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Thoughts on privacy and being anonymous on the internet
I'm watching the latest from RaceFail 2009, and I'm agreeing with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
abyssinia4077 on it needing to be renamed HumanityFail 2009. (The ever-amazing rydra_wong has the links. Here's the SparkNotes version.)
Now, I thought it'd died down to a quiet simmer and went to focus on other things (aka "omglabs"). But the events of this past week have drawn be back in, and, quiet honestly, are pissing me off. And I managed to pin down exactly what made me see red: actions that are flagrantly against my moral and ethical code of behavior online.
To put it succinctly: outing the private identity of a person online, linking their online handle/pseudonym to their legal name is in no way okay. Hell, if the Electronic Frontier Foundation has anything to say about it, it's not only ethically reprehensible but possibly illegal.
Why? Because it's harmful. Because there really are crazy people on the internet, and not the good kind of crazy. Because people can, and have, lost their jobs, been physically threatened, been stalked, etc because of their legal identities being linked to their online identity. It's dangerous.
This is why preserving online anonymity, if someone chooses to use a pseudonym, is Rule One of Online Behavior 101. (Rule Zero being "Don't be a fucking asshole". Arguably, Rule One and most subsequent rules, are in fact subsets of Rule Zero.)
----
I came to online fandom in a way that's possibly different from a lot of people on my flist. I've only really been vaguely "active" in fandom for about the last year and a half. However, I've been lurking and skirting the edges of various fandoms for over ten years. At the time, I was very, very young. It was not safe for me, at age 11-12, to be hanging around spaces online and using my real name. Even if it was simply Sonic the Hedgehog comic/SatAM fanfic fandom. And then, the boards at the GHZ when I was 12-14, talking about Sonic Team works and other games, I was used to the idea of a pseudonym.
Maybe that's a bit of difference. Coming into the internet from the gaming sectors. There it's pretty much unheard of to use your real name. Hell, even the editors of EGM (the print magazine) used handles and nicknames. It's not only an accepted practice, it's the norm.
When I first was allowed to go on the internet (Netscape Navigator with a 14.4Kb modem, whoo!), I wasn't supervised. The family computer was right in the family room, so as long as someone was on the first floor of the house, they pretty much had line-of-sight. But my parents knew I was smart and laid down the rules. And Rule One was "Do Not Give Out Personal Information".
For me, it's because I was a kid. There's always the story in those days of the crazy people online who would like nothing better than to hurt children. And I understood this, and was incredibly aware, way back in 1996, of my own vulnerability.
As I grew up, I'm still aware of that vulnerability. But now, it's not so much with my age. I've discovered that, depending on where I am, "Ultranos" has seen a lot differently than otherwise. The most telling example is how, in gaming circles, I'm nearly always first assumed to be male. And, at times, I'm granted certain privileges or courtesies because of this (it's gotten a lot better in recent years).
And I have to admit, I've been glad I have this name. "Ultranos" is not my first handle, but it's the one I've used for almost ten years. It's my gaming name, when I go play online games of SupCom or have to register for SMT:Imagine. I don't even think about it anymore. It's not because I'm ashamed of things that go on in this blog or anything like that. It's just, well, caution. Since my personal LJ and this one have a large number of people on it who know me in meatspace (I don't like the term "real life", as if "online" is somehow completely orthogonal to and has no interaction with life outside the computer), I know that it is impossible for me to completely separate both. I just try to keep my legal name outside of both and not post too many personal details because of that.
Yes, I'm vaguely worried about potential employers finding out about my activities online, but in the sense that I hate the idea of that invasion of privacy. I'm a huge proponent of privacy online. It's why I screamed about FISA. It's why I'm glad whenever the really invasive attempts at DCM die horribly (Sony, I am LOOKING AT YOU). To me, privacy and anonymity online are sacrosanct. Employers should not get to act as Big Brother and invade personal lives. What you do on your own time is your own business, as long as it isn't illegal.
