The Internet Where No One Knows Your Name - The Forecast - Quartz

2021-11-28 14:01 ✦ The internet where no one knows your name — The Forecast — Quartz
✦ The internet where no one knows your name
YOU’RE READING THE THE FORECAST EMAIL FROM NOVEMBER 22, 2021
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Michelle Spearman
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Hi Quartz members,
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Early internet communities in Manage the 1990s like Usenet, LambdaMOO,

preferences
Li J l dM S
https://qz.com/emails/quartz-forecast/2090414/ d f lt d t th t ld 1/8
LiveJournal, and MySpace defaulted to screen names that could
have as much or as little to do with a person’s real name as they
wanted. But in the early 2010s, the dominance of Facebook and
Google ushered in the real name web—where it became much more
common to post real names and personal information online.
Today, some users, from crypto bros to privacy activists, are

advocating for a return to the pseudonymous web—even beyond
social media, and into our careers.
THE INTERNET, 1990S TO 2010S
Pseudonyms flourished in the early days of the web because there

was no expectation that you reveal anything personal online (beyond
academics, who had institutional emails).
As a result, people were able to explore their identities and fantasies

in chat rooms and other shared online spaces (IRCs, MUDs, and
MOOs) while connecting with people across the world. Not
everything was perfect, however. Cultural knowledge was easily lost,
information was harder to sift through without curation algorithms or
verifiable entities, and the web felt much more disjointed and clunky
compared to the integrated systems we have today (like using your
Google login across several sites), Oxford research fellow Bernie
Hogan told Quartz.
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https://qz.com/emails/quartz-forecast/2090414/ 2/8
Georgia Tech College Of Computing
CALL ME BY MY (SCREEN) NAME
Then came Facebook, which opened to the public in the late 2000s.
Because it launched as a way to connect people to their in-person
college classmates, real name policies made sense as a way to
scale it beyond requiring Ivy League email addresses. Some saw
using real names online as a way to deter the increasingly big
problem of bad behavior: South Korea introduced a real name law in
2007 after a cyberbullying-related suicide and national political
slander against the government.
This issue ballooned during the nym wars of the early 2010s, when
sites like Facebook and Google Plus cracked down on people using
pseudonyms to enforce its culture of real world connections and
inhibit online harassment. In an interview published in the 2010 book
The Facebook Effect, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said:
“You have one identity. The days of you having a different image for
your work friends or co-workers and for the other people you know
are probably coming to an end pretty quickly… Having two identities
for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity.”
But this equation started to change. Real name policies weren’t

stopping harassment, while user privacy/anonymity were taking on
renewed importance to the public. For example, South Korea’s real
name law
a more was struck
personalised down
browsing in 2012,
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THE STATUS QUO

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Today, it’s clear real name policies are not a fix-all—in fact, Jillian
York, the director for international freedom
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nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation, describes them as the

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“white man’s gambit ” as white men are often the ones who propose
white man s gambit, as white men are often the ones who propose
real name policies, but don’t realize how these policies might hurt
marginalized people. Starting in the mid 2010s, platforms like
Facebook and Google began to roll back real name requirements.
“Americans, especially, tend to forget that, just because they’re free

to talk about their proclivities or whatever subculture they’re a part of,
most of the world is still not,” York says. “With increased surveillance
across the web, I think that it’s really, really important that people are
able to protect their identities and to use pseudonyms online to be
able to explore who they are.”
Today, we’ve become adept at moving across alts, finstas, and

identities from platform to platform—sometimes, even within
platforms—to explore aspects of our identity and protect our privacy.
From entertainment (Virtual Youtubers and influencers) to publishing
(writers and scientists) to activism (Hong Kong protestors) to social
networks, many already operate pseudonymously. The question is,
what will it take for pseudonyms to be the norm again?
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“There’s this really strange push-pull in society where people

are increasingly uncomfortable with policing offline, but they’re
increasingly pushing for policing online. And I don’t really
understand this dichotomy… If we’re trying to reform or abolish
the police offline, why are we trying to turn corporations into the
police online?” — Jillian York
A CYPHERPUNK FUTURE IN THE MAKING?
For pseudonyms to catch on, platforms have to grapple with the

question of persistence: “It’s the persistence of a pseudonym that
creates relationships and accountability and more prosocial
behavior,” Jeremy Birnholtz, a communication studies professor at
Northwestern University, says. (Disclaimer: Birnholtz was my
professor at Northwestern).
Some Discord servers have leveling bots to indicate how active a

community member is. But different tacks are needed when identity
verification is more important; dating apps, for example, have
experimented with ways to disincentivize catfishing via photo checks
without requiring names.
On the individual level, how costly—and how normatively acceptable

