It's Become Too Much

Curtis Lin

Cheryl Clarks

7/31/11

BU Summer – Persuasive Writing

It’s Become Too Much

Choi Eun-Woo, a South Korean man of the age of 43, decided to visit a community website, Daum, to see if there were any interesting articles online. To his surprise, on one of the articles, he saw his name, his picture and where he lived. The article also showed his hand near the waist of a young woman. He was accused of sexually harassing a woman on a train. He didn’t remember ever doing that. He thought that, possibly, the picture must have been photoshopped and edited. Continuing to read through the article, Choi saw the distasteful comments about him, leaving him feel bad. But he felt worse – he felt a foreboding sense of danger which would enter his life. And to his dismay, he sensed right. Day by day, he was pointed to, and received malicious looks from people – even at his workplace! He tried to establish the fact that the article was wrong, but to no avail. After a few months of trying to show his innocence, he couldn’t take it anymore, and committed suicide. The innocent Choi Eun-Woo died. And it was simply due to bullying over the internet – cyber bullying.

Fake masks over the internet and cyber bullying are parts of deterioration of internet protocols. Although we humans may remind ourselves time and time again about the potential problems of the internet, when faced with a society so closely integrated with the internet as South Korea, which has 81% of their population using the internet, it’s definitely no longer up to us. The perpetrators get away with these crimes easily since it’s supposedly just the internet, but suicides and threats are constantly increasing due to the internet. It’s time for a change. We must erase anonymity through an identification system in order to forcibly decrease the amount of cyber bullying cases and to get rid of internet masks. Although freedom of speech may be somewhat restricted, people will restrain themselves. Therefore, they will be more thoughtful and understanding of the results of their actions and will think more, and provide stronger, more intellectual messages when joining internet conversations, as to uphold their own integrity and empower their identity like they do in everyday life outside the internet.

Now, many people argue that getting rid of anonymity means restricting freedom of speech. I do agree that it does potentially take away some freedom to express views publicly on the internet. However, many people are taking advantage of this praised internet anonymity, which enables them to hurt, harass, send death threats, as well as commit various crimes over the internet without much chance of reprisal. Inflammatory posts, which have recently been greatly increasing in number, would quickly die down. In general, due to pressure of how people see them and view their character, people on the internet would become more constructive, less bent on expending negative emotions, and become more wary of what they say to others. In other words, the internet would have an essence of courtesy that appears in real life – only even more so, because what they say on the internet is actually recorded for thousands of others to see.

John Dvorak, author of Pros and Cons of Internet Anonymity, also argues that people would shy away from things which would make them look foolish. He emphasizes that “these folks would say nothing at all if there were no anonymity” (Dvorak) and discusses that sociopaths wouldn’t discuss the most abnormal of things on the net if they were to lose their anonymity. I agree that people would indeed shy away from saying things on the internet that are outright embarrassing or maybe even of vindictive and hateful nature. Thus the loss of anonymity on the internet would greatly decrease the pace and maybe even stop the tides of cyber bullying from touching the shoreline and face of the internet community.

But this doesn’t mean that freedom of speech over the internet would be completely removed. The internet could still be used – and would promote – closed circles of intellectuals who would be able to share ideas, give opinions in a constructive manner, and would be able to reply to others with opposing views in a logical, coolheaded manner. This type of interaction would not lead to fights over the internet. In a way, users would think twice before posting, and would try to show that they are indeed both civilized and good members of the internet society. Removing anonymity would promote more enticing intellectual discussions with users with most maturity and self-control.

The internet, without anonymity, would also further encourage intellectual posts by increasing the prestige of the poster. This could lead to a “competition” in which people would try to prove their point in intelligent and persuasive ways, be clear about their evidence, cite sources, and be a good community member of the internet. It would be like reading many fine-woven essays and points of view online, increasing the literacy and decreasing the mediocrity of internet content. Without internet anonymity, the internet would mean serious business.

Removing internet anonymity would also increase the speed and pace of crime investigation. Rather than having to wait on a suspected person’s ISP to reveal logs, as well as deciphering the logs, it would be easier to simply look at the person’s name who is blogging, posting, or simply giving off any new content on the internet. This, in fact, would decrease crime rate since each post and comment would carry the author’s real name. Crime rate and speed of resolving crime over the internet would decrease considerably.

Of course, this will all come down to security issues. Many dissenters would probably feel that – how would this be possible in a safe way? Anyone can just type someone’s name in and pose as him or her. Well, I feel that something similar to the South Korean KSSN or i-PIN number would work well: during registry, the KSSN would be used to identify the person, but not be publicly available. Rather, the name would be displayed on the forefront, and the SSN, which would also include where they lived and their identity, would be in the background, invisible from the public to see. Of course, this would pose security threats – to hackers, anyway. If hackers retrieved a database of SSN from a given website, then much internet fraud could possibly occur. Thus, it may be possible to place protocols, such as leaving SSN in printed documents and leaving the internet database with nothing but the users. The SSN database could possibly exist on another computer, offline to the internet. Simply put, after a user registers with their SSN, it sends the data – a check for verification – and gains an “okay” from the server, the user is registered, and the SSN is sent to the database and transmitted into another computer through USB or other offline means. South Korea recently has something similar, and although there was uproar, there were few or no complaints after a few years. If South Korea, a society closely integrated with the internet, can do it, why can’t we – the rest of the world?

I have faith that we all can adapt. But places like the United States which strongly represent the idea of freedom and liberty may have problems adapting. That is, internet anonymity hides behind the word “freedom” from freedom of speech. Many users will probably look at the term in relation to the internet on just the bare surface, think of a benefit, and then refuse to think deeply about the negativities it brings and abuse it may allow. But South Korea is also a democracy. And it used the identification system first – and it worked.

Abuse of internet anonymity is growing to the point which anonymity needs to be rid of. Although it may limit our freedom now, it would spawn an age of intellectual and quality advancement of media and information on the internet. The internet society would grow stronger, and become a more professional society than it is today. Lives would also be saved, as cyber bullying and crimes over the internet would decrease considerably, as identities of such potential perpetrators would be easily known, thus making the internet a safer and better place to be. Step forward into a stronger society of the internet in this new age. Be the change.