Comments on newspaper websites

[Miss Chicken]

My local newspaper, in it's wisdom (!?), has decided that anyone wanting to make a comment on it's website must now provide their first and last name and their suburb. They have previously only insisted on this for comments made on political topics during the lead up to elections.

Many people are upset over this. Some say that they will no longer be able to comment on subjects because of fears of losing their jobs. This is especially true of public servants who are not meant to speak out on certain subjects. However other people ar concerned that if they have to provide their names and suburbs they could be harassed by the more unstable members of society.

So I am asking people here

1) Do the online newspaper that you read allow comments under a pseudonym?

2) would you/do you leave comments if you have to use your full name?

 

[Finn]

^Well yeah, many websites won't let me read articles so I used to came up with crazy names so I could read them. It has been a while since I've done that.

 

[Deranged Nasat]

To be honest, I'm not comfortable with leaving my real name, email address or physical address when making comments (not that I tend to make comments all that often). Part of my concern is that the time in which I'm most likely to leave a comment is when a minority viewpoint I sympathise if not really agree with comes into conflict with a more mainstream position. This I feel leaves me open to attack from two fronts. If a minority or "breakaway" perspective is under what I perceive as unfair attack I might gently defend aspects of their position, and if they themselves seem too extremist or closed-minded I might try and make an "I sympathise, but consider..." comment and "rein them in". Neither is likely to go down well; majorities don't like it when you refuse to go along with the common wisdom and minorities tend to have a "you're fully with us in everything or you're the enemy!" mentality. And I don't like confrontations. So the idea of letting people know who I am doesn't sit easily with me.

From a single comment, people aren't going to be able to understand the complexities of your personal outlook, so they'll probably make assumptions based on the snippets they get, and usually negative ones. If you're not hanging around to explain and justify yourself, it seems far better to me to simply leave the comment in hopes it will be enlightening, and then move on. Having your name, address, etc hanging there...it's just not something I'm comfortable with unless I'm hanging around to explain myself more fully.

This must seem ridiculous and paranoid, I apologise. But I'm simply not comfortable with leaving myself hanging all over the internet with only the smallest sliver of my worldview that might provoke misrepresentation (and if this is politics we're talking about, extremists and zealots of all factions naturally misrepresent pretty much everything they come into contact with).

As I say, I don't leave many comments, but those I have have shown me that political minorities will accuse me of being a sheep and thus a fool, and political majorities a pointless troublemaker and a fool, based on the exact same comment. So I tend to feel I court too many enemies in politics to justify splashing my identity all over the place. Cowardly of me? Perhaps.

 

[Miss Chicken]

I think it is being wise not paranoid to keep your real name to yourself.

Most of us don't use our real names on Trekbbs and there are good reasons for that. I think there are even better reason to stay anonymous on my local newspaper site. Here I am only one of a less than a handful of Tasmanians that have ever joined this site, but on my local newspaper site I can be read by thousands of people who live around me. It only takes one of them to be a bit unstable and it could cause serious problems in my life if they could easily identify them.

I have been using the pseudonym "Ruth of Howrah" on the newspaper website. Ruth is not my first name but Howrah is my suburb. I am going to see if I can get away as Ruth Rendell of Howrah, I will see if the newspaper objects to that name.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Well, many newspapers have long had policies of not publishing letters to the editor unless the writer was willing to be identified. This really isn't any different.

 

[Goliath]

^Yes. I've actually written letters to the editor of Canada's national newspaper, and had them published under my own name.

I'm in favour of this change. Online anonymity does more harm than good. People should have to own what they say in such public fora.

Every news site that I frequent has a comments section. But I almost never post therein, because it's almost all nonsense. Comments sections are essentially sewer pipes pouring untreated human head-waste into the rivers of our public discourse.

Having to post comments under my own name wouldn't deter me at all.

ETA: This is odd. I just looked at a news story that a colleague had linked to her Facebook page. Apparently, the French-language website of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, radio-canada.ca, requires people to leave comments under their own names. The English-language website, cbc.ca, allows anonymous comments.

The story in question was about the proposed closure of libraries in the city of Toronto. A conservative Toronto city councillor, Doug Ford, has said publicly that there are more libraries than Tim Hortons in his district. (Tim Hortons is a chain of coffee and donut shops) When he was criticized for his position by novelist Margaret Atwood, his reply was: Margaret who?

This is a good example, in my opinion, of why people should have to use their own names. If someone is an anti-intellectual buffoon like Doug Ford, then people should know this fact before they weigh their opinions on issues like the closing of libraries.

 

[YellowSubmarine]

1) Do the online newspaper that you read allow comments under a pseudonym?
2) would you/do you leave comments if you have to use your full name?

1. Yes, they do, and I hope they continue to.
2. I used to do so, but I prefer to use pseudonyms now.

I believe that using your full name is preferred, because you stand behind your words and you show you're not afraid to state your opinion. And when I used to reveal my full name everywhere, I used to stick to more serious, well-thought and reasonable responses, with a pseudonym I tend to be more emotional.

However, anonymity is a very important ingredient of freedom of speech. Sometimes you need to express your opinion anonymously, and even if you don't need it's natural for many people to do so. If you limit the anonymity, you're limiting people's ability to express themselves, and that's bad.

If a news website required me to post my full name I wouldn't comment on that site (because of principle), and if I do, I'll likely use a fake name on purpose to break the site's requirement. That's not a news website, but a few days ago I closed my Google+ accounts and I put in my belief in pseudonymity as the reason for doing so.

P.S. You can always use a fake name on a site requiring you to use your real name. It's hard for a site to prove that something is not your real name.

