In Defense of Anonymity as Identity

In last week’s issue of The Stute, Joseph Brosnan, the editor in chief, argued against online anonymity.  His statements echoed a 2011 statement from Randi Zuckerburg, Facebook’s marketing director, that “anonymity on the Internet has to go away... 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.”

            Both ignore the necessity of anonymity in our society.  Anonymity provides a shield for those who would be hurt or threatened for what they write or say.  The media has relied on anonymous sources for years; one of the most important being Deep Throat.  Deep Throat informed Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein about the Nixon administration’s involvement in the break in at the Democratic National Committee offices in the Watergate Hotel.  He didn’t reveal his identity (Mark Felt, FBI Assistant Director) until 31 years after Nixon left office, out of fear for his job and his safety.  If he hadn’t had the option of speaking anonymously, we may never have learned what truly happened at Watergate.

            Writing anonymously also forces readers to focus on the writing itself, rather than the person writing it.  A 16 year old Ben Franklin wrote editorials for the New England Courant using the name Silence Dogood.

            “Being still a Boy, and suspecting that my Brother would object to printing any Thing of mine in his Paper if he knew it to be mine, I contriv'd to disguise my Hand, & writing an anonymous Paper I put it in at Night under the Door of the Printing House. It was found in the Morning & communicated to his Writing Friends when they call'd."

            Many early feminist writers also wrote anonymously, knowing that they would not be taken seriously otherwise.  Fanny Burney anonymously wrote novels in the late 18^th century about the role of women in English aristocracy, as did Sarah Scott and Lady Mary Montague.  Jane Austen published her first novel, Sense and Sensibility, anonymously, and the rest “By the Author of Sense and Sensibility.” Austen’s name wasn’t added until after her death.

            There’s an old quote I can’t find a source for, but will proceed to paraphrase.  “For friends to stay friends, they shouldn’t discuss religion or politics.”  Both are incredibly important to our identities, and they are also things that don’t necessarily belong on Facebook.  Everyone has that friend or distant relative who constantly posts about President Obama (or other liberal/conservative figure of choice) being a “gay/nazi/muslim/reptilian overlord,” disproving Brosnan and Zuckerburg’s theory that people will behave respectably when tied to a single “real” persona.

Without going into the paranoid fantasy of “the government will track down everyone whose political affiliation on Facebook is set to Democrat/Republican and imprison them in FEMA run concentration camps,” I simply don’t want to make my political beliefs known to the world, but that doesn’t mean I don’t ever feel a need to discuss them.  Posting anonymously, without any way to connect my statements to my real world persona, allows me to. 

Of course people will behave poorly while under the shield of anonymity.  It makes harassing others easier, and many people will only say things if they believe no one can link it back to them (while people believe there is no way to connect them to anonymous statements, they are most often wrong).  However, it’s not difficult to filter these voices out, and the benefits provided by anonymous speech far outweigh this downside.

I don’t believe any of my beliefs are particularly radical or that I need anonymity to protect myself, but here’s one I am willing to sign my real name to: anonymous speech is paramount to maintaining a free society and protecting individuality.

-Dennis Stewart