Authentically Anonymous

Sarah Perez has an interesting post on RWW, on the "end of online anonymity":

Firstly, repercussions of the Lori Drew case:

A precedent-setting case, the Lori Drew MySpace trial, has just come to an end. If you're unfamiliar, this was a case where an overprotective mom established a fake online identity to bully her daughter's [13 y/o] rival [who then committed suicide]. The judge's ruling has now criminalized the act of creating a fake persona online. In the case of Drew, most would agree she deserves the punishment she received. However, the aftershocks of the ruling could very well impact the online identity creation process for years to come if it's not overturned.

I wonder what a fake persona counts as - is a nom de plume ok if its clear who you are on investigation? And how is this going to be enforced across chatrooms and social nets everywhere? I suspect a rash of "real sounding" names will emerge unless people are forced to hand over credit card details or similar, which will break a huge amount of the internet "good guy" stuff (the spammers will carry on relentlessly regardless....)

And this, of course, is what the Big Boys want - as Sarah notes:

Here, companies like Facebook, Google, and others are already in position to offer a solution for making sure people are who they say they are. Facebook Connect, Google Friend Connect, and Yahoo's Open Strategy, have all been busy trying to grab land on the new frontier of identity management. All of them want to be your de facto online identity provider.

Because for them, the scary alternative is that YOU may do it themselves - see the diagram below:



We first started alerting y'all to the coming metadata war 18 months ago, when we had to look at the Federation vs Aggregation isues for a client. You see, there is no real reason why Facebook or any of the others have to be your MetaData aggregator - but of course, they all desperately want to be, because therein lies your digital footprint, that can (so the theory goes) be monetsied - especially if you have to hand over that gold standard, a credit card billing address. Now Sarah notes that:

No matter who wins, though, it's anonymity that loses. For the sites that move to these types of authentication methods, no longer will their users be able to create disposable usernames and passwords so they can troll around harassing others and leaving juvenile comments. Instead, all participants are themselves online - and subject to the same standards for behavior that you would expect to see if you encountered them in a real-life public situation.

That is a 2 edged sword though - some people note that its only via anonymity that they can get personal data into healing situations online. Others argue that all you do is replace virtual with real world trolls.

We think its not a straight jump from authentication to loss of anonymity, in that it is perfectly possible to be authenticated but be a pseudonym - all you need is a trusted authentication party. This can be structured in ways where it can be owned by its users, or a subset, or nobody rather than by a corporate entity. Of course, the corporates know this which is why they have sought to get (very) close to Open ID, Open Source etc, under the "Keep your friends close but your enemies closer" rule - and the SocNets all want to muscle in on Google's act here - as Sarah notes:

The reality is that we have, in fact, turned over vast amounts of our personal identity to this company in exchange for free webmail with pretty themes, snappy web browsing experiences, free analytics tools, more. As Allen Stern noted this weekend, "Google Knows Where I Am and Everything I Do." (If you want to jump even deeper down that rabbit hole, take a closer look at Google's User Data Empire)

But is the resultant Puritan State of affairs sustainable? (hmmm...no affairs in a nonanonymous world - that's a non starter or starters ):

The only way to prevent reputations from being damaged in the process is to always "be on your best behavior" in public. Frankly, that's no fun. No more wild boys nights out? No more getting silly and stupid with your friends? No - not unless you're willing to live with the consequences of having it plastered online in the morning.

Ain't human nature, won't happen methinks. Who wants to live ina Global Village where everyone knows your business (in fact is prdicting it before you do it). People will not trade that for the supposed (and as yet unproven long term) utility of social connectedness. We will muddle through.... I suspect the real growth business going forward is identity scramblers and anonymisers.