If Social Networking Sites Are Like Sex (Thoughts on the Anomymity=Cowardice Bandwagon)

Social networking websites are like sex. The only sure thing is abstinance (sic), but since that's not really acceptable to a lot of people, you better have a lot of protection and education. If you post without security and without regard to what the content is, it's no different than unprotected sex -- it can lead to unintended consequences, and if you get involved in some really rough stuff, better believe you might get hurt.

Bill Smith, Ph.D.
Associate Athletic Director for Communications
University of Arkansas

It is perhaps the most disgusting example of the Web 2.0 Social Networking world to date. What it does falls under the long held American belief of free speech, yet it offends the sensibilities of anybody who has come across it to date. It is a web site by an alumnus of Duke University that probably has the University wishing that its image problems were limited to the Lacrosse team fiasco. But no, juicycampus.com has brought a great deal of attention to the owner of the web site and the fact that he is a Duke alum. He has created a site that allows people to post anonymous campus gossip, much of it so vile and below any standards of social decency, that it is garnering international attention and condemnation. One school's student body is lashing back with an "Anonymity=Cowardice" on-campus campaign, Major advertisers on the site, including Google, are pulling their ads from the site under wilting pressure. So is it time for all of us to jump on the "Anonymity=Cowardice" bandwagon?

This is actually a tougher question than it may seem to be on its face. While many internet sites and blogs do not allow anonymous comments, we do so only knowing that the person reportedly posting is who they say they are. We allow people to post with Gmail, Yahoo! and other public mail service accounts, yet we have no mechanism to test the veracity of these people and these addresses. There are also reasons why people want to post anonymously or with a false name. I myself have posted on the IBM Lotus DeveloperWorks discussion fora with the moniker of "File Save" for years, only "coming out" after I started this blog back in July of 2004. There was a simple reason for this. I started posting on there when I worked for Lotus Professional Services (now ISSL), and we were told not to post there with our real names, lest people think we were posting an official IBM/Lotus position on a subject. Of course, times have changed and you will see many an IBMer posting on there, identifying themselves as IBMers. So it might be argued that this type of anonymity does not equate to cowardice.

Then there is the case of a website called SportsJournlists.com. This is a web site where many a sportswriter and other journalists go to vent about their jobs and other frustrations. They do so with false screen names so that they do put their jobs at risk. At the same time, however, they attack others with so much vile and contempt that their "anonymity" does equate with cowardice. And it is ironic that these are the same people who blast blogs because of anonymous comments. But there is an unwritten code there: even if you know who the person behind the screen name is, you do not out them publicly. If they choose to out themselves, then they make that choice.

This brings us back to JuicyCampus. One of the many complaints about the site is that people are "outing" closet homosexuals, putting these people at emotional and physical risk. The ultimate irony here is that the owner of the site is a self-outed homosexual man. Yet he refuses media interviews as the web site is being investigated by state Attorneys General across the country.

There seems to be little people can do to pout this Genie back inside the bottle. Even if this site were to be shut down today, the type of content that drives it will still  be around and continue to grow. All we can do is to do our own self-policing of our web sites based on our principles and internal moral guidelines. We can also start to use practices that show our commitment to what we say we are going to do, which may not be easy. Companies such as PricewaterhouseCoopers require the use of a corporate email address that is physically validated before a registration process is completed. It might be argued that this is done for marketing purposes, but it can just as easily be argued that this is to protect against user fraud. But some people may work for companies that do not allow their company work addresses to be used for anything.

We could go further in what information we collect to validate a user s a real person. For example, It is getting harder to complete on-line registration forms for web sites using dummy information to "protect our privacy". Some sites are validating entered street address information against a United States Postal Service (USPS) database of valid mailing addresses, bouncing any registration requests that cannot be validated. Sadly, this is a false sense of validation. Unless I am registering on a site to actually conduct some sort of transaction, I can just open up a phone book and use any name and address that I find handy. And this just makes the situation worse.

The Web 2.0 world is fraught with with this type of peril and it may actually require a major paradigm shift in what people will do and not do on the Internet. One of these things, as written in a post by Dr. Smith is:

While this is old advise -- probably a year too late for many -- but if you have not claimed your name on your campus Facebook, here's yet another example of why that's a problem.

So let's all get together and give good social networking.

Related Link(s)

Dr. Bill Smith's 2006 COSIDA Presentation on Social Networking Sites