This is completely and utterly wrong, and only furthers my belief that nobody in Silicon Valley actually "gets" anonymity.<p>I'll try to write a real response tonight on my blog (<a href="http://chrishateswriting.com" rel="nofollow">http://chrishateswriting.com</a>)
I've been taking a deeper look at reddit in the last couple of weeks and I'd say real-name social networks decay in a different direction. My Facebook wall is an extremely shallow stream self-promotion, one-liners, and food pics -- very little actual discussion. As the OP notes, it is very rare that anyone says anything remotely controversial (or interesting).<p>Reddit, on the other hand feels very much alive. People talk about their feelings, confide in each other, ask interesting questions. Not sure if it's just the anonymity, it also has to do with the fact that the community is much bigger so you can ask anything and someone will have an answer. However, the anonymity certainly allows for that large group to come together for (often) coherent conversations.
If 4chan.org has taught the world anything, the first thing that people will do with total anonymity is decay into the behaviours that they WANT to express, but society deems unacceptable. That forbidden fruit of being able to shit-talk without consequence will never stop tasting sweet, but I think that it speaks more to the character of the shit-talker than medium.<p>Thus, I think that the "solution" to these sorts of nasty gossip apps is what Mr. Altman has done: simply refusing to be party to the gossip. You may miss out on juicy deets of who's done what with whom, but some things are more important than two minutes of entertainment. It's really up to potential users to decide if they want to get sucked into this sort of negative attention funnel.<p>edit: I see moot is going to be writing a response to this; I look forward to what he has to say. He is, in my opinion, the foremost expert on internet anonymity (or at least he's on 4chan a lot) so I think that his perspective should be considered highly.
My account will probably soon be killed on HN - like many before them. They all die around the 30 karma mark, presumably because of the many downvotes by feminists. I tend to be outspoken on feminist topics, which have become rather frequent on HN.<p>My point is: nasty things are not the only things you can only say in anonymity. It's also required for opinions that are not aligned with the mainstream. I come from Germany - we have learned here that the mainstream is not always right.<p>I keep considering to write about feminism in my blog, but I am actually worried about crazy people on the internet targeting me. I don't really hide - I've voiced my opinion with my real name as well. But I don't feel very confident about it.<p>Real names are perhaps fine for tech bloggers, but there are too many subjects where they really hamper honest discussion.
> In fact, the closer to real identity internet forums get, the less they seem to decay.<p>Wow, I had no idea 4chan is so irrelevant. Someone should tell them.
I also deleted the app pretty quickly .. but mainly because of its annoying push notifications sent <i>every time</i> "someone I knew" posted something. There was only one nasty personal attack that I saw during my brief use, and it was about a fairly well known CEO by a putative (and potentially disgruntled) employee.<p>As to Sam's argument, it's certainly important to consider the ramifications of anonymity on civility: as users of HN we know how quickly things can degenerate.<p>In an app like Secret, it could get even worse. Since the posts you see are from either contacts or contacts of contacts, it's not hard to deduce whether a scandalous rumor is realistic. Thus, revelations can be much more damaging and with the attendant network effects, function like high school bullying.<p>We shouldn't forget, however, that anonymity has great benefits as well: the ability to say things you really think without the fear of social & political persecution, similarly whistleblowing. Confessing your mistakes anonymously may take a load of your back and let you move on to better things.<p>Ideally, I want to live in a society where people <i>say what they mean</i>, and <i>mean what they say</i>. Where free speech is not merely <i>theory</i> but <i>practice</i>. I also want to live in a society where we treat each other with the respect that human beings deserve.<p>Part of the respect that human beings deserve is the respect for their right to speak freely without threat of persecution. As a practical matter, this means the right to speak under their own name <i>as well as the right to speak anonymously</i>.
I should clarify what I meant by "decay"--services can continue to grow, but if the quality (defined loosely) goes below a certain point, I think it's hard to make them into really valuable businesses.
<i>In fact, the closer to real identity internet forums get, the less they seem to decay.</i><p>Define decay. People voicing strong opinions or even being assholes to a certain degree doesn't count. It's a normal part of every community. Usenet was full of legendary flame wars, yet the level of discourse was still very high, and most people used real names to identify themselves.<p>Otherwise, all you get is a hugbox echo chamber where people with personality disorders and brittle egos thrive in a mutual self-affirmation, eradicating all discourse.
