How Facebook is Killing Your Authenticity

This shouldn't surprise anybody who has lived in a small town -- when you are in a fish bowl, you manage how you present yourself differently than when you are in a big urban anonymous situation. I choose not to live in small towns, and I choose not have a facebook persona, precisely because I don't want to have to worry this crap. (I think Facebook has already lost its mojo because of these issues, but that is another story.)<p>Regarding "authenticity": please, give me a break about the "real you". The part inside you that wants to rip off your clothes and tell dirty jokes is no more "real" than the part, also inside you, that maintains your social persona. Without sociality -- and the maintenance of personas and ethics -- you don't exist, period. Even the idea of "authenticity" is given to us, a (rather lame) invention of the 19th Century Romantics, Freud, and the 1960s.<p>(Edit: Some of the existenstialists would even go so far as to say there is no "real you", and that the anxiety created by this lack of anchoring is one of the most important aspects of the human condition.)

Yep, I saw this interestingly articulated here: <a href="http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbling/2010/11/the-psychology-of-twitterjokes.html" rel="nofollow">http://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbli...</a><p>In essence, the power of Facebook to connect you with your personal friends also makes you re-make how you present yourself to the outside world.<p>You create a "purified identity", maybe as you see it a better, less controversial character for fear of offending, or perhaps more likely to please your 'friends'.

Alternate interpretation: Facebook is making you act like the authentic you all the time. If you are unwilling to stick to your principles because of what your friends will think, are they really your principles?

<i>Don’t believe me? Go to TechCrunch and count the comments on last week’s posts. Better yet, go read the comments. They suck. They’re sterile and neutered.</i><p>TechCrunch seems to be pretty happy with the result: <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/06/techcrunch-facebook-comments/" rel="nofollow">http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/06/techcrunch-facebook-comment...</a><p><i>The problem with tying internet-wide identity to a broadcast network like Facebook is that people don’t want one normalized identity, either in real life, or virtually.</i><p>Is there any evidence this is true outside of geekdom?<p><i>People yearn to be individuals. They want to be authentic. [...] The nature of commenting on the web needs to feel organic and fluid, just like it does in real life.</i><p>But real life rarely includes trolls.<p>I don't like Facebook comments at all, and as long as TechCrunch uses them I probably won't be commenting, but this article makes too many broad statements, with too little support, for my taste.

What <i>is</i> authentic behavior?<p>If you can say something with one group of friends, but need to change or hide that to speak to another group, are you being authentic?

The wonderful thing about real conversations is that they are confined to that moment in time and to the people you have them with, whether they know you or not. If you're in a new bar surrounded by people you don't know having an interesting conversation you can be whoever you want to be for the sake of the discussion or simply for fun. If proponents of 'open' want to destroy that they can go suck it. I deleted my Facebook account last year and more often than not, despite having lost the connection of people of whom I have dear memories, with every new day I become more convinced that my life is better without Facebook.

The (very real) prospect of Facebook owning your online identity is frightening.<p>I think it's already been well-established that people act differently under the guise of anonymity. This is both the power and the pain of the Internet. So it's no surprise that (effectively) anonymous comments have people acting like jerks.<p>There are basically two sites on the entire Internet where I will actually read comments: here and Stackoverflow. Everywhere else (particularly reddit), it's basically just noise (often hateful, uninformed noise).<p>The fact that Facebook comments can effectively wipe out much bad behaviour (possibly taking a lot of good with it; time will tell) makes it highly attractive to site owners. Even on my lowly, largely desserted personal blog, I've basically turned comments to moderated because of spam and general noise.<p>The fact that Facebook owns your identity in this way is a little scary but I think they'll either come underdone or, in the coming years, the issue will become so important that governments will intervene (this is, in part, why I think the upside to Facebook now isn't all that great; there's only so big you can get).<p>What Facebook will probably need to combat in coming years is spam int he form of fake profiles. This will probably take some time for the spammers to create profiles that are very hard to separate from the real (automatically I mean) but it will happen (IMHO). What then?<p>There are already services selling votes on sites like reddit. Why not likes on Facebook? The problem is harder but certainly not impossible.

I have no trouble being as about as honest as I'd like to be on Facebook.<p>Of course, the fact that I don't use my real name or anything connected to my professional career there makes it easier.<p>I shudder for those who do use their names - I also harass them on Facebook for doing so.<p>Being part of a subculture where anonymity is encouraged helps too.<p>If anything Facebook encourages me to create a more fake but entertaining me. But I don't mind saying that - on Facebook.

so... time to start maintaining multiple facebook accounts?

