* Anonymous opinion is fundamentally dishonest;

hyperborean

This is an article in today's Irish Times, http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2013/0109/1224328598599.html?via=mr. I purposefully didn't name the author because my suspicion is he is looking for a rise, my question to the good folk of after hours (this being the journalistic version of an After Hours post)

Is there merit in this article? Or does some journo calling anonymous posters on social media cowards get your goat as well?

Anonymity on the internet is the cloak of the coward


OPINION: Online debate appears lively and stimulating. But dialogue between masks always lacks the courage of conviction

This column is for you bigmouth86 and you @jadedcynic and the ubiquitous Lookatmeimsoclever and not forgetting screamingheadbanger@gmail.com.

There has been a lot of talk about you lot – anonymous commentators – lately and a lot of it has been emotionally confused and unbalanced.

Playing into the hands of both online trolls and old media protectionists, the debate quickly descends into whether you are “for” or “against” new technology.

Let me be clear: you are not Satan’s children, and you don’t deserve to be silenced. Rather, you deserve – in the main – to be ignored.

I say that conscious of the fact that about half of all commentators on the Irish Times website are anonymous (according to my own surveying this week), and conscious also there may be legitimate reasons to use a pseudonym (mainly for the likes of bloggers in Syria).

It’s also true that anonymity afflicts old media – from the use of unidentifiable texts on talk radio shows, to quoting unnamed and sometimes highly dubious sources, especially in “celebrity” stories.

The last paragraph put me in mind of another Socrates quote

“Strong minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, weak minds discuss people.”

Lad Of Banter

Socrates wrote: »

“If a donkey had kicked me, should I have taken him to court?”

yes, absolutly

Endless Nameless

I'm not reading all that crap

tl;dr: He can Deal With It.

Czarcasm

hyperborean wrote: »

This is a line from an article in today's Irish Times, I purposefully didn't name the author because my suspicion is he is looking for a rise, my question to the good folk of after hours (this being the journalistic version of an After Hours post)

Is there merit in this article? Or does some journo calling anonymous posters on social media cowards get your goat as well?



The last paragraph put me in mind of another Socrates quote

“Strong minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, weak minds discuss people.”

The hell OP, you said "a line". That was practically the whole article!

hyperborean

Czarcasm wrote: »

The hell OP, you said "a line". That was practically the whole article!

edited accordingly

squod

Anonymity is dead and gone OP. Article is mostly bullshít.

mikom

Cowards, you say.

I'll just leave this here.......... http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=77120064 and this as well....... http://www.broadsheet.ie/2011/12/02/the-irish-times-and-kate-fitzgerald/

MadsL

Until there is decent whistleblower protection in Ireland, I'm sorry, but politely - fuck you. Anonymity has meant corruption, crimes and abuses get uncovered.

DonkeyStyle \o/

the spread of anonymity on the internet

Pretty sure anonymity was here first, while the "here's my name and where I live" idiocy is what's spreading.

I'm sure online advertisers are just wetting themselves at the idea of everyone having a fixed identity across all sites on all their devices.

tigger123

MadsL wrote: »

Until there is decent whistleblower protection in Ireland, I'm sorry, but politely - fuck you. Anonymity has meant corruption, crimes and abuses get uncovered.

Is that really what that what the article is getting at though? Is it not about anonymity and public debate?

MadsL

tigger123 wrote: »

Is that really what that what the article is getting at though? Is it not about anonymity and public debate?

We have had a recent example on boards.ie with the whole Truly Irish/McAuliffe trucking debacle. Outing someone else's wrongdoing and falsehoods when they blatantly lied and denied business connections and then get caught out by the "anonymous" internet should not involve me saying I'm so-and-so at this address. Boards have my IP logged, if I do something illegal , I can easily be found. A username means that you can say to the bully who denies everything "here is the truth" without fear of personal reprisal. We need that.



Besides, very few ordinary users are truly anonymous on the internet.

Pottler

You're not anonymous, you just think you are. I'm deffo not, my pics there for all to see, anything I post I'd say in public and I'm the same gobby cnut irl. Like it or leave it, not too bothered tbh. Some might kid themselves that they're anonymous and so can say anything, but it doesn't work like that.

There(in keeping with yesterdays tradition)should be a poll. Do you feel anonymous when posting on the tinterned?

tigger123

MadsL wrote: »

We have had a recent example on boards.ie with the whole Truly Irish/McAuliffe trucking debacle. Outing someone else's wrongdoing and falsehoods when they blatantly lied and denied business connections and then get caught out by the "anonymous" internet should not involve me saying I'm so-and-so at this address. Boards have my IP logged, if I do something illegal , I can easily be found. A username means that you can say to the bully who denies everything "here is the truth" without fear of personal reprisal. We need that.



Besides, very few ordinary users are truly anonymous on the internet.

I'm not arguing against any of that, and neither is the article. The article is about online anonymity and its role in public debate.

