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never assume you'll remain anonymous
Published Sep. 2, 2009Views: 1597
That's essentially the message in this post on NPR.org today, by Kevin Whitelaw.
The headline reads: "Gotcha! Why Online Anonymity May Be Fading" and here is an excerpt. Click on the link above to read it in it's entirety.
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When Rosemary Port, a New York blogger, used her anonymous posts to call a New York fashion model a "skank" and a "ho," she had no idea that her name would soon be plastered across the pages of the New York Post.
In Port's case, it took a court order to reveal her identity, but the Internet, which gained a reputation for being an anarchic and wild place in its early years, is becoming less and less anonymous in many ways.
Some of the change is cultural. Users have been flocking to social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, where they voluntarily share all kinds of details about their lives.
In some ways, the meteoric success of these sites could be a reaction to anonymous blogs and public comment boards, which can often devolve into name-calling and polemics. (A famous Internet axiom called Godwin's Law holds that the longer an online discussion continues, the higher the odds that someone one will compare somebody else to a Nazi.)
"The nasty anonymous world is certainly still there, but I think people are trying to create protected spaces where they are a little more insulated from that," says Mary Madden, a senior research specialist at the Pew Internet and American Life Project. "It is becoming increasingly difficult to think about being completely anonymous."
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Good blog
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Certainly that would never happen on golo.
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