What Ever Happened to the Anonymous Web?
In a bid to protect users, we rid the web of much of its dark, anonymous underbelly. But we also lost spaces that helped so many of us uncover our hidden selves. I think it’s time we re-examine.
Dear readers (Gen Zeros? IDK I’m trying to find my equivalent of Gaga’s Little Monsters), many of you have written to me with your responses to my pieces. That is so wonderful! I encourage you to share these musings in the comments below. Together, we can further the ideas I explore and learn from each other.
Look, central to this newsletter are two contradictory notions:
That everything on this hellish digital hole called “The Internet” is fake and fleeting.
The ideas that shape “The Internet” are vital because they will shape our future.
With that in mind, I am going to slightly expose myself, knowing that yes, real humans beings that I know and love read this, and also, nothing matters here!!!! So with that:
I had a realization the other day while scrolling Only Fans. Only Fans is a digital platform where “fans'' pay to support “creators'' at a given price in exchange for access to their content. The website is most known for providing access to homemade pornography, but it is also used by musicians, fitness experts, and others who use the platform as a way of making money from their self-produced content.
You see, I was on Only Fans doing, um, research for my, um, Substack and noticed something I found incredible. After making my account by signing in through Twitter and verifying my identity, I happened to click on a sly little box in the top right corner titled “my profile.” There, to my shock, was my face, my name; all of the information that I had publicly chosen to use for my public Twitter was present on this account for a website that is, for all intents and purposes, used for the viewing of pornographic content.
My mind reeled. What absolute sociopath would ever be comfortable with their face and name being connected to this very private act? Did people not realize that their crass comments under porn came alongside tiny photos of their face, that strangers now know that one John Smith is turned on by some impossibly niche kink?Or does John Smith know and simply not care? As the questions raced through my mind, I quickly removed my picture and changed my name to something that was reminiscent of my old, more private days scrolling through the seedy, anonymous internet.
The anonymous internet saved my sanity and made me who I am. When I was young and closeted and confused, I spent hours in chat rooms specified for “gay teens.” There, under an impossibly vague pseudonym, I chatted with hundreds of other lonely, longing young people. I needed this. For straight folks, the implicit embarrassment of their burgeoning sexuality is at least able to processed with friends through disgusting, yet necessary, middle school sex talk. I had no one That is no one but my many secret “friends” on chat rooms. Typing my new feelings about other boys kept me partially sane during these charged and challenging years. And upon reflection, some of the relationships I formed there were just as real, just as vital, as many physical relationships I’ve formed since coming out. With the safety of the unknown protecting me, I could explore new ways of being and loving in the world. I could try on the life I would soon assume.
It’s important to note that these spaces were also dangerous. Though I can’t confirm, I can probably assume that upwards of a third of the “young people” I talked to were pedophiles pretending to be peers. They knew that people like me were lonely and desperate enough to see through red flags and continue the conversation. They knew that people like me were naive, impressionable. Anonymity brought me immense freedom to explore my sexuality, but it also brought me danger as others used the sense of freedom I relished to manipulate and coerce me.
Since those days, many platforms have moved away from a limitless anonymity towards a vigilant identification. Russell Brandom, in a 2017 piece for the Verge titled “We Have Abandoned Every Principle of the Free and Open Internet” wrote the following:
“For a long time, hardly anyone knew who you were online. Handles replaced real names, and though your service provider certainly knew who you were, massive swaths of the internet (Facebook, e-commerce, etc.) hadn’t developed enough to make the information widely available . . . There was simply nothing tying you to a single, persistent identity.
Now, nearly everything you do online happens under your name. It started with Facebook, the most popular single product on the internet, which has enforced its real-name policy since the beginning. Today, your Google searches, Netflix history, and any cloud-stored photos and text messages are all only a single link removed from your legal identity. As those services cover more of what we do on the web, it’s become much harder to create a space where anonymity can be maintained.”
Much of this shift was powered by an understandable disgust with the cultures that anonymous platforms empowered. 4chan, a truly anonymous platform, was largely responsible for breeding many online communities that morphed into the Alt-Right, later feeding into Q Anon and hate groups. And there was also the concern that the anonymous web posed a threat to young unwitting users like myself who could be sexually harassed and abused by savvier, more cunning actors who committed crime with the impunity of being anonymous. Requiring the use of one’s “true” identity to use a platform is similar to that of leaving bright lights on in a park at night. The idea is that no illicit actors would ever be so bold as to perform their seedy actions under a visible spotlight; Simply require real names and photos and there’s no need for overzealous moderation. Social norms and outright shame should do the trick.
There was also a capitalist minded, user-experience angle. The ubiquity of Facebook, Google and Twitter means that just about all of us have an account on at least one of those platforms. Instead of laboriously creating new account names and passwords in exchange for access to a website, all you have to do is simply link back to one of those Big Three. But it also means that there you are, face and name for all to see. This is typically no problem if you are scrolling, liking and commenting on a news site, but Only Fans . . . maybe you would opt for “YoungPerson2000.”
I highlight my experience on Onlyfans because it is so patently obvious that anonymity is preferable there. And yet, the very smart, highly-educated engineers and thinkers at that particular organization, figured that the seamlessness of account creation was more important than the tediousness of users maintaining anonymous identities online. I can’t say that their cost-benefit-analysis was wrong from a user-growth perspective, and yet, I am disturbed. The norm, at least in some places, should be towards anonymity.
The internet is a portal into new communities, topics, and ideas. And it is vital that users are able to interface with these new spaces outside of the demands of public persona. I would never have used those chat rooms if I was required to use my legal name. I never would have made those connections, shared those feelings, explored in tandem with others that knew my yearning. Maybe, this is the price of keeping young people safe. But I would respond that there is a real cost to the actions we take in name of digital safety and security. A need to connect users to their legal identity may encourage better behaviour, but it also eliminates the possibility of users exploring their identity through imaginative creation or future-facing envisionment. In that chatroom, I could say that I am a gay boy. In that chat room, I could be loud, flamboyant. I could be myself.
Anonymous spaces still exist online; I myself am still going under pseudonyms on discord servers related to podcasts I enjoy. This is not because I have anything to hide, but because the folks I talk to there simply don’t need to know who I am IRL to have a meaningful conversation around our shared interests. But as the assumptions of platforms and companies begin to settle upon public self-identification, this choice that I earnestly make will become stranger and stranger. And the possibilities for experiences such as my own as a young closeted teenager will become unlikely. I fear that once the discourse of “safety and security of our young people” enters any conversation, our imaginations shrink, our ability to weigh options diminishes. Suddenly, we are all protective warriors. But take it from a young gay boy, I needed that seedy underbelly. It made me who I am.