Synopsis: A system for addressing internet anonymity is discussed. The system relies on the act of assigning an internet-wide identity to people. Like a character in a game, how people develop their internet identity's reputation will impact their ability to get along with others online. Features of the system beyond the scope of games is also discussed.
Internet anonymity gets a bad reputation because of the antics of people online when they can be anonymous. Lots of people say "If people knew who these antic-prone people were, they wouldn't behave that way." I happen to be one of the people saying that. I believe that if everyone knew who I was, I'd spend a little more time thinking about the consequences of my actions. My public identity would be hanging in the balance. Just as I have incentives to stay on good terms with my neighbors, I'd have incentives to stay on good terms with people online.
The nice thing about internet anonymity is that it goes both ways. I can contribute on the web and in games without some random person getting my identifying information and doing something like calling me at home, or sending threats by paper mail or some such lunacy. The overwhelming majority of people are perfectly reasonable and are uninterested in performing maliciousness, but we worry over that tiny fraction of immature or unbalanced people who would choose to seek us out. When I was a kid, we never locked our doors. Until a thief started entering people's houses and stealing silver. It only took one thief to get everyone to start mistrusting strangers.
So what could be done to instill some respect in people while still protecting everyone from the online predators? The solution that I suggest is the same one that is used on countless web sites, only I take it to another level.
Instead of having an identity per web site or game, create a single identity repository on the internet. Much as web sites register their information with one central website repository, each user on the internet registers with one central user repository. Unlike the website repository, not everyone can wander around in the central repository's information. The secrecy of identity information is critical. However, once you are registered there, you can go to any web site, game or other online experience and use that central identity to establish who you are.
I would be user 3920578. You would be user 4495874. That's the only information that we have to volunteer about ourselves. Everything else is private. So when playing World of Warcraft, you are known to be a certain user. If somebody wanted to, they could click on your avatar and ask Google to list stuff that you've written on MMORPG.COM. That is part of your internet identity - what you say in public.
Ideally, Google will record the identity of the person who made the query. You should have the opportunity to find out who asked things about you (including government agencies). So if user 1987458 does a search on your information on MMORPG.COM, you would know. You could then do a search on their information, but that would inform them that you did that search. And so on.
So what's in here to stop some griefer from getting your home phone number and calling you in the middle of the night? There is no public connection between your user number and your phone number. If you use your real name in a post on one site and you include your home town somewhere else on the internet, somebody could put them together to find you. So you don't want to publicly post personal information.
What's then needed is a way for you to grant permission for people to get personal information about you. Sometimes you want to share that information. But you don't want to share it with everyone. Just a specific person. If you want somebody to email you directly, you could send them your email address. But how could you do that when you don't know their email address? You tell the central repository to let that other person see your email address. Now they can see it and send you an email.
Let's get back to gaming. You see me in a game today and mark me as "Gongo", because that's the name my character is using. We group, we chat, we finish some quests together, and we graduallly part company. Years later, we bump into each other in a new game. You are told that this guy flying the spaceship next to you was "Gongo" back in that fantasy game all those years ago. We can renew our gaming friendship. We aren't obligated to swap names, emails or phone numbers. But we certainly could if we wanted to.
What about the idea of curbing annoying behavior? Well, consider that a jerk will be pegged as a jerk as soon as he behaves like a jerk. Instead of marking me as "Gongo", I might get marked as "Jerk". From then on, anytime the player who marked me as "Jerk" sees me - anywhere on the internet - they will know that they didn't care for my behavior sometime in the past.
That definitely puts a curb on the enthusiasm behind being a jerk. It's no longer enough to do something annoying in a game with one character, have some mischievous fun at others' expense, then simply create a new character and move on as if it had never happened. With the internet identity in place, your antics follow you wherever you go.
Now toss in a social networking structure on that central identity repository. Declare who you like and who you don't like. You meet somebody new on the internet. You don't know them, but you know that a friend of yours likes them. So you decide to trust them. Or vice-versa. You don't know them, but you know that a friend of yours dislikes them. So you decide to be wary. Or yet again, you don't know them, but you know that an enemy of yours likes them. You may decide to be wary again. Or you may just decide to see for yourself.
Roleplayers might think that this is a problem for them. Sometimes they want to roleplay a jerk. That's still okay, assuming that everyone understands that it's all roleplaying. When someone decides to roleplay a jerk and they do it to the wrong person, they'll get tagged by that person as truly being a jerk. This serves to remind us that we're not just avatars in games. We remain real people, impacting other real people. If we're going to roleplay a jerk, we make sure that everyone understands that we're just roleplaying, and we'll take further steps to ensure that others are accepting of that.
Back to general cases. Suppose you wanted to sign up for a new game. Normally, you go through that annoying task of giving them your credit card information. But if the central identity repository knows about your financial information (just as you have it spread all over the web today), then you can give the game publisher authorization to see a particular credit card and to use that for your subscription. And that's all they get to see. Properly done, the company simply needs to make sure that you can pay the subscription through the central repository and then bill through the central repository.
