Many atheists are still in the closet about their atheism when it comes to friends, family, and coworkers. They benefit greatly from online interaction where they can be themselves -- though even online they remain anonymous so that their atheism doesn't get back to people they know. So atheists in particular should probably be concerned that, in the near future, we may lose the ability to be anonymous while online.
A series of robust identity technologies is spreading across the web. Powerful new authentication methods like writing-style analysis are probably just a couple of years away from being put into widespread use. In a report issued this April, the US government issued a report calling for an interlocking system of compatible identity systems. It seems like one is already emerging.
Will online anonymity, and the crime and abuse that come with it, become a remnant of a past age? Is the internet about to grow up?
...online social networks collapse our social lives to a single space, completely unlike normal life where we generally interact with different groups at different times and in different ways. A person might share a radical political view with a friend but shy away from expressing the same opinion at work, for example. It is normal for us to take on what sociologists call different "social roles", yet this behaviour is inhibited by the openness of Facebook, and less directly by the less transparent technologies that bind our online activities into a single identity.
Granted, people tend to behave better when they are visibly part of a social network as opposed to operating anonymously, says Zeynep Tufekci, a sociologist at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. However, she adds, "Facebook is the wrong tool to extend to the rest of the web."
Letting users adopt nicknames on social networks might be one answer, combining the civilising effect of social networks with the ability to adopt different social roles. "Most of the time we want pseudonymity, not anonymity," says Danah Boyd at Microsoft Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts. And yet, a pseudonym is exactly what Figes was using when he trashed his rivals' work.
The question that will shape the future of identity on the net is how much we are willing to give up to be assured that every book reviewer on Amazon is who they say they are. Right now, along with anonymously maligning the competition, we are all free to peruse websites on radical politics, investigate medical diagnoses and make a cheeky remark or two in a chat room - all without feeling that anyone is looking over our shoulder. Would we be willing to do so if all of our online actions were logged in an identity database?
Source: New Scientist, October 29, 2011
Both governments and corporations would like to know more about what we are doing online. They have different reasons, but their desire is very, very strong. They want to tie together everything that we do in all the places they go and they need to tie all of that back to us as individuals -- ideally so they can tie it to what we do in our regular lives as well.
Of course, anonymity isn't a universally good thing. When you can be completely anonymous, everyone can be completely anonymous. This means that the people you interact with could be anyone at all and you can't be sure that people are who they say they are. I'll bet there are lots of cases where you've wished you could learn who a person really was -- and for good reasons.
What's more, people are voluntarily giving up their anonymity for the sake of convenience. Facebook is the primary force behind this. Facebook requires a real identity for an account and this real identity -- the real you, not a pseudonym -- is then used to log into various web sites to comment, subscribe, interact, etc. I'll bet you've done it too.
So what is your anonymity worth to you? Will you be able to remain anonymous and keep your atheism to yourself in the future? Will you even want to bother?
As an Australian I am not concerned about maintaining anonymity. I am very up front about my atheism in all areas of my social interaction, and rarely miss an opportunity to make my position clear.
It is, of course, very different for an American living in Mississippi or Alabama, in the middle of the Bible blob, and much worse still for a citizen of an Islamic country. We had a poster from Saudi Arabia recently who was atheist and gay. He maintains anonymity or he dies.
I think atheist shouldn’t maintain anonymity. I mean in some places religious views are so strong that if you are an atheist you would lose your job, or even your life. But, I think that if we all can drop our anonymity, I think it’d be better for every atheist. I mean I know how hard it is, I came out to my family as an atheist not so long ago and I was recieved with a bit of scorn and shock (and even some threats that god would do something to me!). They eventually just got over it, but if my family was unable to take that with a little respect I doubt people outside my family would be nicer. However, if we all do it, if atheist were more open about their views perhaps we could change this view that all atheist are evil, that atheist have no morals. Other minorities have gained more acceptance around the world… Why not us?