Anonymous Online Presence and Harassment

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The option to remain anonymous is a prevalent feature in information technology and online platforms. Anonymity is commonly associated with namelessness, detachment, and lack of recognition. Anonymity is defined as a state of being unidentifiable by others due to a lack of coordination between known and unknown trait(s) that an individual possesses [1]. Each trait is a part of a collection of unique interconnected traits that make up one’s identity. The disunion of these identifying attributes allow an individual to remain unknown.

For example, platforms such as Reddit.com structure user accounts to have pseudonyms or fictitious names that mask identity[2]. Anonymity can result in positive outcomes such as supporting free expression, however it also cultivates an environment of negativity, harassment, and ethical implications.

Reasons for Anonymity Online

While there are many reasons an individual may want to remain anonymous online some include free self expression without identification, avoiding consequences as a result of questionable actions, minimizing discrimination, and privacy. These reasons may overlap and are not mutually exclusive. In all these cases anonymity serves as a form of protection from a potential repercussion. The nature of anonymity allows behavior online that can potentially be positive, negative, or neutral.

Positive Examples of Online Anonymity

Virtual Support Groups

Individuals experiencing hardship or trauma may seek support groups and community to heal. Online platforms and technology provide people with quick and convenient access to a variety of online communities where they can connect with others. For example, a sexual abuse survivor may choose to refrain from revealing their identity due to the responses they could receive for revealing sensitive information. A common feature on these platforms is the ability of others to comment and interact with posted content. The context of a sexual abuse post may elicit different types of responses. The victim is able to protect their mental health and well being by using anonymity as a shield. In this case anonymity is fostering a supportive environment for a socially stigmatized topic[3].

Soliciting Honest Feedback in the Workplace

In the workplace environment it can be difficult for managers to solicit honest feedback from employees. Employees may be concerned with job security and potential backlash for pointing out a workplace concern. A 2019 study, resulted in many respondents advocating for anonymous input in order for leaders to receive legitimate feedback. In this particular study, the feedback was often in the form of an anonymous survey and online portal for the company. Employees felt they had a voice and one respondent explained how anonymity eliminated the fear of repercussions [4].

Product and Service Customer Reviews

Shopping websites, customer review websites, discussion pages, and blogs allow people on the internet to share opinions about products, services and experiences electronically. Reviews have become an integral part to inform potential buyers about quality, accuracy, and performance of products and services, especially in e-commerce. For example, shoppers at Amazon.com heavily rely on reviews to make good purchases. In general, reviews from customers are more trusted than the marketing done by the company selling the product or service. Customers are encouraged and incentivized to add more reviews to Amazon.com to improve the shopping experience for all customers. Soon after making a purchase through Amazon, customers are sent a reminder to write a review for their recent purchase. The option to give anonymous reviews is considered an important element in increasing the number of reviews[5]. Users feel more comfortable being honest when unidentifiable.

Negative Examples of Online Anonymity

Disinformation and Fake News

Disinformation is the intentional spread of inaccurate information. Disinformation is a big concern because it can be harmful and discredit news media, and journalism on a large scale. It also has the potential to disrupt democracy and alter the communities views and perspectives. Many platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook allow users to share visual content such as photos and videos. Misleading visual content is dangerous due to its ability to persuade viewers of its credibility. The account creation process does not prohibit users from creating inaccurate personas and accounts. Using anonymity and misconstruing the identity of the account owner can pose a threat to transparency on online platforms. Actors are able to easily manipulate visual content and achieve their intended goal when the audience takes information out of context. Once the inaccurate information is released, social media makes it easy to reshare and repost deceitful content unknowingly. This behavior leads to misinformation, unintentional presentation of falsity as truth. The complexity of artificial intelligence (AI) allows for completely fabricated content to be made. For example, there is apparently video evidence of Obama referring to Trump as a "dipshit"[6]. It was discovered that the video was a deep fake and product of AI. Deep fakes and cheap fakes have become increasingly relevant in the technological sphere and are weapons for disinformation.

