Facebook's Randi Zuckerberg: Anonymity Online 'Has To Go Away'

"Randi Zuckerberg, Facebook’s marketing director, has a fix for cyberbullying: stop people from doing anything online without their names attached.

Facebook requires all members to use their real names and email addresses when joining the social network -- a policy that has been difficult at times to enforce, as the prevalence of spam accounts or profiles assigned to people’s pets suggest.

Zuckerberg, who is Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg’s sister, argued that putting an end to anonymity online could help curb bullying and harassment on the web.

'I think anonymity on the Internet has to go away,' she said during a panel discussion on social media hosted Tuesday evening by Marie Claire magazine. “People behave a lot better when they have their real names down. … I think people hide behind anonymity and they feel like they can say whatever they want behind closed doors.'

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt has also made this suggestion, calling online anonymity “dangerous” and predicting that governments will eventually 'demand' that people use their names for all online activity.

But the proposal to tie real-world identities to online actions is a controversial one, with many privacy and free speech advocates countering that anonymity is necessary to protect dissidents and other individuals, such as sexual abuse victims.

Gigaom’s Matthew Ingram wrote recently, 'Many people believe that requiring real names will solve the problems of trolls and bad behavior, but they don’t -- and that policy can have negative consequences in terms of suppressing dialogue about important topics.'

Though pressed several times to name what new features Facebook will offer to better safeguard security on the social networking site, Zuckerberg declined to offer specific examples of forthcoming initiatives."

Leon Mcnichol wrote:This is as ridiculous as demanding an ID from a stranger i see in the street. Sure people will feel more exposed with their names on, but the obvious catch is that i can have acess to true data of anybody with a few clicks, and thats why they want this to go through, such data is worth millions.

Rev Scare wrote:

Leon Mcnichol wrote:This is as ridiculous as demanding an ID from a stranger i see in the street. Sure people will feel more exposed with their names on, but the obvious catch is that i can have acess to true data of anybody with a few clicks, and thats why they want this to go through, such data is worth millions.

We provide our names on numerous occasions offline. It is not the same as demanding an ID from a stranger, but more along the lines of joining a club in which members are known. In this day and age, I do not see it as highly threatening for anybody to know my basic information. What does it truly matter? Malicious individuals can find valuable data quite readily as it is.

I do, of course, see the potential danger in this under capitalism as far as politics and other controversial subjects are concerned, but anonymous "action" is no form of action in any case.

Leon Mcnichol wrote:

Rev Scare wrote:

Leon Mcnichol wrote:This is as ridiculous as demanding an ID from a stranger i see in the street. Sure people will feel more exposed with their names on, but the obvious catch is that i can have acess to true data of anybody with a few clicks, and thats why they want this to go through, such data is worth millions.

We provide our names on numerous occasions offline. It is not the same as demanding an ID from a stranger, but more along the lines of joining a club in which members are known. In this day and age, I do not see it as highly threatening for anybody to know my basic information. What does it truly matter? Malicious individuals can find valuable data quite readily as it is.

I do, of course, see the potential danger in this under capitalism as far as politics and other controversial subjects are concerned, but anonymous "action" is no form of action in any case.

I see Randi's words as something like, if you want to use the internet, you have to put your ID. It's where this leads you, it's not just a matter of putting my first and last name in some site, it's having a backtrack of everything you do, say, and see on the internet. Now would you like that? I wouldn't, and i can see the obvious implications of such a thing.

If it depended on facebook, all your info would be there, and all the sites or foruns you logged on would be using their login, and obviously they would have records of that, that they could sell to the highest bidders.

Leon Mcnichol wrote:

Rev Scare wrote:

Leon Mcnichol wrote:This is as ridiculous as demanding an ID from a stranger i see in the street. Sure people will feel more exposed with their names on, but the obvious catch is that i can have acess to true data of anybody with a few clicks, and thats why they want this to go through, such data is worth millions.

We provide our names on numerous occasions offline. It is not the same as demanding an ID from a stranger, but more along the lines of joining a club in which members are known. In this day and age, I do not see it as highly threatening for anybody to know my basic information. What does it truly matter? Malicious individuals can find valuable data quite readily as it is.

I do, of course, see the potential danger in this under capitalism as far as politics and other controversial subjects are concerned, but anonymous "action" is no form of action in any case.

I see Randi's words as something like, if you want to use the internet, you have to put your ID. It's where this leads you, it's not just a matter of putting my first and last name in some site, it's having a backtrack of everything you do, say, and see on the internet. Now would you like that? I wouldn't, and i can see the obvious implications of such a thing.

If it depended on facebook, all your info would be there, and all the sites or foruns you logged on would be using their login, and obviously they would have records of that, that they could sell to the highest bidders.

Rev Scare wrote:


I do not see the situation to be as ominous as you apparently do. Tracing an individual's personal information and requiring a name to communicate are not necessarily related issues. Granted, I do not find enforcement of such a proposal to be in any way feasible or even desirable for the internet as a whole, but the idea itself is not something I find disagreeable in and of itself.

I do not quite understand upon what basis you are drawing your conclusions. What does it matter if your name is visible whilst communicating with others online? I do not find it to be in any way problematic, and the magnitude of the procedure could only be mitigated if it were equally applicable to all clients. As far as "tracing" your personal history is concerned, there is no manner of such being visible to the majority of users since it would pertain to your IP address, not to your personal name. All of your personal browsing history is already detectable to internet service providers and would, by extension, be accessible by the state.

Are you implying a threat in terms of identity theft or privacy issues in general? With regard to the former, the basic information which most individuals would provide online is meaningless and can already be discovered by anybody willing to scour government databases. It could be argued that anti-anonymity measures would facilitate criminal misconduct, but this would be a marginal issue besides the central topic.

Leon Mcnichol wrote:

I think you are not understand the full impact of what she means.

I have an account on facebook. But i don't have my real name there.

What she want's to do is make it impossible for me to put a fake name there. Now tell me, how do you expect to be able to control that?

Of course, having access to ID databases, and forcing ISPs to identify who lives in wich household. And if they have acess to that, they, and anybody for tht matter, can have access to it, since what are they, if not a private company? This is like giving private corporations full "government" permissions in terms of your personal data.

Now tell me, how is this positive in any way? There will be less "trolls" on the internet? Less pedophiles? Well i think there will be less freedom on the internet too, and then what? This is like those post 9/11 measures to "improve safety".