—will it be to start over, to be pseudonymous? “Not having a carrd is
a red flag” / “dni [do not interact] if you don’t have a carrd in bio” is
common Twitter discourse in certain fandom spaces, where some
are shunned as suspicious for being pseudonymous/anonymous.
(Carrds are one-page
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@hwngmenu
Currently, it’s hard to imagine the web becoming fully

pseudonymous, as social networks have become the predominant
way of maintaining real life relationships. But the capacity for
pseudonymity should be protected, rather than eschewed.
So what are the new battlefields for pseudonymity online? Here are
what a few experts envision.
Crypto, NFTs, and the decentralized web
In crypto, the idea of a more pseudonymous internet has gained

traction as a part of the shift toward the decentralized, interoperable
web (aka Web3). Several bitcoin developers, for example, work
under pseudonyms to avoid scrutiny, maintain privacy, or detach
their new projects from their established reputation, CoinDesk
reported. DeFi project SushiSwap launched with a largely
pseudonymous team.
Hogan argues that the rise of NFTs is helpful in thinking about this
transition. NFTs allow us “to create authenticable identities that are
cross platform that don’t need to be tethered to your real name
identification credentials,” Hogan says. “They don’t need to be
tethered to your birth date, your postcode, and gender, just for
someone else to know
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TheUse precise geolocation data. Actively scan device characteristics for identification. Store and/or access
metaverse
While the metaverse remains largely vague and undefined, the
concept as well as the companies working toward it are redefining
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“Even if we take away the Facebook Metaverse, we are seeing a
push towards VR and AR, andManage preferences
spaces where presumably you are
going to be a representation of your offline self,” York says. “I don’t

know what those spaces will require in terms of identity, but it worries
me.”
Beefing up privacy tech
Current pseudonymity doesn’t guarantee anonymity. Birnholtz raises

the question: Pseudonymous or identifiable to whom? People leave
identifiable records behind that ISPs, platforms, or banks can still
trace, so the pseudonymous aspect largely applies to other users of
that platform.
Amid a big tech backlash, users could begin erring on the more
extreme side of privacy, it could mean using privacy-oriented,
decentralized tools: Tor browsers to block trackers, DuckDuckGo
rather than Google search, multiple email addresses, crypto wallets,
and a multitude of screen names.
KEEP LEARNING
A More Pseudonymous Internet (The Atlantic)

A Case for Pseudonyms (Electronic Frontier Foundation)
Can Fake Accounts Save the Internet? (The New York Times)
Pseudonyms and the Rise of the Real-Name Web (Bernie
Hogan)
Is it weird to still be a virgin? Anonymous, locally targeted
questions on facebook confession boards (Jeremy Birnholtz)
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Online Anonymity (Anonymous
Planet)
SOUND OFF
What sites would you use a pseudonym on?
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identity to social media
2021-11-28 14:01
y g y
✦ The internet where no one knows your name — The Forecast — Quartz
In last week’s poll about asynchronous work, 34% of you said you
wish more than half of your work was done asynchronously.
Have a great week,
—Jasmine Teng, associate membership editor, (trying to avoid the

mortifying ordeal of being known)
ONE 😮 THING
One interesting case is when pseudonymous networks pop up within

platforms that have largely enforced real name policies. Before
smartphones and Grindr became common in India, gay people
constructed fake Facebook profiles with a variant of their real name
to interact pseudonymously with a network of known people—albeit
isolated from the rest of Facebook, according to Birnholtz.
“Facebook’s just a generic infrastructure for connecting people,”

Birnholtz says. “… There are cases of pseudonymous networks that
are isolated within today’s platforms, but they’re rare.”
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2021-11-28 14:01 ✦ The internet where no one knows your name — The Forecast — Quartz

✦ The internet where no one knows your name

Early internet communities in Manage the 1990s like Usenet, LambdaMOO,

Today, some users, from crypto bros to privacy activists, are

THE INTERNET, 1990S TO 2010S

Pseudonyms flourished in the early days of the web because there

As a result, people were able to explore their identities and fantasies

Georgia Tech College Of Computing

CALL ME BY MY (SCREEN) NAME

But this equation started to change. Real name policies weren’t

THE STATUS QUO

nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation, describes them as the

“Americans, especially, tend to forget that, just because they’re free

Today, we’ve become adept at moving across alts, finstas, and

Nijisanji Allow cookies

“There’s this really strange push-pull in society where people

A CYPHERPUNK FUTURE IN THE MAKING?

For pseudonyms to catch on, platforms have to grapple with the

Some Discord servers have leveling bots to indicate how active a

On the individual level, how costly—and how normatively acceptable

Currently, it’s hard to imagine the web becoming fully

Crypto, NFTs, and the decentralized web

In crypto, the idea of a more pseudonymous internet has gained

going to be a representation of your offline self,” York says. “I don’t

Beefing up privacy tech

Current pseudonymity doesn’t guarantee anonymity. Birnholtz raises

A More Pseudonymous Internet (The Atlantic)

Real name on everything Allow cookies

Just social media sites Reject cookies

Everything, from email to workManage preferences

Have a great week,

—Jasmine Teng, associate membership editor, (trying to avoid the

One interesting case is when pseudonymous networks pop up within

“Facebook’s just a generic infrastructure for connecting people,”

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