The Dark Net and Criminal Activity

The internet is a popular place for extremists groups to reside. It is beneficial for these extremist groups to remain anonymous to exist in spaces where other may disagree with their ideals. Websites, social media, and the Dark net are easily accessible from everywhere and allow postings, sharing of messages, and more. For this reason there has been a large migration of extremists into cyberspace, especially platforms such as TikTok. TikTok is an online platform for video sharing and is most commonly used for comedy, dancing, and singing. However in late 2019, ISIS content that aimed to recruit people was discovered on the platform. There were reports of content praising militants incorporating TikTok filters and trendy emojis. Additionally, there were reports of Nazism and violent white supremacy that advocated for murders of ethnic minorities[7]. There continues to be a plethora of politically charged content finding its way onto platforms that were intended for a much lighter purpose. Extremists and actors have found a way to take advantage of the features associated with social media sights such as background music, emojis, hashtags, tagging, reshares, and more. An important concern considered is the age of the TikTok audience. The app targets younger adults and teenagers, whom can be susceptible to propaganda and sensitive content.

Ethical Implications

Right to Privacy

Anonymity and privacy are closely related and a topic of debate in the virtual world. Some perspectives in the US argue that anonymity is required to help uphold human rights to privacy and free expression. Anonymity is seen as a right that needs to be protected along with rest of constitutional rights granted to citizens. Anonymity is thought to be a facilitator in democratic society, allowing voters, political dissidents, and corporate whistle blowers to operate without fear of negative consequences. In addition, pseudonyms and identity protection shield people like journalists and activists from violence outside of the virtual environment[8]. This perspective defends online anonymity and believes it is unfair and unethical to take this feature away.

Although some perspectives advocate to protect anonymity as a right, there are invisible forces behind the scenes that are tracking information about online users all the time. This prompts the question if true anonymity is possible in the online sphere. A user may appear anonymous to other users online because of the "uncoordinality" of their traits[9], but algorithms working behind the scenes may no more information other than what users have intentionally put out there about themselves. Big Data and national security measures threaten complete anonymity and are highly discussed ethical considerations. More and more internet interactions are being monitored and recorded by Big Data such as clicks, comments, and transactions[10]. Significant data collection make users more identifiable by coordinating traits and online behavior.

Lack of Accountability

Anonymity can be used to protect identity in ways that enable mischievous behavior. For this reason anonymity becomes a difficult topic to defend as it can lead to criminal activity such as child pornography, illegal gambling, as well as human and drug trafficking[11]. The lack of accountability and punishment for the behavior of offenders encourages such activity online. Offenders are able to mask their identity and obscure profiles to represent whatever they desire. The internet also enables multiplicity, which is the ability to create multiple different identities online. With the click of a button users can create, delete, and duplicate accounts with both factual and inaccurate information. A large societal concern is the cyber-grooming of children. While a child is safely at home, they are vulnerable to child-abusers reaching out to them online. This type of behavior involves unmonitored exchange of inappropriate and sexually explicit content with children via photos, videos, webcams, and chats. For example, on Facebook, an adult sexual-predator connected with an 11 year old online and exposed his genitals to the child via Facebook webcam[12]. Vulnerable populations like children continue to be targets for online sexual-abuse.

Another heavily discussed ethical concern related to anonymity is cyberbullying and hate comments. Anonymity can allow for depersonalization, a separation from self in regards to body, mind, and thought. For this reason individuals may feel inclined to behave in ways unlike their real life behavior. The lack of accountability also instills bravery into individuals to communicate without repercussions that they may experience with face to face contact. Comments may contain some form of racism, sexism, and/or reinforce harmful stereotypes about groups of people.

Cases of Online Harassment

Harassment is not always clearly defined in online platform policy. However, Instagram and Twitter have outline certain behaviors that are unacceptable such as "repeated unwanted contact" and "reported behaviors one sided or included threats"[13]. Abuse, bullying, harm, hate, stalking, and threats are most commonly identified as harassment behavior on online platforms.

The Fappening

Reddit.com is a platform that establishes a community for social news and discussion. Reddit.com has been at the center of attention for controversial online activity in more than one instance. The design of Reddit's platform has allowed the space to promote and spread anti-feminist content. In 2014 a series of anti-feminist activism unfolded on Reddit's website. One case was referred to as "The Fappening", which was the illegally acquired nudes of celebrities like Jennifer Lawrence[14]. The women were victimized and the nudes were then circulated and commented on anonymously through Reddit and 4chan. The comments were disturbing and the posts became extremely popular at the time of the leaks. Many users "upvoted" the content which caused Reddit's algorithm to feature links to the posts and website traffic increased significantly.