I haven't used it, but from what I understand it's an app where people tell secrets about something or someone. So that may be the first reason you may not like it, especially if it's about you. It doesn't have much to do with anonymity, but with the fact that it's supposed to be a community around divulging people's secrets. So even though it's "anonymous", it's actually <i>anti-privacy</i>.<p>Second, I'm anonymous on HN and I'm anonymous on Reddit. This should prove that what you need is not to ban anonymity, but to have good enough voting and filtering mechanisms, and a decent culture inside the community.<p>I'm also not entirely sure Twitter is getting better. If it is, it's only because you chose to follow certain people. But I imagine with Twitter growing its audience, a lot more of the "normal people", who may not be as educated, join Twitter and say a lot of nasty stuff online, much like they would offline.<p>As for Facebook, again, it may have gotten "better" for you because of its filtering mechanism, and because in time it learned to show you only certain types of posts.<p>So from your point of view, I think the main problems are with the type of community this is in the first place, and the "etiquette" for that community, and with Secret.ly being a new app and the founders not having enough time to polish things up.
This person seems to be confusing anonymity with lack of accountability. Back in the day, when people didn't use their real names on websites, communities relied on accountability to maintain good behavior. Some ways this is done are through reputation systems or moderation tools. Your real name wasn't known, but if you wanted to participate in any community you had to follow the community rules. Anonymity wasn't a hindrance to good behavior.<p>Facebook and other social networks don't usually have much accountability built in. You can be an ass on Facebook and not face any consequences. So Facebook actually only maintains "good behavior" by allowing closed communities (All my friends are well behaved, so all I see on Facebook is good behavior. If I behave badly my friends will react negatively, etc.). If you were able to look outside your own well-behaved bubble, you would see that real-name social networks aren't able to enforce good social norms. They just reinforce the social norms that are already dominant in your friend group.<p>An issue with the forced-identity aspect of social networks is you are only allowed one identity. You are discouraged from activities/communities/discussions that are sensitive or embarrassing or not accepted by your dominant peer group.<p>Not to say there is nothing good about these real-name social networks. They would have never reached such a broad cross-section of people with everyone registering via pseudo-anonymous handles. Using real names makes things more palatable and manageable for non-technically minded people.
This probably says a lot more about the author's need for anonymity than anything else. Yeah, persecuted Iranian journalists only need anonymity to "be mean". Derp. Yeah, Chinese dissidents only need it when they want to say something naughty. Living in a bubble is all comfy but let's not imagine that everyone in the world operates from the same luxurious position when deciding who needs anonymity and why...especially when your premise is based on scanning 4chan or Reddit.
I think the author had a negative emotional reaction to Secret and jumped too quickly to what he thought was a rational analysis of the theme.<p>He grabbed a few top of mind examples that supported his theory and tried to guess what was wrong with Secret, then extrapolated to anonymity in general. Had he slept on the text or sent to a few friends to review it, I could bet it would become different on the conclusions.
This reminded me of an excellent post the other day about an anonymous messaging network ("Rumor Monger") that ran inside Apple until management shut it down:<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7204558" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7204558</a><p>It got very little discussion, so if you didn't see it, I recommend it.
Anonymity is a tradeoff, and in my opinion it is hopelessly incorrect to focus on only one side of the tradeoff. It's like saying oxygen is bad because it's corrosive -- true, but it also happens to be essential to life.<p>There are times when anonymity can help people who are really in danger or who hope to call attention to broken systems. But you're never going to see that if you're focused on grousing about people being jerks. (I suspect that people do this as a way of elevating themselves above the muck, so to speak, but that is another topic entirely.)
