I should have been clear – I see the need to have a private profile on Facebook and LinkedIn, however the basic forms of identity validation such as a showing you have a profile and have friends provides some value. As an extension I see social profiles as an opportunity for Federated Identity – for example: I know Frank, you know Frank – I don’t know you, however because you know Frank I can increase my trust that you are who you say you are and that if I need to validate who you are I can always ask Frank. Note (Frank is fictitious but it is better than Person X and Y to use as an example).

If we can leverage our collective social maps so that we can get to know more people and realize that really we are not that many degrees of separation apart, perhaps we can build stronger online communities. That may sound very Utopian – however I am a student of Jane Jacobs and as more physical communities go online we need to get to know each other and trust one another.

Cheers – Eric

Such an earned reputation, however, does not have to be tied to your true name.

In the once upon a time days of the First Age of Magic, the prudent sorcerer regarded his own true name as his most valued possession but also the greatest threat to his continued good health, for–the stories go–once an enemy, even a weak unskilled enemy, learned the sorcerer’s true name, then routine and widely known spells could destroy or enslave even the most powerful. As times passed, and we graduated to the Age of Reason and thence to the first and second industrial revolutions, such notions were discredited. Now it seems that the Wheel has turned full circle (even if there never really was a First Age) and we are back to worrying about true names again… [Vernor Vinge, True Names]

In most parts of our social lives, we do not make a point of sharing everything with everyone. My boss doesn’t know which magazines I subscribe to. I do not know which boys my sister had a crush on in high school. My best friend didn’t tell me which jobs he was interviewing for. My parents don’t know who I am dating.

It is simply not proper or polite to expect that on the internet, everyone will share every detail with every person. The simplest way to hide these things is often to use an alias.

Similarly, the requirement that profiles correspond to real, named individuals goes a long way towards cutting down on the annoying and irresponsible behavior that so often clogs more anonymous sites.

There are some good arguments above for why not everyone can afford the luxury of exposing their real-world identity on-line, but for me the utility of dealing with real people outweighs any privacy concerns I might have. I suspect this is the case for most people as they age out of the experimental period in their life and establish careers that benefit from building a reputation on and off-line. Danah makes an interesting point about how each user can perform their own process of authenticating other contacts, but I don’t have the patience to execute that protocol for each person that friends me on a SNS. If they have a real name and photograph there are, as Eric points out, a few simple tests, such as “friends in common” that I can execute quickly and almost subconsciously. I just don’t have the time or patience to maintain the mapping between screen names and real-world identities. Facebook seems to be designed with the above attitudes at its center. That won’t make it suitable for everyone but I think it does account for a lot of its current success.

Thank you for taking the time to shed light on the other side of this argument. I think what started me off on the tangent was more than likely due to reference to Techcrunch and for me it is a place/blog where some great points are made by thoughtful commentators and then cheap shots are made from the anonymous.

I can see how based on your examples there is a need to operate with the cloak of a fake identity so that you can leverage the power of the tools that are out there but keep it to your own chosen group. The Techcrunch article however was arguing that SNS’s and Facebook specifically is not for finding new friends but to connect with existing friends. I think this is a fallacy based on a narrow view of who is using the site and its infancy. If a site like LinkedIn had a lax policy on people creating bogus profiles the implicit trust would break down in a hurry. The same goes for Facebook as it moves from young early adopters to an older demographic using it to re-connect and find new friends the need for valid profiles exist. Over 30% of my friends on Facebook are people I have never met in person – however we connected online – validated each other based on profile and cues of authenticity. I have been friended by people who are clearly not who they say they are – usually women who I don’t know, we have no friends in common, no interests in common and all of their friends are men. Spotting a fake is not that tough because it is done by validating based on cues not unlike cues one uses when you first meet someone.

However your point is well taken – if I was to take myself back to being a high school student I would be challenged to be as free and open as I am now for fear of the downstream repercussions. The reason why I am fascinated by your research is one of the things that always stands out for me is a piece that you wrote, (dannah), on the changing landscape for today’s teens. They socialize online because they cannot as easily socialize offline – not allowed to hang out at the mall in person because we keep them indoors for their own safety so they hang out online (this is what I took away from one of your articles – that may not have been the message and if it is not sorry about that). My children, (11,10,8) interact online with their friends from school and I do not see them acting online that differently than they do offline. They create bogus profiles for the purpose of getting around the age restrictions – I see the logic and don’t care because if you are not online you are not socially interacting. Perhaps there is the need for a SNS that has the features of Facebook but the anonymity of Club Penguin – you validate offline and hookup only via a known screen name. The problem is you can’t have it both ways because it is in practical terms it is way too much to manage. The reality is that there are those that create profiles on Facebook for the sole purpose of spamming others and the time and effort it takes to weed through all of them is something that Facebook does not want to do nor do they have the resources to do. You contact to many people you get a warning and maybe banned. Add too many friends too quickly you get a warning and then maybe banned. Why do they do this because that is the pattern of those that abuse the system. On our site we have just over 100K members and it is a lot of work to support and remove those that abuse. I cannot fathom having 80 million profiles and having to weed through all of them – it is way too time consuming – so you build tools that do it for you. Sure some get busted having not done any real crime – however the amount of effort to verify if you have done a real crime or not is a real challenge.

Fake profiles for privacy reasons or fear of repercussions have their place without a doubt. Fake profiles for the purpose of hiding your identity so that you may act in an inappropriate ways is not, in my opinion, worth protecting.

The line is blurry – however a line needs to be made and the rules need to be clear. Just as comments on this blog can be deleted due to abuse so to can profiles that are used with the intent to mislead with and eye to cause harm – figuring out which one is which is tough.

In any event I am merely a spectator and admittedly out of my league when it comes to all of this and I appreciate you both taking the time to comment. Your comments educate and for that I am grateful.

Cheers – Eric

@Mr. Dewhirst, I obviously disagree about the use of online pseudonyms. While its possible to have abuses, it it also possible for there to be no practical difference between someone who uses a pen name and someone who does not. I have years worth of reputation built up with this sobriquet in various pockets of the ‘net, but see no need to tie it to my real person in a public way. I could just as easily have chosen a real-sounding name that is not too rare but not too common, blended in with millions of other search results, and had everyone thinking it was my real name. Facebook is the only major socially-oriented service that requires actual personal data in practice. Google does not. Yahoo does not. Microsoft does not. Nor do virtually any of the other “2.0″ sites to come along in the last couple of years. They all find a way to weed out abusers, and people who value their privacy are happy.

As for teachers… It isn’t about shame, it’s about social appropriateness. Teachers are old enough to drink. Teachers date, have sex, and engage in other behaviors that are considered age inappropriate for minors. Teachers know that they must operate differently when around their students than in other contexts, not because of shame, but because of what’s appropriate. Teachers aren’t supposed to express their political views in the classroom. When teachers chaperon school dances with their partners, they aren’t supposed to engage in public displays of affection, even if their partner is opposite sex. The internet collides contexts and while you might be fortunate enough to have a life in which distinct contexts don’t matter, there are plenty of folks who have very legitimate reasons to separate contexts. Plenty of teachers have gotten fired for expressing political views in the classroom. Should teachers’ expression of political viewpoints online be treated as though it is in the classroom? Imagine that teacher is in a school with a large number of helicopter parents who might push the school to fire that teacher should their views be part of public discourse that their kids can access. Wouldn’t the teacher be better off just not putting her or his name to political commentary? Sure, I’m a big fan of people being able to stand behind their words, but shouldn’t that teacher have the right to make a decision that is best for her/him?