IM0

Anonymous opinion is fundamentally dishonest

*head explodes*

DonkeyStyle \o/

tigger123 wrote: »

I'm not arguing against any of that, and neither is the article. The article is about online anonymity and its role in public debate.

Who decides what is or isn't "public debate"?

K-9

Unfortunately we aren't allowed to post full articles or even large transcripts due to copyright legislation, we especially can't post any news or opinion piece without a link, links which the Irish Time tried to charge Womens Aid for linking to on their website and which the IT had to issue a clarification on, they erred in billing them apparently.

Anyway the writer is Joe Humphreys. Our site policy is to only quote paragraphs but,

This column is for you bigmouth86 and you @jadedcynic and the ubiquitous Lookatmeimsoclever and not forgetting screamingheadbanger@gmail.com.

doesn't say a lot and might reduce those clicking on the link.

Might give my non mod opinion after I've taken a break from all that work.

mirekb

Anonymity is fine as long as we all understand that the internet is not constrained by societal norms and therefore shouldn't be given the same respect as 'real' life

MadsL

K-9 wrote: »

Unfortunately we aren't allowed to post full articles or even large transcripts due to copyright legislation, we especially can't post any news or opinion piece without a link, links which the Irish Time tried to charge Womens Aid for linking to on their website and which the IT had to issue a clarification on, they erred in billing them apparently.

*Head explodes*

Can I say (anonymously) that whole debacle with the NNI and links; you utter ****ng morons!

Thank you, feel better now, it's been bothering me.

starviewadams

Don't feel anonymous on t'internet,even on that Tor thing which says it is fairly anonymous.

The Th!ng

“Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.” - Oscar Wilde

gurramok

Pottler wrote: »

You're not anonymous, you just think you are. I'm deffo not, my pics there for all to see, anything I post I'd say in public and I'm the same gobby cnut irl. Like it or leave it, not too bothered tbh. Some might kid themselves that they're anonymous and so can say anything, but it doesn't work like that.

There(in keeping with yesterdays tradition)should be a poll. Do you feel anonymous when posting on the tinterned?

Agree. If someone posts serious defamatory stuff about a private individual, boards(any Irish website) can receive a request for that persons identity under a section 8 request from the authorities.(something like that) assuming you are traceable by your IP. Just be sensible and don't act the boll1x on websites.

What I see happening at the moment is because a govt minister committed suicide and they imply that criticism received online as well as telephony was responsible, the political elite are using this as an excuse for stricter laws so as not to defame any person in the public eye. That is not right as every person in the public eye should be open to any criticism in their field of excellence(in this case politicians), its an excuse for censorship.

anncoates

The democratization of opinion is something that appears to frighten a lot of print 'columnists'.

It's obviously hard to see their beloved fallacy of 'expert opinion' so vigorously debunked by so many people online that are just as knowledgeable and articulate as they are without being paid and feted for it.

Plus the loss of the tradional 'right of no reply' from your previously silenced audience must especially hurt hence the usual childish and vituperative categorisation of all online 'non-professional' commentators as cranks, weirdos etc.

Pottler

anncoates wrote: »

The democratization of opinion is something that appears to frighten a lot of print 'columnists'.

It's obviously hard to see their beloved fallacy of 'expert opinion' so vigorously debunked by so many people online that are just as knowledgeable and articulate as they are without being paid and feted for it.

Plus the loss of the tradional 'right of no reply' from your previously silenced audience must especially hurt hence the usual childish and vituperative categorisation of all online 'non-professional' commentators as cranks, weirdos etc.

I agree with you, except for the bit in bold. There are some seriously expert people here on boards for example, to me,often exceeding or bordering on genius, one of the things I love about Boards, you never know when some lad (or lass) will pipe up from the back of beyonds and have a grip on a subject that any "expert" would kill to have.

Madam_X

Surely being anonymous or quasi anonymous would cause people to be more honest and more likely to say stuff they wouldn't say in person?

The people who are deliberately dishonest to provoke are trolls, and they're a minority.

starviewadams

Good sensible article from Junior Minister Ciaran Cannon about regulation of social media here:

http://www.thejournal.ie/ciaran-cannon-social-media-regulation-745587-Jan2013/?utm_source=shortlink

MadsL

starviewadams wrote: »

Good sensible article from Junior Minister Ciaran Cannon about regulation of social media here:

http://www.thejournal.ie/ciaran-cannon-social-media-regulation-745587-Jan2013/?utm_source=shortlink

Did you just say sensible and minister in a sentence relating to the internet??

*feints*

K-9

Madam_X wrote: »

The people who are deliberately dishonest to provoke are trolls, and they're a minority.

This.

Why legislate for a minority? You legislate for the majority and let the courts/law deal with the miscreants.

I don't think Boards had much of a problem with abusive posts at Minister McEntee. I'm a bit biased but we don't allow much abuse on the politics board, even AH isn't that bad, though some of the posts wouldn't be to my liking and I don't like abusing public figures just because you can.

Give a good reason and civil criticism is worth far more.

Make the owners of comment sites more culpable, I'm looking at you YouTube and Google!