If a game wants to ban a player, they can look at their list of banned identities and continue to refuse admittance to those people. No more of this nonsense of griefing under one identity, being banned, and then creating a new identity and getting right back into the game to grief some more. No more banning of IP addresses, credit cards or other partial forms of identity matching.
What's the downside to all this? Clearly, we'd lose our anonymity. Companies and people would be able to spot us once they had seen us before. In games, it would be worst when you're trying to just play the game when you stumble across somebody that you know in real life and they want to talk to you about non-game stuff. "Just leave me alone, I'm trying to play a game here." But you don't want to be rude, so you're stuck talking to them. It might even be something related to work. Ick.
Clearly, there would have to be means to broadcast to others that you really want to be left alone. Games would make it non-trivial to get to the identity information of a player. So instead of having all your identity information floating over your head, a game might only show your identity number if explicitly asked, and then the interested player would have to go to a web site to look up that number. Only people who were motivated would take the time to find out. Just getting to the identity information in the first place might tell the target that their identity number is being asked for.
How about all this "Is that female character really female?" nonsense? Never fear. Your gender would be part of your anonymity. If you're concerned about being a girl playing a game, you can remain anonymous to a degree. Somebody can still look you up on the web according to your identity. Frequent postings on women.com might be a giveaway, of course. But if somebody decides to harass you over your gender, you just set the internet police on them. You can identify them perfectly because their identity is known to you. Not their name, age, address or gender, but you can say "That one, officer."
Those police aren't just internet-based, either. Now that you have been fingered for harassment, the real police can use the identity information to go to your house and charge you with a crime. For the paranoid, the police can't see any personal information without proper authorization. And when they do look at it, the police officer who is looking at it gets their identity recorded. The idea is to avoid any secrets from the central repository.
For the truly paranoid, yes, the central repository would be constantly assaulted by every criminal element on the planet. Just as they are constantly attacking all the various and sundry company- and web-specific repositories out there. Instead of trying to defend myriad repositories, a single repository could be enforced like Fort Knox, growing ever more protective of that information.
For gamers, the goal of the system is to make sure that it's possible to recognize a certain person. If I am significantly nice or mean to you, you can push a button to record that. If you see me another time, you can be told of your opinion of me. That can be a valuable technique for managing online interactions in avatar-based games. Or in web forum discussions. More broadly, the system can be used for almost everything under the sun. A cynic sees George Orwell's 1984, while a more optimistic person would see the opportunity to take something away from the less-than-altruistic members of our society. Both online and off.
User Comments
There is already far too much in the world that is associated with a single identity that we have to do deal with. Our real lives. Name, social security number, drivers license, address, credit card numbers etc. etc. etc.
The less I have to let random stranger know about me, the better.
I'm not a "Big Brother is Watching!" conspiracy nut or anything, but the further of "the grid" the better. If I go to play a new game, I may not want people to instantly recognize me from the other games I've played in the past. It's very, very, very hard to get a fresh/new start in the Real World, why make it so difficult to do in the virtual one?
I feel accountable for what I say online becuase I know that other people read it, and it's important to me to present myself in a respectable matter. Do they know my real name? I hope not, but they know who Heerobya is, and I want people to respect my online identity here. Because Heerobya is "who I am" when I'm here.
I want who I am to be good, not some a$$hat.
Taking something away from less-then-altruistic members of our society? Sounds like "I'm more noble/moral then others, we should come up with a system to reward people like me and punish others who aren't as good."
I'm not saying your cocky or a S.O.B. or anything JB, you know I respect you, but you must be careful with this kind of thought. It follows along the same path that the Elitists and religious zealotry follow... the path of dictators and despots. Two sides of the same coin.
heerobya: "I want who I am to be good, not some a$$hat."
Unfortunately, not everyone feels that way. That's why children are supervised and why laws exist for the adults. Both require accountability.
heerobya: "Taking something away from less-then-altruistic members of our society? Sounds like "I'm more noble/moral then others, we should come up with a system to reward people like me and punish others who aren't as good.""
I always find reactions like that telling, given that there are no ethical judgments inherent in the system. The closest it gets to that is requiring responsibility for a person's actions.
I don't claim to be more noble or moral than anyone else. I only claim that there is a spectrum of nobility that can be known. It is the notion of absolute morality. The notion of relative morality is far more popular these days.
I know all about the notion of absolute morality.
I spent a year discussing Plato's Republic in college, an entire year for that one book just to get at the heart of that very issue.
What is absolute morality? Who can define it?
Know one has been able to reach a consensus in thousands of years.
Trying to state that we can or will define it in the modern age is laughable, and I'm sure you agree.
