Anonymity
Rory Cellan-Jones of BBC’s dot.life blog writes:
Now anonymity is a valuable, indeed vital protection for junior staff inside corporations or public bodies, or people from countries with repressive governments, who would otherwise feel unable to contribute their views or provide valuable information to blogs like this.
But doesn’t “Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells” have more credibility if she writes as Josephine Bloggs of Acacia Gardens?
The answer is no. Courage does not equate to or even necessarily correlate with truth or validity. I strongly disagree with the misguided rhetoric directed at anonymity. My position is that if you have anonymous trolls on your blog, it’s a problem of trolling and not of anonymity. The idea that someone’s comment has more credibility — aside from subjective credibility; I am not talking psychology here, but epistemology, i.e., I’m talking about who we ought to trust, not who we are psychologically disposed to trust — if they attach their real name to it is a misdirected ad hominem. Paradoxically, we’re most willing to award anonymity to people in situations where the identity of the source is most important. If some whistleblower claims that there are shady business deals going on in a major corporation, or hidden torture going on orchestrated by some government or other, whether the informant is really someone who’s in a position to know these things is crucial to the credibility of the information. Anyone can say there’s evil stuff going on, but only those who are actually privvy to the facts of the matter — what is going on behind closed doors — are actually reliable. Yet we are extremely quick to allow whistleblowers whose identity is crucial to determining the veracity of their claims anonymity, while average commenters — whose information is essentially a series of arguments, facts linked to their sources and personal opinions — are suddenly less credible unless they attach their name to it, when in fact their identity is irrelevant to the content and veracity of their claims.
There is a misguided notion here that courage has something to do with truth or veracity. If you don’t have the courage of your convictions, if you’re not prepared to attach your name and reputation to your opinions, you are suddenly less credible. Psychologically, that may or may not be so, but logically, this is a fallacy. Ad hominem is a fallacy of irrelevance: it is an attack on the messenger’s character when the message’s credibility doesn’t depend on said messenger’s character. The fact is that the messenger’s character and position is incredibly relevant when it comes to whistleblowing, but largely irrelevant when it comes to a comment of the type “this course of action is right for reasons #1, #2 and #3 (see sources A, B and C)”.
I’m not arguing that journalists should stop keeping sensitive informants anonymous. I’m not arguing for a reduction of anonymity, but for an extension for it. It’s not our place to judge the reasons why a person chooses to be anonymous when we’re discussing the merits of a universal healthcare plan or the relative merits of Lost and Heroes or whatever. Maybe anonymous commenters are cowards, maybe they don’t dare to stand up for their convictions even though all they risk losing is their good reputation, or maybe they’re facing persecution and torture — who cares? This stuff is simply not relevant in most discussions, and when it’s most relevant, we already have an established convention of applying anonymity liberally.
I understand that some blog owners, for instance, have found that as a practical matter, anonymous comments just leads to trolling, flaming, and spam. I understand that they might then choose to require real names, as a practical matter. But in principle, I think anonymity is largely orthogonal to on-topic discussions, and everyone should be allowed to be as anonymous as they want. It’s not for us to judge their motives; or, judge all you like, but don’t bring it into a forum of serious, on-topic discussion. It’s off topic, rude and epistemologically unjustified.
Pseudonymity is a great hybrid, too, and the BBC blog is effectively arguing against pseudonymous authors: people who retain identity through time, to whom stable opinions and dispositions and, dare I say it, identities can be attached — it’s just that these personas are cut off from the “real world” persona, the real name and the personality this person projects in other areas of life. And who cares? When we’re discussing aesthetics, politics, ethics, science, programming, engineering or just goofing around, it doesn’t matter, because the “real” identity of the poster is completely irrelevant. What matters psychologically is that we can relate to people, that we can form a stable picture of them and have some context in which to read their comments. Pseudonyms allow all this, cowardly or not. What matters epistemologically is very rarely the real identity of whoever is posting on a forum, or a blog, or writing a letter to the editor; and when it is, we have already established that anonymity is preferrable.
