Anonymity should not be free

I started using the Internet in the early 1990s, when it was mostly used by government officials and academics. Everyone was pretty friendly, and more importantly, everyone was themselves. There was even a system called the finger protocol, where you could look up (“finger”) other users on the network to learn their full names and email addresses and see if they were currently logged on.

Back then, users of the Internet were all out in the open. The notion of being anonymous didn’t occur to anyone. Needless to say, it was a very different Internet then.

At that time, most online discussions took place on Usenet using the grossly underrated and mostly forgotten NNTP protocol. NNTP allowed for easy-to-read, threaded conversations. Folks were pretty congenial because everyone was clear about who they were. But it wasn’t long before I ran into a guy who used the name Lord Khronos. This struck me as rather odd, but hey, if you want to use a silly name, okay.

The original Internet troll

But Lord Khronos was, not to put too fine a point on it, a jerk. He was combative, rude, and generally unpleasant to deal with. To make matters worse, no one knew who he was. He might very well have been the first Internet troll. 

And of course, he could get away with behaving badly because of his anonymity. Being anonymous let him feel free to be a jerk. People already tend to say things online that they would never say in person. Adding the layer of anonymity only makes that problem worse. If I use my real name and say something rude to a colleague online, I will have to deal with the consequences, maybe even face-to-face. But if I’m anonymous, I can say what I want without fear of any social reprisal. Hence, we get the ubiquitous Internet trolls. 

Now, a person certainly has the right to be anonymous. Many people have good reason to protect their identities online. Being anonymous does give one a certain freedom to say what might otherwise be very difficult to say. But mostly, being anonymous just allows someone to be a rank jackass. 

Yet the problem extends beyond people being merely obnoxious. The cost to society is much greater. With the rise of AI, it is possible to use anonymity to create manufactured personas that can and do spread lies and misinformation. Nation states can and do try using false personas to influence public opinion on a large scale. Anyone can create thousands (or even millions) of accounts on social media and use automation and AI to rapidly produce a “grassroots” movement for a cause.  

And it has occurred to me that all of this happens because anonymity is free. In the world of social media, the incentives are plainly backwards. If you want to be anonymous, be a jerk, spread propaganda, and generally make others’ lives miserable, you can do it for free. But if you want to speak as yourself with a verified account, you have to pay for the privilege. 

Tax the jackasses

I want to suggest a simple fix. I’m no expert on the economics of the social media marketplace, but it seems clear to me that the incentives would be better aligned if the social media platforms charged for anonymity. If you want to create an account that does not use your real identity, then you should have to pay—even just a modest amount. Otherwise, you have to use your real name and identity.

Now, I realize this presents some problems, the most obvious of which is how one might go about proving that you are who you say you are, and how the platforms might avoid people presenting fake credentials. But plenty of services verify identity today—banks, crypto exchanges, government portals—so it’s not out of the question.

Maybe everyone should pay either way. I don’t know how it might work. There are many players with strong incentives—advertisers, influencers, politicians—who are invested in the status quo. I’m not saying overcoming the resistance will be easy or even possible. 

I do know that when the marginal cost of creating another anonymous account on Twitter is basically zero, we will inevitably get a whole lot of anonymous accounts on Twitter. Spam is a huge problem on the Internet because sending out a hundred million emails costs almost nothing. A Twitter account is no different.

Don’t get me wrong, I love a good shitposting account. Some of the wittiest and funniest content online is produced by anonymous users. But most of the bad, nasty, nefarious, dubious, dangerous, and destructive content on the Internet comes from the systematic use of online anonymity. 

Raising the cost of being a jackass and making people pay for anonymity on social platforms could shift the balance of incentives in a better direction. And maybe give civility and truth a fighting chance.