Posted on 08/19/2014 7:44:13 AM PDT by Second Amendment First
Anonymous comments, even positive ones, damage trust in the news media.
Despite their ubiquity on news sites around the Internet, a movement against anonymous comments sections has slowly gathered steam over the past few years. The first call to action came in 2010 when the American Journalism Review said, It is time for news sites to stop allowing anonymous online comments. Since that bold declaration, a wide variety of media outlets, including ESPN, the Huffington Post, Popular Science, Sporting News and USA Today have either banned anonymous posts on their sites or eliminated comments sections altogether.
In August 2013, the New York state legislature even debated an ambitious bill that would have required all Web site administrators to pull down anonymous comments from social networks, blogs forums, message boards or any other discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages.
This no anonymity movement is motivated by two assumptions. First, when Internet users are allowed to post their thoughts anonymously, online discussions inevitably deteriorate into uncivil flame wars. The idea that anonymity can breed negativity is, of course, not new. Indeed, Godwins Law, which states that as anonymous discussions grow longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1 was first articulated in 1990.
More recent assessments of anonymous comments sections have not been more complimentary. In 2010, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Leonard Pitts argued that anonymous comments sections have become havens for a level of crudity, bigotry, meanness, factual inaccuracy and plain nastiness that shocks the tattered remnants of our propriety.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
I clicked on one of the author’s website.
Kevin Wallsten
Political Scientist
Welcome
Comments are closed.
About Me
I am an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at California State University, Long Beach.
I guess the “right to privacy” the left so reveres only applies to gay sex and killing babies.
Bite me WashCompost.
That was my reaction, exactly!
That depends on your being willing to give X Y and Z some spending money, and perhaps a loan to smooth things along.
The Federalist Papers are an excellent example.
Somebody's been lurking in the Religion forum.
>> Anonymous comments, even positive ones, damage trust in the news media.
Hahahaha! Comments are comments, not news. If you want “the news media” to be trusted then don’t be so biased. What stooges.
LOL........I knew someone would get it!................
I haven’t seen anonymous comment sections via internet browser access in a few years. (on most MSM web sites)
Most of them require a Disqus login.
Which is just another data mining tool that the gov’t can use against people.
” In 2010, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Leonard Pitts argued that anonymous comments sections have become havens for a level of crudity, bigotry, meanness, factual inaccuracy and plain nastiness that shocks the tattered remnants of our propriety.”
‘Can’t have people saying what they really think. If they are anonymous it is too hard to track them down and punish them for improper thoughts/speech.’ - The liberal thought police.
It can be safely said that Kevin Wallsten and Melinda Tarsi are mouth breathing, knuckle dragging morons using up precious air, and should have been aborted in the womb.
It’s not the fools who will be adversely affected by it.
It’s the people who write reasoned, articulate and influential arguments in opposition to the regime. They will be more easily targeted by the IRS and DHS.
This no anonymity movement is motivated by two assumptions. First, when Internet users are allowed to post their thoughts anonymously, THEN FREE SPEECH IS ALLOWED. THE LEFT AND THE GOVERNMENT DOESN’T WANT ANY OF THAT!
The Left hates it that they live in a world where there are other points of views an opinions. they will kill hundreds of millions that dare to speak against them.
They need to have dissenters on a list for the future...for the glorious day when the rifle butts can knock on your door in the middle of the night because you have decided to disagree with the politburo.
“havens for a level of crudity, bigotry, meanness, factual inaccuracy and plain nastiness that shocks the tattered remnants of our propriety.
Sounds like a description of the mainstream media....
Its not suprising that the msm wants to eliminate it, what w/ being a forum primarily for liberals who are demonstrably more rude and crude than conservatives.
FR is a haven for open & respectful intercourse and the simple policing that Jim and his associates do here should serve as a model for other sites.
The left wants names.
it is legal to use fake names.
posting using fake names is legal.
The left wants to do what the left did when the left was wearing hoods, obtain membership lists of those in opposition in order to punish public statements.
We have tried the real names thing. Reporters of the effete media are essentially useless.
I bet 90% of this article was written in German circa 1940.
“Anonyme Kommentare Abschnitten “geworden Oasen für ein Niveau von Rohheit, Bigotterie, Gemeinheit, tatsächlich falsch und schlicht Gemeinheit, die die zerfetzten Reste unserer Anstand schockiert.”
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