Nobody is forcing you to friend everyone and their cat. Personally I have exactly 42 friends on facebook. They were chosen carefully to create what I call the "facebook context". It allows me to act stupid and not care.<p>Quite liberating.<p>Alternatively, you could argue that we should, collectively as a society, realize that humans act differently in different contexts and that <i>that is awesome</i>. I'm fairly certain your grandma realizes you talk dirtier to your friends than you do to her ... so why can't "real important professional-like" people understand the same?

You have this same problem in "real" life too.<p>Eventually, you either twist yourself into someone who turns into a different person each time you see someone you know or stop caring about what other people think of you and be who you feel like to be.<p>IMHO, Facebook hasn't got much to do with it except possibly lower the bar to be yourself. Thanks to Facebook, when you <i>do have everyone</i> on the same board you can't possibly be everything for everyone anymore: you can either shut down completely or just resort to only being yourself.

2 Simple solutions to this problem.<p>1. Create fake FB account if you don't want you real identity associated with your comments. 2. Don't bother to comment on sites which asks for fb login.

The one thing I don't like about using Facebook (or similar sites) for commenting on sites like TechCrunch is that my Facebook friends couldn't give two hoots in hades about my "tech world" blabbering. For them it's mostly irrelevant.<p>I don't use Facebook as a business networking tool -- I use LinkedIn for that -- instead I just use it on a purely social level and I don't really want the two to mix.<p>Business and social don't need to mix in order for you to be authentic.

What about looking at this from the perspective of the site owner? Facebook comments can do more for the site owners than the alternate comment systems. Increased exposure through facebook news feeds should help introduce their sites to new people.<p>Just as important is the back-channel that allows comments to be created and shown in different places (this was mentioned as an "incidental" note in Tech Crunch's article describing the comments system <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/01/facebook-rolls-out-overhauled-comments-system-try-them-now-on-techcrunch/" rel="nofollow">http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/01/facebook-rolls-out-overhaul...</a>). I find it particularly appropriate to bring this up here on HN because I expect Tech Crunch to look with envy or exasperation when comments are posted HERE (HN) about stories appearing THERE (TC). Why shouldn't TC want to have all of the relevant, useful comments appear next to the content they create and host? Facebook comments could help that happen (indeed, so could have disqus if it were used by HN and TC both. Alas, disqus, RIP).

Contrary to the author's opinion, I think the facebook comment system almost forces a synthesis of various online personae into a single facebook persona—one that's at least based in part on your real-world self. And while that may often increase self-censorship, it's not at the expense of authenticity. I would argue that it encourages authenticity.<p>One interesting thing that facebook commenting seems to have done is connect people based on mutual interest. Until now, it's primarily been a networking tool based on a map of real world relationships (with the exception of pages, and those are most often not community building but vehicles for one-way, marketing driven communications). It's a pretty radical shift for facebook.

In my experience many of the anonymous comments which are mean, snarky, sarcastic, etc, often have a valid point, but the commenter is too lazy to articulate that point in a way that does not come off as trolling.<p>Perhaps they don't have enough time or enough patience to properly explain themselves, but if that's the case, perhaps leaving no comment is a better option? It's not as satisfying for the venter, but it's a better experience for everyone else.<p>Making commenter's use a tangible "real" identity makes them think twice about posting lazy rants.

tl;dr: You will probably act differently when not hidden behind the veil of (optional/partial) anonymity.<p>&#62; Face it, authenticity goes way down when people know their 700 friends, grandma, and 5 ex-girlfriends are tuning in each time they post something on the web.<p>This should probably refer to your "extended social circle" as you can't actually have 700 friends. See: Dunbar's Number

Facebook actually handles this pretty well, I have different groups of people and I can cater my status message carefully to each and every one of them.<p>This problem happens more to me when I'm on twitter however, as I'd like to tweet about how crazy my weekends were, but my entire network is reading along so I really couldn't.

I haven't posted a comment on TechCrunch with the new system, but I do see there is a checkbox for "Post to Facebook." Seems that would solve the problem of your 700 "friends" being exposed to your comments. Unless the comment still really does end up on Facebook in some way which I wouldn't be surprised by.

What is the problem here?

I disagree, but I think it depends on the person as well. You can use facebook to do whatever you desire with it. While people try to 'censor' themselves in many social situations, I think society as a whole is moving towards more acceptance. Thanks to the internet, you can always find someone else 'out there' who has the same outlook on life as you. You are also able to see people from every different background and way of thinking, opening yourself up to better understanding and acceptance of them. You can be who you are wherever you are in the world and find acceptance online, even if in your hometown you may be ostracized. Interesting film concerning this: <a href="http://www.weliveinpublicthemovie.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.weliveinpublicthemovie.com/</a>