Thursday, May 12, 2011

Facebook comments : A farewell to anonymity ?


On April 2011, Facebook, the leading social networking site announced its new 'comment-box add-on' aimed at what it terms "more personalized chats on third-party sites".This has become a serious concern for those who believe in anonymous and frank discussions on the corners of the net.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/221106/facebook_beefs_up_comment_box_for_external_sites.html

Even though the new feature was aimed to make comments more relevant in social networking arena, the fact that facebook adds the personal info of users next to their posts and had added links to these third party sites and feeds in the posts have increased risks on privacy of the users who comment.
All this is helpful to those interested in tying thier general online activities with Facebook. But consider the scenario if you 'don't want your comments on a site to be visible to your 500 facebook friends?'.It is suggested that in this case, by default, the "Post to Facebook" box underneath the comments widget in third-party sites should be checked.Even though your comments are hidden, the people on that site will still see your Facebook Profile picture and if they click, can access your profile.

Sometimes serious issues of free speech can be underlying like this observation where U.S. Senate Assistant Majority Leader Richard Durbin of Illinois asked Facebook Chief Executive Officer to allow users to choose anonymity, invoking the political situations in Egypt and Tunisia just a day before the former achieved freedom.The fact that many of the activists couldnt use anonymity as shield aided the state to crackdown on them.


Christopher "moot" Poole, the founder of Internet anonymity haven 4chan, thinks Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is wrong when it comes to online identities. Remaining unknown online frees people to blaze ahead with creative endeavors they might otherwise shy away from for fear of being embarrassed.

TechCrunch, which implemented Facebook Comments as an experiment last week, reports that while the total volume of comments is down significantly, the comment nastiness quotient is approaching zero -- except, apparently, for nasty comments about their new commenting system.In other words, people who might have left casual comments under the cloak of anonymity are choosing not to comment at all under the new system, turning TechCrunch into a sloppy space. This is the verification of the arguiment that the nature of commenting on the web needs to feel organic and fluid, just like it does in real life and should be anonymous if necessary.


But being such an extremely social company, Facebook's insistence that you have one identity across the web is both short-sighted and flawed, and people are starting to realize this. And i want to remind you if you are concerned about online security, switch over to anonymous browsing options and see how online anonymity can make your Facebook experience safe and secure.