Google and Facebook Want To End Online Anonymity
3 min read
My online persona, this one anyway, is Binary Blogger. I’d like to keep it that way. If you dig hard enough you will eventually tie this to my real world personality and I am not trying to hide it completely. However I have other personas, characters, egos scattered about that I want nothing referencing my real life. I’d also like to keep that the way it is as well. Going back to the early 90s I have used fake names, cool IDs, and other handles other than my name in every system I have used.
Google and Facebook do not want that practice to continue, they want your real names and see an end to online anonymity. So would the government, special interest groups, lobbyists, and any other fundamental movement that has an opposition. Hiding, I like to call it shielding, behind a persona is not a bad thing, in fact it’s what keeps the information free and flowing. Speaking your mind and expressions without the fear of reprisal and sometime things just need to be said regardless of the source.
Google and Facebook are targeting not for the control of information or movement to stop ‘cyber-bullying’ but to protect the ever so precious marketing dollar. The one thing that allows Google and Facebook to be at the top, money. When people don’t use their real names, then by nature you are not 100% yourself in the way to act or use the Internet and therefore you skew any marketing. Force everything you post and do to one name, you cannot hide from the money making ads that drive the Internet.
When you see these big corporations wanting to move toward this direction, think twice and ignore the reasons they give. They will never say it but it’s only about the advertising that it targeted to you. If you are not you then the advertising is being wasted and not generating as much as it could. Plain and simple.
However, there is a darker side, a more Big Brother side to the idea of forcing people to only use their real names on what they do on the Internet. I keep my real identity tight for security, privacy, freedom of thought, and it’s fun to have that second personality live in the cyber-world. Once you crack down on that you immediately start to control what is said. Who’s going to go on political rant that is against the grain of the majority if their real name is tagged to it, knowing he will get chastised or worse for his thoughts? So you don’t say anything and that position gets suppressed. Having the freedom to create a persona outside yourself gives you the buffer to get your thoughts out there and only have the debates within the space it was created in and not spill into the real world.
If we have to use real names are they going to stop authors from using pen names?
When you control how things are said you start to control how thoughts are formed and then you control thought. Lots of powerful agencies, groups, and governments have tried many times in the past to stop that free flowing thought that is in opposition that has the grip. You want to stay in power, control thought about the situation then you have no worry for an uprising. Look at the current world’s events and see how those countries are working out.
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| No, no, no |
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Binary Blogger has spent 20 years in the Information Security space currently providing security solutions and evangelism to clients. From early web application programming, system administration, senior management to enterprise consulting I provide practical security analysis and solutions to help companies and individuals figure out HOW to be secure every day.
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