----
The discussion that sparked RaceFail'09, way back in January, was good. It was good because it was needed. It was painful, but there were things that needed to be said. And I'm saying this as one of the people who was hurt, who has the old hurt. And I'm saying that, because I made the choice to say one thing and not engage as others have done, I could step away and watch and listen (because there is still a lot that I must learn, because I know that my situation is not unique but it also is not universal). And to those who kept engaging in discourse, I salute you and feel so damn guilty that I did not choose keep speaking right along with you. (Even though it was because I thought you spoke more eloquently than I could.) Because you have ended up hurt worse than I.
I watched from the sidelines instead and now I feel like I have to apologize a bit if the IP address I come from half the time has given your opponents ammunition for their contortions of logic fail (for anyone who knows ANYTHING about IPs, it's blatantly obvious where I'm coming from). *wry grin* On the other hand, I have some very nice statistics for you to shove in your detractors faces about that if you ever have need of it. (Such as, oh, the economic, class, and racial make up of the university I attend and how possibly assumptions they might make about those are blatantly false and how the administration has taken action against those types of things.)
----
It's funny, because I'm having to re-read Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash for class. And, to be honest, when I tried to read it at age 16, I couldn't get through it. Now, though...I'm noticing things I didn't notice before. And it's because of the discussion.
Stephenson did race in Snow Crash. Hiro is mixed black and Korean (and an Army brat). Juanita is Latina. Da5id is Jewish. It's laid right out there in the first chapters. And Stephenson mentions flat-out how growing up like that, their experiences were different. How these are different characters defined by by their experiences and their upbringing.
It's pretty much what people have been saying about writing CoC for the past few weeks. It's not perfect, no, but it's a sight better than other things.
And you want to know the really, really hilarious thing about this? Snow Crash was written after Stephenson said "fuck it". He'd tried the writing thing, and his first attempts just weren't selling. And then, he said "fuck it. I'm going to write a book. And when it doesn't sell, I'm going to get on with my life and stop this writing thing". This is Snow Crash. If Stephenson can do this well after giving up, what the hell is everyone else's excuse?
ETA: Edited to fix broken lj-user tag. My inability to type bodes poorly for the paper I have to write.
abyssinia4077 on it needing to be renamed HumanityFail 2009. (The ever-amazing rydra_wong has the links. Here's the SparkNotes version.)Now, I thought it'd died down to a quiet simmer and went to focus on other things (aka "omglabs"). But the events of this past week have drawn be back in, and, quiet honestly, are pissing me off. And I managed to pin down exactly what made me see red: actions that are flagrantly against my moral and ethical code of behavior online.
To put it succinctly: outing the private identity of a person online, linking their online handle/pseudonym to their legal name is in no way okay. Hell, if the Electronic Frontier Foundation has anything to say about it, it's not only ethically reprehensible but possibly illegal.
Why? Because it's harmful. Because there really are crazy people on the internet, and not the good kind of crazy. Because people can, and have, lost their jobs, been physically threatened, been stalked, etc because of their legal identities being linked to their online identity. It's dangerous.
This is why preserving online anonymity, if someone chooses to use a pseudonym, is Rule One of Online Behavior 101. (Rule Zero being "Don't be a fucking asshole". Arguably, Rule One and most subsequent rules, are in fact subsets of Rule Zero.)
----
I came to online fandom in a way that's possibly different from a lot of people on my flist. I've only really been vaguely "active" in fandom for about the last year and a half. However, I've been lurking and skirting the edges of various fandoms for over ten years. At the time, I was very, very young. It was not safe for me, at age 11-12, to be hanging around spaces online and using my real name. Even if it was simply Sonic the Hedgehog comic/SatAM fanfic fandom. And then, the boards at the GHZ when I was 12-14, talking about Sonic Team works and other games, I was used to the idea of a pseudonym.
Maybe that's a bit of difference. Coming into the internet from the gaming sectors. There it's pretty much unheard of to use your real name. Hell, even the editors of EGM (the print magazine) used handles and nicknames. It's not only an accepted practice, it's the norm.
