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Ask HN: When is online anonymity undesirable?

7 points by onuralp ↗ HN
I am particularly curious about circumstances where you think anonymity detracts from the overall experience, makes the communication less efficient, and reduces the chance of a future interaction.

Is there a place for anonymity in our digital future?

8 comments

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goblins
>Is there a place for anonymity in our digital future?

I hope so.

Bizarro
How would there not be a place for anonymity in our digital future?
onuralp
I suppose what I had in mind was akin to the following practical example, say a technical question asked on Stack Overflow. When the submitter can't reliably or efficiently anonymize the accompanying data [which would risk reveal the submitter's anonymity and compromise data], the submitter does not have any choice but anonymizes both the identity _and_ the data, which probably results in a sub-optimal exchange.

Imagine that you can effectively anonymize the dataset, I think one can think of circumstances where this could lead to a more effective communication as to provide further information (e.g., submitter's domain familiarity, language experience, resource constraints) and context (e.g., is this a standard practice) instead of fishing for more clarification in an iterative, and therefore less efficient, fashion.

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coralreef
From what perspective are you seeking?

If you take the perspective of a consumer internet business, then knowing your user is pretty valuable, and may help in monetization and UX.

slim
When you need to build trust. Typically in social networks
Irishsteve
Cynical view would be its a good way to force unified accounts across your various verticals - a-la google plus, and in that case you can sell as one entity as opposed to seperate.
cimmanom
When you're trying to self-promote - e.g. LinkedIn.

Situations where you want to discourage abusive / antisocial behaviors (especially those with potential real-world repercussions for the victim) or be able to enforce real-world repercussions for said behaviors.