How Far Is Too Far With Anonymous Posting?

One of the greatest things about the internet is also one of the worst things about the internet: anonymity. Anonymity allows people the freedom to say their most truthful and deepest thoughts without fear of social sanction. But it also makes it too easy to express vicious and hateful thoughts and to try to manipulate others. To combat this, people have adopted various tactics -- everything from deleting anonymous comments to the creation of fake posters to refute the haters. But how far is too far?

The incident that raises this question involves Scott Adams. Adams, for those who don’t recognize the name, is the creator of the comic strip “Dilbert.” Adams, who describes himself as a “libertarian minus the crazy stuff,” found himself in trouble in March of 2011 when he wrote a blog post on the topic of men’s rights after his readers suggested that be his next topic.

In typical Adams style, Adams relied heavily on sarcasm as he suggested that men treat women differently for the same reason men treat children or the mentally handicapped differently, i.e. because it is an effective strategy. He then suggested that men should take the path of least resistance when dealing with women. This generated significant outrage both from men’s rights advocates and from feminists, neither of whom can take a joke.

Adams eventually deleted the post after pointing out that people had failed to grasp his use of sarcasm and satire, and he wrote that this furor showed that it was impossible to “have a rational discussion on any topic that has an emotional charge.” But that didn’t end the problem. Following this, Adams found himself subject to repeated nasty criticism on the internet by anonymous posters. Adams responded by creating a fake person (called a “sockpuppet” in internet parlance), who would visit sites like Reddit and Metafilter pretending to be a fan of Adams and would defend Adams. Eventually, he was caught, and in April 2011, he confessed. This unleashed ferocious criticism of his tactic. But was he unjustified?

This is an admittedly complex question and answers that appear clear at first glance turn cloudy very quickly. For example, in general, we shouldn’t condone fraud or deceit. Pretending to be someone else is classic fraud. But then, the entire internet is anonymous, and why should we condemn Adams when we don’t demand to know the identities of the equally anonymous attackers?

Also, if our concern is just his pretending to be someone else, then he could fix that by hiring someone to defend him -- like a public relations firm. But that’s the same thing we call fraudulent when a salesman does it by planting a shill in the audience to talk up their product. So isn’t that just swapping one problem for another? Or should we factor in the difference anonymity makes today? In the past, you had to make your claims in person, which toned them down and gave people a person to judge the allegations against. But not today. Today, people have the power and right to slander you without ever disclosing their real names, much less their motivations. Shouldn’t that grant some leeway in how people choose to fight this threat?

Of course, we should also point out that people should know not to trust what they read from anonymous sources. So caveat reader seems to be the order of the day. But do people really get this? I can tell you from experience that the perception of independence matters, even when it’s a false perception. For example, we’ve seen that a link posted by one of you at Big Hollywood will consistently drive many times the amount of traffic to our site that the same link posted by one of us would. Yet, those visitors have no way to know if any of you is real or if you are just Commentarama sockpuppets. So clearly, there is something to the idea of an independent recommendation that people find attractive, even when there is no way to confirm the independence.

But before we start advocating some new rules, we should also ask: does it matter? Sure, humans tend to believe far too much of what they read. But most of the criticism found on the net is just subjective opinions and falls into the “he said, she said” category which people tend to ignore. Moreover, if either side pushes too far into truly damaging statements, then readers start to suspect a motive. . . that’s how Adams got caught and how the Washington Redskins got caught when they did the same thing -- they pushed too hard in their own defense. Also, massive organizations like Media Matters regularly flood comment streams with pro-leftist posts today, but the public still has turned against Obama and the Progressives. So maybe this type of attack just isn’t very effective?

Ultimately, maybe this whole issue comes down to a bit of a contradiction. For example, I find that I cannot condemn Adams for wrongdoing. He has the right to defend himself. He did nothing more than use the same tools used by his critics to attack him. And he never left the realm of subjective opinion into making false claims about the physical properties of products, i.e. the kinds of things I would see as fraudulent. But at the same time, I can’t condone what he’s done either as it feels dirty. And I have to wonder if maybe the best policy when faced with this kind of attack isn’t simply to challenge the anonymous posters under your own name? People respect that and they tend to give instant credibility to the “known” entity over the unknown attacker. So maybe, the answer was there all along -- Adams should have just stood up for himself as “Scott Adams”?

What do you think?