When I first was allowed to go on the internet (Netscape Navigator with a 14.4Kb modem, whoo!), I wasn't supervised. The family computer was right in the family room, so as long as someone was on the first floor of the house, they pretty much had line-of-sight. But my parents knew I was smart and laid down the rules. And Rule One was "Do Not Give Out Personal Information".
For me, it's because I was a kid. There's always the story in those days of the crazy people online who would like nothing better than to hurt children. And I understood this, and was incredibly aware, way back in 1996, of my own vulnerability.
As I grew up, I'm still aware of that vulnerability. But now, it's not so much with my age. I've discovered that, depending on where I am, "Ultranos" has seen a lot differently than otherwise. The most telling example is how, in gaming circles, I'm nearly always first assumed to be male. And, at times, I'm granted certain privileges or courtesies because of this (it's gotten a lot better in recent years).
And I have to admit, I've been glad I have this name. "Ultranos" is not my first handle, but it's the one I've used for almost ten years. It's my gaming name, when I go play online games of SupCom or have to register for SMT:Imagine. I don't even think about it anymore. It's not because I'm ashamed of things that go on in this blog or anything like that. It's just, well, caution. Since my personal LJ and this one have a large number of people on it who know me in meatspace (I don't like the term "real life", as if "online" is somehow completely orthogonal to and has no interaction with life outside the computer), I know that it is impossible for me to completely separate both. I just try to keep my legal name outside of both and not post too many personal details because of that.
Yes, I'm vaguely worried about potential employers finding out about my activities online, but in the sense that I hate the idea of that invasion of privacy. I'm a huge proponent of privacy online. It's why I screamed about FISA. It's why I'm glad whenever the really invasive attempts at DCM die horribly (Sony, I am LOOKING AT YOU). To me, privacy and anonymity online are sacrosanct. Employers should not get to act as Big Brother and invade personal lives. What you do on your own time is your own business, as long as it isn't illegal.
----
The discussion that sparked RaceFail'09, way back in January, was good. It was good because it was needed. It was painful, but there were things that needed to be said. And I'm saying this as one of the people who was hurt, who has the old hurt. And I'm saying that, because I made the choice to say one thing and not engage as others have done, I could step away and watch and listen (because there is still a lot that I must learn, because I know that my situation is not unique but it also is not universal). And to those who kept engaging in discourse, I salute you and feel so damn guilty that I did not choose keep speaking right along with you. (Even though it was because I thought you spoke more eloquently than I could.) Because you have ended up hurt worse than I.
I watched from the sidelines instead and now I feel like I have to apologize a bit if the IP address I come from half the time has given your opponents ammunition for their contortions of logic fail (for anyone who knows ANYTHING about IPs, it's blatantly obvious where I'm coming from). *wry grin* On the other hand, I have some very nice statistics for you to shove in your detractors faces about that if you ever have need of it. (Such as, oh, the economic, class, and racial make up of the university I attend and how possibly assumptions they might make about those are blatantly false and how the administration has taken action against those types of things.)
----
It's funny, because I'm having to re-read Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash for class. And, to be honest, when I tried to read it at age 16, I couldn't get through it. Now, though...I'm noticing things I didn't notice before. And it's because of the discussion.
Stephenson did race in Snow Crash. Hiro is mixed black and Korean (and an Army brat). Juanita is Latina. Da5id is Jewish. It's laid right out there in the first chapters. And Stephenson mentions flat-out how growing up like that, their experiences were different. How these are different characters defined by by their experiences and their upbringing.
It's pretty much what people have been saying about writing CoC for the past few weeks. It's not perfect, no, but it's a sight better than other things.
And you want to know the really, really hilarious thing about this? Snow Crash was written after Stephenson said "fuck it". He'd tried the writing thing, and his first attempts just weren't selling. And then, he said "fuck it. I'm going to write a book. And when it doesn't sell, I'm going to get on with my life and stop this writing thing". This is Snow Crash. If Stephenson can do this well after giving up, what the hell is everyone else's excuse?
ETA: Edited to fix broken lj-user tag. My inability to type bodes poorly for the paper I have to write.