Today I was reading one of my favourite blogs (The Pervocracy) and out of curiosity I went through the policies for commenting and posting. They are extremely clear and full of common sense (if you ask me, especially the one that says: "This is my blog and ultimately I reserve the right to delete anything for any reason"), and they make me wonder if I am wrong.
I sign my blog. What I mean by this is that my blog isn't anonymous. It's linked to my personal e-mail account (probably not the best idea, but I haven't had a problem yet) and I publish most of the posts on Facebook when I publish them. Part of the reason for making my blog signed was that if I was going to publish it on Facebook, people would know anyway. The other part is more complicated, and it has to do with privacy, anonymity and comments in the internet.
For a long time I was a defender of internet anonymity. I thought (and still think) that it allows people to publish about topics that they would rather keep quiet in part of their social circle, especially at work or with their families (i.e. sex preferences, political leanings, etc.). However I have a problem with anonymity in the internet: I don't like bullies. A lot of people take "anonymity" to mean "free pass", and they are unnecessarily rude (and this is me being political, rude is often too soft a word), and they say things they wouldn't dare say under their own names. For this reason, long ago I decided that I would sign what I wrote here, and I would stand up for it, but also that I would not allow anonymous commenting (there are ways around this, but that is another matter). The problem with this, of course, lies in that if someone wants to keep their views about something discussed here anonymous, then they can't. It's two sides of the same coin: on the one hand, I believe people should stand up for what they believe in and be ready to own up to what they say. On the other hand, I believe in people's right to keep certain opinions to themselves in certain parts of their social circles.
I started to consider changing my posting policy a few weeks ago, based on the fact that it would be easier for me to delete offending comments than it would be for people to own up to everything they might want to say, and then the NSA spying scandal broke out and I came to one conclusion: few people are truly anonymous in the internet. If someone really wants to find out what you've said and where, they are going to find out. So I might as well stick to my guns and demand that people are careful about what they say, are sure they want to stand up for what they are saying and are ready to face the fact that if they post an opinion, they should be held accountable for doing that. After all, you are free to post (or not post) as you wish.
All this ties in nicely with a few thoughts I had recently about the reasons I wouldn't publish a post: embarrassment and workplace conflict. These are my thoughts: if I'm too embarrassed to tell anyone in my social circle something, then it probably doesn't belong on the web, where everyone can see it, and if I honestly believe in something and yet I can't defend that openly at work... Well, in that case I should probably be looking for a new job.
These two things are (funnily enough) contradictory: the first one says "don't publish something your not comfortable with" (so censor yourself) and the second one says "don't stay somewhere where you can't voice your opinion" (don't censor yourself). And yet... I still think both apply. So I won't be changing my posting (or commenting) policies. At least not until I can find a reliable blog host who won't share my data with the rest of the world.
No comments:
Post a Comment