Why do people seek anonymity?

The search for anonymity on the web is often perceived as a means to act as “trolls,” who are widely decried for their negative and often personal attacks on virtually every site where comments are permitted. However, there are other reasons why many Internet users don’t want their identity to be public. Three HCI professors from Carnegie Mellon University examined a group of international anonymity-seekers to learn about their experiences. Italics represent quotes from study interviewees:

Ninety-three percent of the interviewees reported anonymous social interactions online. Some anonymous social activities were idiosyncratic, seemingly done for fun or amusement. An interviewee in mainland China created a fictitious profile on a social networking site to play a trick on a friend.

''I created a profile similar to my friend’s profile on Renren.com. Then I added all the contacts from his ‘friends’ list, and posted some funny updates daily ... since he was on good terms with me, I liked to play tricks on him. He did that to me too. (#30)''

Many anonymous social activities, however, were associated with groups. Anonymity can make it difficult for people to establish trust or get credit for one’s contributions in groups, and may hinder online community building. Our interviewees generally agreed that these were benefits of identifiability. Nonetheless, more than half of our interviewees were anonymously involved in various online interest groups, mostly hobby groups on topics such as fiction, music, pets, games, technology, and sports. One popular reason for anonymity was that the norm of those groups was to be anonymous. In a few cases, the group had an implicit or explicit membership standard that encouraged anonymity in those who did not conform. For instance, interviewee #27 joined a Japanese video sharing community anonymously to hide his American identity, because the community excluded foreigners.

Although social networking generally requires using one’s real identity, half of our interviewees reported using fictitious profiles to go on social networking or dating sites, or used false personal information when chatting online. Some interviewees used different social network profiles to separate the information they shared with different groups of people. A teacher (#17) was very active in a fandom group, and often posted fan fiction online. She wanted to keep in touch with other members of that community, but she was afraid that she might be criticized if her family or her boss found out about her writing because it was not “real” fiction. She therefore maintained two Facebook accounts, one under her real name for family and co- workers and one under a fictitious name for fandom friends.

Nearly half of the interviewees reported posting original artwork, photographs, videos, and writing online to share with others and receive feedback. We expected interviewees to attach their real names to original works to gain status and reputation, but many interviewees chose instead to sacrifice recognition to avoid links to their offline life. Interviewee #1 participated in various online music communities every week. She always posted her songs anonymously so that no one at work would find them and judge her by them.

''The reason I won't use my real name is to not connect my real life with the online community... I don’t want my supervisors and colleagues to know about the other side of my life, since that may make my image look bad. (#1)''

Interviewees who posted original work also sought anonymity to manage their online interactions. One artist told us that he built a reputation in online communities by posting his works under a consistent pseudonym, although he wasn’t sure that counted as being recognized for his work. He also explained that he preferred not to log into his account at all when reviewing other people’s work.

''When I post critiques I tend to be rather harsh.... [I’m afraid of] being targeted by someone who can't take a critique, so they might decide to try to find my alias on other art sites, and troll me in return. (#24)''

Kang, R., Brown, S., & Kiesler, S. (2013). Why Do People Seek Anonymity on the Internet? Informing Policy and Design. CHI '13 Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computer Systems, 2657-2666.

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