opinion, you argue with them,
or block them, and if someone starts advocating violence
or directly bullying others, then you get out the big guns.
- Of course, what constitutes advocating violence
or directly bullying others is also up for debate as well.
Recently, Clara Janover, who is a Harvard grad
and has been an outspoken activist for Black Lives Matter,
came under serious internet fire
for a TikTok video she made.
- The next person who has the sheer nerve,
the sheer entitled cock-acity to say "all lives matter,"
I'ma stab you!
I'ma stab you, and while you're struggling and bleeding out,
I'ma show you my paper cut and say ...
"My cut matters too."
- Is it over the line?
Yeah, for sure.
Is she advocating violence?
Well, she claims it's just an analogy.
Should she lose her job for it?
This is the question that we need to reckon with seriously,
because it's happening to more and more people every day.
Scott argues that, in this kind of atmosphere,
it's only people who are rich or financially stable
who can talk about their politics
while also being identifiable.
- [Scott] One of the saving graces in my situation
is that I'm financially secure,
but some of the letters I've gotten
have been from grad students who are already facing
a tremendous uphill battle to succeed.
These are the smartest and best-educated people around,
and a lot of them are terrified to speak out publicly,
because some college hiring committee
is going to think they're a liability.
Same with any job whose HR
will Google their name before hiring them.
I hate to say it, but I think the only people
who aren't vulnerable here are journalists.
They're hired to publicly write opinions,
and so their jobs don't care what they say.
- I get what he's saying here about the journalists,
but my impression is almost the opposite,
that journalists are more vulnerable to pressure,
given the very public nature of their jobs.
It's easier for large swathes of people
to call for their heads if they publish
a controversial opinion
or an article that explores a taboo topic.
- [Scott] That makes sense,
and you probably know more than I do about this,
but I think ordinary people have to worry
about holding even pretty common views.
The problem isn't just that your dream job doesn't hire you
because you said something outrageous;
it's that your dream job refuses to hire you
because they see that you have a politics blog at all
and they assume that's a risk.
- So, is the solution here just anonymity for everyone?
Scott had an unconventional idea here
that I hadn't thought of before.
- You and I have both talked
about the cultural side of this before,
building tolerance, understanding, and respect
for diversity, but the other half is the economic side.
The more of a social safety net we have,
the less afraid we'll have to be.
Something like universal basic income
would be a godsend here.
Don't get me wrong: I would rather live in a culture
where you could express your opinion honestly
without needing a backup plan in case it ruins your life,
but right now we suck at this,
and having a backup plan sounds really good.
(upbeat music)
- Scott's story underscores a few reasons
why anonymity is really important.
For one, most of us occupy multiple social identities.
You probably don't behave the same with your friends
as with your romantic partner, as with your parents.
At least, I hope not.
The other reason anonymity is important,
which is actually a bigger reason, in my opinion,
is that we need to be able to express our ideas freely
in order to challenge authority and dogma.
Anonymity enables the pursuit of truth.
It's why we protect whistle-blowers
and why researchers will collect sensitive data anonymously.
And around the world, anonymity is critical
to fighting government corruption
without being killed or jailed,
which is precisely why oppressive regimes
are trying to take anonymity away.
China is a particularly egregious example.
The Chinese government operates
one of the largest internet censorship regimes in the world.
Since 2017, anonymity isn't allowed there.
Everyone has to have their real identity verified
before they can use social media.
Now, the government claims that this is to fight fake news.
Sound familiar?
But it's part of a broader pattern
of China controlling the flow of information
and punishing dissidents who speak out
against the Communist party.
At least two million people are employed
by the Chinese government to scour the internet,
looking for information that needs adjusted or removed.
This is not a thing of dystopian sci-fi movies, right?
This is real life.
And American tech giants
have often been complicit in all of this.
Just a couple weeks ago, Zoom terminated the accounts
of three Chinese activists
who were using the platform to organize.
Why?
Because the government asked them to.
I mean, come on, Zoom, grow some balls.
Now, here in the U.S., our right to anonymity
has been protected by a few Supreme Court cases,
but that does not mean we're home free.
For instance, Facebook itself
has a policy requiring real names.
Now, imagine a world where most people
get their news from Facebook
and it's one of the main ways that people
can discuss what's happening in the country.
Imagine that that country's government
is hostile to people who criticize it.
This hypothetical is not a huge stretch,
just a little stretch.
But what about online harassment?
Doxers, and swatters, and trolls,
should they really be able to hide behind a screen name?
(upbeat music)
In the popular imagination,
an internet troll hides behind an anonymous screen name
while they wreak havoc on the internet
from a dingy basement.
So, this is why people say,
"Hey, if we take away the anonymity,
"then the behavior's gonna go away."
But there is an elephant-sized assumption in that argument,
which is that it's the anonymity that causes bad behavior.
If that were true, we should see less toxicity
in online environments where people's real names
are attached, but we don't, so what's going on here?
Researchers think something that may be playing
a big role in bad behavior online is that,
when we're anonymous, we're more likely to conform,
which means, if I'm on a troll-y internet forum
where everyone's being a dick,
well, I'm more likely to be a dick, too,
but if I'm in a community
that expects respectful conversation,
well, I'm more likely to be respectful too.
This effect is known as "de-individuation."
It's a psychological phenomenon
where the norms of a group we're in
overrides our individual sensibilities,
and the effect gets worse
when there's a clearly defined out-group;
so, one group's fans versus another group's fans
or liberals versus conservatives.
Unsurprisingly, it plays a role
in mob mentalities and groupthink,
which means we have to think about the environment
that all of this stuff is happening in,
which is a lot more complicated.
So, this is why some researchers are now saying
we need to think about trolling and bad internet stuff
not as an anonymity problem but as a self-control problem.
We can take a couple of things away from this,
alternatives to getting rid of anonymity.
One is to encourage social media platforms
to build in tools that help us to get a grip
when we are having self-control issues.
The other thing that we can do is,
because there is a conformity element at play here,
is we can model the type of behavior
that we want to see in our online communities
and try to cultivate that as a group.
That's all I got for you today.
Thanks for joining me.
Thanks to Scott for the email chat.
Thanks to Mordecai for voicing Scoot.
And I'd love to know what you guys think
down below if you're on YouTube,
or shoot me an email at lacigreen.tv.
Take care of yourselves out there,
and I'll see you next time.