Shii's essay on the strengths of anonymous communities is still the best I've read on the topic. It comes off as somewhat naive, being written in 2004 and updated in 2006, before 4chan had really exploded in popularity and set in stone what people think about when they hear the word "anonymous," but I think his assessment is still valid even in the 4chan of today. Forcing users to check their vanity at the door really does cut down on the superfluous garbage and keeps the conversation <i>about the topic</i> (or wherever the topic meanders) and not <i>about the people having the conversation.</i><p>If I could add a postscript to that essay, I'd say that it's 4chan's <i>lax administrative policies,</i> <i>distaste for moderation and censorship</i>, and the incredible <i>size</i> of the community that give it its unruly flavor, not the fact that the posters are anonymous. In the smaller, more carefully moderated anonymous communities I've been a part of, things are much closer to the ideals shii describes.<p><a href="http://wakaba.c3.cx/shii/shiichan" rel="nofollow">http://wakaba.c3.cx/shii/shiichan</a>
> Anonymity breeds meanness<p>Only if the users aren't invested in their identity. It has also been shown that positive anonymous communities can be built.
I can see Secret becoming popular. I've obsessed with the topic of anonymity online. I created dmtri.com in order to foster anonymity online. I believe that people long to be honest with themselves, but the avenues of doing so is extremely limited and difficult. I hope that Secret will be one of few outlets for people like that.<p>The problem I have with Secret is that, in order to be marketable to marketers and VCs, Secret weakened the purpose of anonymity online. Straight honesty. Without the ability to be honest with yourself and others, anonymity online is only half good. The community rules they have are destructive to people who want to be honest with themselves.
You don't need a more extreme example like dissidents or protesters to make a case for anonymity. Pseudonyms have been used by people to spark intellectual and political debate for hundreds (thousands?) of years.<p>When people feel like they are the only one that espouses an idea, they are less likely to share it publicly for fear of shame. When they are given anonymity, they can share freely and potentially find that their idea is actually commonly shared.
Anonymity isn't as black and white as everyone keeps portraying it. Take HN for example - we all have usernames, some of which are our real names. Sites like 4Chan and LikeALittle - all harbor true anonymity. I agree with Sam that those sites decay over time. However, sites like Reddit and HN that are built around pseudo-anonymity and voting have been able to produce thoughtful discussion
It might have been helpful to distinguish between anonymity within small groups (Secret) vs anonymity in large groups (4chan).<p>In 4chan, particularly on /b/, there are so many anonymous participants that it's very unlikely that one person would recognize another. Someone could write something personal about another person, and it seems unlikely that anyone would care, and certainly no-one would remember. There are few real-world consequences. (I found a fun paper on anonymity in 4chan by merely searching for "studies on anonymity" <a href="http://projects.csail.mit.edu/chanthropology/4chan.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://projects.csail.mit.edu/chanthropology/4chan.pdf</a>)<p>But in Secret, part of the point is to exchange information about the real world. This seems to be much more likely to have ill effects, possibly like the ones gruesome referred to in the "Rumor Monger" software at Apple that he mentioned elsewhere in this thread.<p>Has anyone found anything interesting about small group anonymity? Is that a useful distinction?
Anonymity, and the effectiveness of anonymity has a lot to do with how the site, or product is structured. With secret, you have the app directly plugged into your friends-list, and while the content is 'anonymous', it's a watered down version of true anonymity. All apps like this serve to do is breed insecurity and malcontent amongst our peers.<p>Now imagine another version of Secret, where you truly anonymize message sends. Instead of seeing content from your friends lists, you see content from the world-over. Instead of some sort of petty, mean-girls-esque hate journal, it could be a modern, 21'st century version of the confessional (not that I'm a fan of the confessional, but you gotta admit there's something rather tantalizing in the concept).<p>SV seems to be stuck in a mire where product has to revolve around one's social group. What happened to the days of good old voyeurism?
> they need anonymity for mean things and things they are embarrassed about<p>In my mind, it's the "embarrassed about" point that makes such an app interesting.<p>Facebook, twitter, etc, is all cleaned up - the things you aren't exactly proud of, the dark moments, etc, are removed.<p>Which leads to a whole lot feeling like everyone on Facebook is doing better than you. It's nice to see the darker side of people, sometimes.
There are some individuals that <i>SHOULD</i> have negative things said about them. I'm not trying to be controversial but why do we insist that everyone deserves sugary platitudes? It would be interesting to tally positive, neutral and negative comment counts for each person mentioned.
Usually people share a link to the app of piece of content they are denigrating. Might someone share a link to this "Secret" app he speaks about.
" Anonymous social networks have been (thus far, anyway) in the category of services that get worse as they get bigger--unlike services like Facebook or Twitter that get better as they get bigger"