We built a data set of 45 million comments on news articles on the Huffington Post website between January 2013 and February 2015.
I am no expert but I feel like this is a really bad data set choice for this study.
It is. They should’ve used Reddit and Twitter posts/comments from it’s start to the present to get a more accurate database
Interesting. But the article headline is misleading. The article states that the biggest difference was between volatile anonymity where people could make arbitrarily many accounts, and stable pseudonyms, where a ban cannot easily be evaded. Stable pseudonyms are a lot better as the article states.
Between stable pseudonyms and real names, the difference is smaller, as stated in the article. Real names make it only slightly worse.
The greater internet fuckwad theory applies to all things digital. It turns 20 this april: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/greater-internet-fuckwad-theory
am still sour [._.]
A persona allows people who otherwise wouldn’t to experiment with being magnanimous and making/admitting mistakes(some more cautious IRL, others incapable of backing down).
OTOH, there’s always people who play Paladins on tabletop, and the mitigating factor of the Block button - most who don’t want to aren’t forced to engage with the worst of us, and blocking someone who knows you IRL has a more complicated cost/benefit calculation. This is one thing I feel cancel culture and the younger generations get right; Screw the other consequences when not blocking that shitty uncle, boss, teacher, coworker, celebrity, whoever, is letting them monopolize some of your personal time and mental energy.
