Trolls and flamers have been with us as
long as Internet anonymity. At every step, they’ve provided aid and comfort to
those who try to block anonymous communications.
The Internet didn’t always offer anonymity.
The demarcation between user and host was deliberate, but not for any lofty
“First Amendment” reason. The early Internet was built around computers that
supported many users; it was a pragmatic piece of engineering.
Anonymity was something that emerged, grew,
was debated – and has always been in danger by the malicious, the evil, the
stupid.
Courtesy of Google, I find that the
venerable Link e-mail list over at ANU doesn’t record any strong debate about a
right to Internet anonymity until 1996.
Let’s grab some rough time periods:
The
1980s: You (mostly) weren’t anonymous
The Internet was mostly academic; you connected as a user at a university. Even in
America, the first ISPs emerged late in this decade. Internet Relay Chat (IRC)
emerged in 1988. What anonymity existed was confined to the relatively small
Internet community.
The
1990s: Emergent anonymity
Most people were “kind of” anonymous as the
Internet grew: they were lost in the crowd, and their Internet identities (like
their e-mail addresses) didn’t necessarily reflect their “real names”.
IRC became the focus of early anonymity
debates. Here’s a paper (http://www.irchelp.org/irchelp/misc/electropolis.html)
from 1991 which notes that:
“The lack of self-regulation amongst users
of IRC can be both positive and negative, as far as interaction is concerned.
The safety of anonymity can "reduce self-consciousness and promote
intimacy" between people who might not otherwise have had the chance to
become close. It can also encourage "flaming" … the gratuitous and
uninhibited making of "remarks containing swearing, insults, name calling,
and hostile comments."”
Bruce Sterling, in 1992, quoted 1990
newspaper reports about hackers using the “relative
anonymity” (my emphasis) of their computers (not, however, absolute
anonymity) in his http://www.gutenberg.org/files/101/101-h/101-h.htm
book The Hacker Crackdown.
An early and popular anonymous message
relay server was set up in Finland in 1992, for example, as is discussed http://people.dsv.su.se/~jpalme/society/anonymity.html
here.
According to Wikipedia, the cartoon that
probably epitomizes anonymity was published – “On the Internet nobody knows
you’re a dog” – came from 1993.
In 1994, http://www.nytimes.com/1994/12/31/us/computer-jokes-and-threats-ignite-debate-on-anonymity.html?n=Top/Reference/Times%20Topics/Subjects/R/Racketeering%20and%20Racketeers&pagewanted=2
this article from the New York Times estimated that there were around 25 anonymous
remailers in the world.
I’ve picked out these highlights to
illustrate the emergence of the debate about anonymity. Most people understood
that computers were relatively anonymous. What emerged by the second half of
the 1990s was a debate pro-versus-anti: “is anonymity a right?”
If anonymity
is a right, it only has that status because people worked to make it so – and
it’s a right that can be withdrawn or limited by governments, if they’re given
a reason.
If you view anonymity as a right, it’s one
that took some time to become truly accessible to the ordinary Internet user –
and it’s all too easily denied by authorities.
Which is why I regard the kind of people
who use anonymous Twitter accounts (registered in seconds, location “The Web”)
to abuse and victimize others to be fools.
What’s happened to Charlotte Dawson is the
kind of behavior most likely to erode what anonymity that exists.
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