When people abuse anonymity to bully others, or to make sexist or racist remarks it allows them to get away with their actions with no consequences. This issue of using anonymity for the wrong reasons is escalating more and more every year and something definitely is needed to be done to either get rid of it all together, or to at least minimize it as much as possible. The site called Hello there, Racists has many good examples of the amount of racist comments that are made on the Internet by both males and females of all ages. The amount of racist comments that are made about the president of the United States is sickening and the idea that we all possess thinking that racism has minimized over the years in my opinion is very far from the truth, as it is still very prevalent today. Having a site like this makes the point of racism very obvious and it gets awareness out to people, and I believe this is a very positive and good thing. These people should not be given the right to make comments like these if they are not willingly to face the consequences of their own actions. I believe that we are given the right to free speech, but if what you have to say is unethical or is said just to hurt another person, exposure of your real identity is absolutely necessary.
The anonymity of the Internet may provide a level of privacy, but it can also enable certain participants to become much more aggressive and rude than they would be without hiding their identity. Using exposure in outing people who use anonymity to be racist or to bully people I believe is a very necessary action. There is no doubt that anonymity can allow users to express their opinions more confidentially than they would in the real world. However, my reasoning for exposure is because some users ignore Internet etiquette when they are able to continually make rude remarks without any consequences, and it will just continue to happen because there is nothing stopping them from doing this. If we are able to take away the freedom of anonymity from the people who abuse it, I believe this will have a positive effect in decreasing the amount of racism and bullying found on the Internet. The bullying that happens online has extremely harmful and devastating effects on people's characters and self images.
A recent example of anonymity that I have come across is a Facebook page called MRU Confessions, and on this anonymous site it gives students a place where they can make a range of confessions from people confessing about people they like from around campus, to various school incidents. For the most part, the confessions made here are harmless and quite entertaining to read, but there is one example of "The Phantom Puker" that is not very entertaining at all. I live in residence here at Mount Royal and over the last semester there have been many incidents of someone puking in the elevators and hallways at all times of the day, and no one ever owns up to it. It was becoming quite the problem and we have had to have building meetings to discuss these frequent incidents. Since MRU Confessions has begun, there have been multiple posts from "The Phantom Puker" making comments about how nothing will stop him, and just being plain ignorant about the whole situation. For me and many of the others who live here, as well as to the cleaning staff, we find this very disrespectful and completely disgusting and this person deserves to be exposed because these actions are very immature, and may end up costing all of us more money if it continues.
I believe that the Anonymous' intervention in the Steubenville and Rehtaeh Parsons cases is not justifiable and is seen as an act of vigilantism because given the information from Anonymous is unknown if their facts are true or not. There is a reason Anonymous does not want to be known and to be held accountable. Anonymous involvement in the cases by taking the law into its own hands and potentially incriminating and violating of those individuals is not doing any good. Although Anonymous' actions are done with the right intentions, I do not think it can be justified because of the way they go about it is still illegal. If vigilante is seen as appropriate, it is likely for more groups of people to take it upon themselves to use illegal activity to change what they believe is wrong. Anonymous' actions are ones that law enforcement is incapable to do because it is hacking into peoples private lives without any legal authority.
Therefore, anonymity is an issue that is hard to take one side over the other because anonymity is seen as being extremely effective in promoting freedom of expression, but when used wrongfully the impacts can out way the good. I believe when anonymity is used to harm others, their rights of being anonymous should be stripped away from them and they deserve to suffer the consequences for their actions.