 

[Goliath]

However, anonymity is a very important ingredient of freedom of speech. Sometimes you need to express your opinion anonymously, and even if you don't need it's natural for many people to do so. If you limit the anonymity, you're limiting people's ability to express themselves, and that's bad.

No. That's obviously not true.

Assuming that we're talking about a free society like our own, limiting anonymity doesn't limit freedom of speech in any way. You're just as free to say anything under your own name as you are under a pseudonym.

What it does limit is responsibility for speech, and the potential consequences of speech for the speaker, both legal and moral. And that's not the same thing at all.

What you're advocating here is not freedom, but anarchy.

 

[YellowSubmarine]

Assuming that we're talking about a free society like our own, limiting anonymity doesn't limit freedom of speech in any way. You're just as free to say anything under your own name as you are under a pseudonym.

Ideally, that's true. If free speech is not limited by the government, you can express any opinion, and it's up to you to find the means to exercise it and to not use it foolishly, turning people against you with your speech. Ideally, that's enough to place a tick in the box “free speech”.

But in the real world things are not so simple, and no, that's not enough. The government is not the only thing that can limit speech. You can have anything from a corporate monopoly controlling the communication channels to extremist groups who wish to silence another group, and all those can effectively* limit free speech too.

Even the people in the government would often break the rules, abuse their power, introduce new more limiting laws. Having real anonymity makes it harder for them to infringe on your freedom of speech, harder for them to take it from you, it can also give it to those that don't have it.

* That's why I'm talking about “freedom of speech” in a discussion of the rules of a private newspaper website. When you're running a web forum, these things typically do not apply, but I do believe that they do when it comes to a popular online media or popular communication service.


==== Edit ====

In simpler words, freedom of speech is the ability to freely express an opinion without being prosecuted for it. Free speech laws are a legislative guarantee of that ability. Anonymity is a practical guarantee of that same ability. Both are important.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

What it does limit is responsibility for speech, and the potential consequences of speech for the speaker, both legal and moral. And that's not the same thing at all.

That is a very good point and I think people get the two confused a lot.

I think anonymity promotes extremism, as people can say whatever they want without fear of repercussions. Let's say you're a racist, or a homophobe, or some other kind of bigot. If your anonymity is assured then you can safely proclaim your beliefs and even call for those people to be rounded up and killed.

If you had to attach your real name to such statements, would you still do it? I suspect most people wouldn't. In real life, talk like that can cost you friends, family, and jobs. You can also get into legal hot water if you defame or libel a person or company.

Modern technology plus an entitlement mentality have led people to believe that "freedom of speech" means "I can say whatever I want about anyone or anything at any time, anonymously and with no consequences whatsoever."

But it doesn't mean that. It means the government will put no prior restraint on your speech and tell you "you can't say that." That's about it. If what you say runs afoul of the law, or runs against the social mores of your community, those are consequences you will and should have to deal with. Nonymity (as opposed to anonymity) helps moderate extreme positions.

Phenomena like trolling would be far less prevalent online if you had to put your real name to everything you say. I might be slightly nicer in TNZ, too. Slightly.

 

[Mr. B]

You can have a fake name on our paper website but I am happy to provide my real name online because I'm not an asshole.

 

[bluedana]

The online newsites I use require a working email address (I use my junk one) and your real name, but your post is published under a pseudonym. I would not comment online if I could not be anonymous because I work for the government, and it's always a hassle drawing that line between my own opinion and the position of the department I work for.

Anonymous comments, on the whole, though, make is so much easier for trolls to take over every conversation.

 

[Timby]

The newspaper in Dubuque (where I lived from 2002 - 2010) used to have a totally anonymous system, then moved to requiring verification (name and credit card info, stored server-side -- you could still use an alias), and just recently moved to a paywall system -- you can't read anything beyond the first two paragraphs without having a paid account.

At least the New York Times lets you read 20 articles per month.

That said, comments sections of news websites are truly the depths of Hell itself.

 

[RJDiogenes]

I wonder what Ben Franklin would have to say about publishing under a pseudonym.

 

[Sean Aaron]

I don't have a problem with the requirement to use my real name (clearly I do that all the time online), but revealing your suburb seems a bit much. I would balk at providing my address beyond my city (though I'm pretty easy to find online for anyone with a bit of time to spare and some decent Google skills).

BBC comments require an email address, town and name, but they don't publish the email - seems okay to me.

 

[Locutus of Bored]

I wonder what Ben Franklin would have to say about publishing under a pseudonym.

He'd say "To whom it may concern, Richard Saunders demands you send over more French prostitutes as soon as possible."

 

[Gov Kodos]

I wonder what Ben Franklin would have to say about publishing under a pseudonym.

He'd say "To whom it may concern, Richard Saunders demands you send over more French prostitutes as soon as possible."

I can't imagine, but surely Silence Dogood might?

 

[Locutus of Bored]

I wonder what Ben Franklin would have to say about publishing under a pseudonym.

He'd say "To whom it may concern, Richard Saunders demands you send over more French prostitutes as soon as possible."

I can't imagine, but surely Silence Dogood might?

Ooh, saucy.

 

[Gov Kodos]

He'd say "To whom it may concern, Richard Saunders demands you send over more French prostitutes as soon as possible."

I can't imagine, but surely Silence Dogood might?

Ooh, saucy.

Saunders and Polly Baker could go at it over the Prostitute Issue: Virtue- It's Own Reward.

 

[Ghost07]

The online newspaper I read allows comments under any name you wish. I put in comments under Ghost07. Considering that I have noticed and experienced nasty comments no matter what I say, I'm glad I don't have to use my real name. There are some very mean people out there. I certainly don't want those nutjobs to know who I am!