It’s time to end anonymous comments sections

Washington Post ^ | August 19, 2014 | Kevin Wallsten and Melinda Tarsi

[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, Godwin’s 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.”

[Altura Ct.]

Of course the writers and the publication itself has no bearing on that trust...

[Albion Wilde]

The study seems primarily alarmed that the online comments section doesn’t think highly of media. Duh. Eliminating it won’t solve that problem.

[Roman_War_Criminal]

Indeed! We’re supposed to trust this shadow wing of the gov’t?

LOL!!!!!!!!!

[aegiscg47]

I agree with this, but while participants here on FR are generally well behaved, it isn't the case everywhere. Recently I was on several sports and entertainment sites where some of the most vile, nasty, things I've seen in awhile were going back and forth over football and which film finished first at the box office that week! People threatening to kill each other, Jewish conspiracies, aliens, and who knows what else tossed about over things most of us just shrug our shoulders at and move on. I think shutting down the comments sections is going to become the trend over the next few years.

[Political Junkie Too]

You're not qualified to comment on the news!

Only a J-school graduate can comment on the news!

-PJ

[dennisw]

Thanks for reading! You know about our great history of issuing anonymous tracts and pamphlets. Tom Paine was big on this and the British hated whoever was issuing this effective anti-Brit propaganda. His "Common Sense" was anonymous

wikipedia
Common Sense[1] is a pamphlet written by Thomas Paine in 1775–76 that inspired people in the Thirteen Colonies to declare and fight for independence from Great Britain in the summer of 1776. In clear, simple language it explained the advantages of and the need for immediate independence. It was published anonymously on January 10, 1776, at the beginning of the American Revolution and became an immediate sensation. It was sold and distributed widely and read aloud at taverns and meeting places. Washington had it read to all his troops, which at the time had surrounded the British army in Boston. In proportion to the population of the colonies at that time (2.5 million), it had the largest sale and circulation of any book published in American history.[2]

Common Sense presented the American colonists with an argument for freedom from British rule at a time when the question of whether or not to seek independence was the central issue of the day. Paine wrote and reasoned in a style that common people understood. Forgoing the philosophical and Latin references used by Enlightenment era writers, he structured Common Sense as if it were a sermon, and relied on Biblical references to make his case to the people.[3] He connected independence with common dissenting Protestant beliefs as a means to present a distinctly American political identity.[4] Historian Gordon S. Wood described Common Sense as "the most incendiary and popular pamphlet of the entire revolutionary era".[5]

[Beagle8U]

Another thing anonymous comments do...shatter the myth that the majority of the population are libtards!

[Bon of Babble]

I call B.S.

The media don’t like it that Americans are onto their biased, lying reporting, especially from racists like Pitts.

They want NAMES!! Names that they can turn over to employers or use to further destroy those whose opinions they don’t like.

My own local papers, that was getting hammered daily with great FReep-type conservative comments now demands names and addresses AND a call back before one is allowed to post.

Funny, now all that’s on their commenting board is lefties that agree with the newspapers’ lefty opinions.

That was right before I canceled my subscription.

[Sgt_Schultze]

As long as media sites continue to welcome former paid mouthpieces (such as stephanopolous) into their organizations as unbiased observers, there will be no resuscitation of trust.

[defconw]

There are many similarities to today's’ “progressives” and the Nazi's of yesteryear. To many for my comfort level. I see an incestuous relationship between the Democrats and the Muslims beginning. It will not end well.

[Savage Beast]

"damage trust in the news media"?????

These people can't be serious. Can they? If so, they are seriously, dangerously delusional!

But, on the other hand--we already know that!

[Billthedrill]

The media consider anonymous comments to be acceptable in inverse proportion to the degree to which they consider themselves an arm of the government. If they weren’t Establishment, they wouldn’t care.

[Pearls Before Swine]

With incidents like the IRS using invasive tax audits on people whose politics it disapproves of; or the recent SWAT raid on a home because someone had posted via their unsecured wireless network, or political death threats from crazies, what sane person wouldn’t want the option of anonymity on the internet?

[TauntedTiger]

The Sacramento Bee stopped public comments long ago simply with a subscription fee. Now, even the most outrageous liberal scandals have virtually zero negative public comments. We all agree now.

[DJ Frisat]

“...havens for a level of crudity, bigotry, meanness, factual inaccuracy and plain nastiness that shocks the tattered remnants of our propriety.”

Oh, just come out and say it: the Huffington-puffington Post and the Democratic Underground. Why beat around the bush?

[stylin19a]

the media’s “confidential informants” are excluded

[rights with responsibilities]

We certainly wouldn’t want to disrupt the MSM party line

[W.]

Comments over at the article are pretty good, too. Not much love goin’ on...

[DManA]

Styfling free speech is the Left’s primary preocupation.

[DManA]

It’s harder to indict Anonymous.