#Gamergate

Gamergate was an ill motivated campaign to spread hate by harassing women in the gaming community. This started in 2014 with a post about a breakup with a the creator of Depression Quest (DQ), Zoë Quinn. The post had great detail about the details of the relationship between Eron Gjoni and Zoë Quinn and included screenshots of alleged Facebook messages between the two. Zoë Quinn was previously harassed online for after releasing DQ, which included rape and death threats. The post from Eron delegitimized Zoe by attributing her success in gaming to sleeping around with gaming journalists[15]. The anti-feminist attacks became widespread, not only targeting Zoë, but other women and allies in the community as well. The campaign picked up steam and coined the hashtag #Gamergate. The lack of punishment and accountability allows campaigns like this flourish and grow. This incidence brought to light serious ethical concerns in gaming journalism.

References

  1. ↑ Wallace, Kathleen A. (2018). Online Anonymity. In Himma and Tavani, pp. 165-190.
  2. ↑ Massanari, Adrienne. (2015). #Gamergate and The Fappening: How Reddit’s Algorithm, Governance, and Culture Support Toxic Technocultures. New Media & Society 19 (3): 229-46.
  3. ↑ Nazanin Andalibi, Oliver L. Haimson, Munmun De Choudhury, and Andrea Forte. 2018. Social Support, Reciprocity, and Anonymity in Responses to Sexual Abuse Disclosures on Social Media. ACM Trans. Comput.-Hum. Interact. 25, 5, Article 28 (October 2018), 35 pages. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3234942.
  4. ↑ Cardon, P. W., Huang, Y., & Power, G. (2019). Leadership Communication on Internal Digital Platforms, Emotional Capital, and Corporate Performance: The Case for Leader-Centric Listening. International Journal of Business Communication. https://doi.org/10.1177/2329488419828808.
  5. ↑ Ismail Erkan & Chris Evans (2018) Social media or shopping websites? The influence of eWOM on consumers’ online purchase intentions, Journal of Marketing Communications, 24:6, 617-632, DOI: 10.1080/13527266.2016.1184706.
  6. ↑ Paris, B. & Donovan, J. (August, 2021). Long on Profit and Years Behind: Platforms and the Fight Against Audiovisual Disinformation. Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, Special Section: Visual Mis- and Disinformation, Social Media, & Democracy 98 (3), 641 - 664. https://doi.org/10.1177/10776990211035395.
  7. ↑ Gabriel Weimann & Natalie Masri (2020) Research Note: Spreading Hate on TikTok, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, DOI: 10.1080/1057610X.2020.1780027.
  8. ↑ Robert Bodle. 2013. The ethics of online anonymity or Zuckerberg vs. "Moot". SIGCAS Comput. Soc. 43, 1 (May 2013), 22–35. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/2505414.2505417.
  9. ↑ Wallace, Kathleen A. (2018). Online Anonymity. In Himma and Tavani, pp. 165-190.
  10. ↑ Andrew, J., Baker, M. The General Data Protection Regulation in the Age of Surveillance Capitalism. J Bus Ethics 168, 565–578 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-019-04239-z.
  11. ↑ Robert Bodle. 2013. The ethics of online anonymity or Zuckerberg vs. "Moot". SIGCAS Comput. Soc. 43, 1 (May 2013), 22–35. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/2505414.2505417.
  12. ↑ Nikolovska, M. (2020). The Internet as a creator of a criminal mind and child vulnerabilities in the cyber grooming of children. JYU dissertations.
  13. ↑ Jessica A. Pater, Moon K. Kim, Elizabeth D. Mynatt, and Casey Fiesler. 2016. Characterizations of Online Harassment: Comparing Policies Across Social Media Platforms. In Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Supporting Group Work (GROUP '16). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 369–374. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/2957276.2957297
  14. ↑ Massanari, Adrienne. (2015). #Gamergate and The Fappening: How Reddit’s Algorithm, Governance, and Culture Support Toxic Technocultures. New Media & Society 19 (3): 229-46.
  15. ↑ Massanari, Adrienne. (2015). #Gamergate and The Fappening: How Reddit’s Algorithm, Governance, and Culture Support Toxic Technocultures. New Media & Society 19 (3): 229-46.
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