Requiring responsibility for a persons actions online does exist, to an extent, but only in the form of legality. How can you place laws on online morality? It the same issue I just talked about. Who defines that morality?
I see statements like "A more optimistic person would see the opportunity to take something away from the less-then-altruistic members of our society" as meaning:
"maybe I should be the one who defines that absolute morality."
And such statements scare me. Not saying you are a bad person or that your moral compass is anything but straight and true, but you see what I'm trying to say? Who are we to be Gods and judges/jury?
heerobya: "What is absolute morality? Who can define it?"
It's far more important to accept the very notion that it exists. That there is absolute morality. That actions can be understood to be inherently right or wrong. That they either inherently aid in the development of a healthy society or they do not.
Understanding gravity has eluded us as long as has absolute morality, despite the fact that everyone knows that it exists. Far fewer know that absolute morality even exists, so it's not surprising to me that no consensus has been reached. Social engineering is rather complicated, as MMO developers can attest.
heerobya: "And such statements scare me. Not saying you are a bad person or that your moral compass is anything but straight and true, but you see what I'm trying to say? Who are we to be Gods and judges/jury?"
I've heard what you're saying countless times, but I still don't understand the mindset. If we don't make value judgments, how can we help anyone? If my friend wants to take drugs, do I say "That's his moral decision, so I'll help him because I'm a good friend."? Each time we take any action, we are influencing others. We impact others each time we open our mouths, making the role of deity or judge and jury inevitable. You are playing that role each time you write anything as a blog article or forum post.
Returning to the system described in the article, if someone does something that is unacceptable to a given community, then that community becomes empowered to take defensive actions. That might be as simple as a fine by the community (a game fining a player for grief actions). It might be elevated to ostracization from the community (suspension or ejection for grief actions). It might even go to the point where a broader community's laws take hold, such a pedophilia. In that case, the actions against the individual would be enforced by the police.
In each case, the community is playing the role of deity, per your rationale. It has the right to declare actions as unacceptable. They are the ones that are declared illegal, to be discouraged or penalized. The healthiest communities are the ones that choose absolutely moral rules - whatever they are. We seem to be destined to figure that out by trial and error. Hopefully that process of trial and error will involve as few repetitions as possible of poor community formulas by those who refuse to learn from history.
We already have community that takes action. We have power.
I've reported countless people on this website for saying things that I believed to be immoral, or just plain stupid.
There are rules for posting on this site, and on nearly every other board on the net. That's why they have moderators. Social justice is mob justice, democracy in inaction.
We excercise our right and our power by voicing our opinion.
Of course we can make value judgements, of course we can say things like "drugs are bad for you" but it's up to the other person to make the decision. Deciding things for other people is the first step towards ruling them.
They most we can hope to do, morally, is inform people how we feel and hope that they listen. Why do you think there is so much debate about the law? What one defines as moral and right, another will say is evil and wrong. It's the whole reason lawyers exist in the first place, to spin that fine grey line in their favor.
You are asking questions and making statements far too large for the MMORPG.com setting lol, hell, even for religion and politics and law etc. etc. There are no right answers.
We can talk all we want about absolute morallity. But we base our definition of such things from our own personal biases.
You and I might think that stoning someone to death for commiting adultry is not moral, but in many parts of the world it's the only viable response.
Are they right? Are we right?
There IS no absolutes when it comes to morality. You'll always find someone who disagrees, no matter WHAT is said.
The best we can hope for is a majority rule. The majority feels that pedophilia is really immoral, so we inact rules and protections to prevent it from happening.
Back to the orignal topic, is there any way to increase responsibilty and accountability on the internet? Where people are protected from reprieve by their online anonymity? Maybe, but it walks a very thing line with breeching personal privacy.
You'll never find a consensus. You'll never find an absolute.
Even acknowledging that you beleive their is an absolute tells me that you feel there SHOULD be a black/white right or wrong answer... but there simply isn't.
Mankind simply cannot achieve perfection. It's against our nature. This, however, is not a bad thing.
On a technical basis, I'd like to point out a few issues with your idea of anonymity.
For one thing, what you are describing is technically called "pseudonymity" -- an identity persistant across multiple works but not readily traceable to a real world identity. It's central to not only game reputation, but also to hacker communities, political writers (take authors from the American Revolution or US Constitutional debates who produced "broadsides" under pseudonyms like Cato).
Anonymity completely severs the association between the author and the works -- only voluntary and *mechanically* unverifiable association between real world and creator identity remains. Systems such as Tor or Psiphon provide reasonable online anonymity (disclaimer -- I used to be executive director of The Tor Project http://tor.eff.org, now http://torproject.org).
The problems with this central repository you propose are multiple. For one thing, any such central repository requires absolute trust in the repository owner, that privacy will be preserved, and that security will be maintained at a very high, almost unattainable level.
Consider how often we hear of credit cards and other personally identifying information being hacked from various sites. Then imagine there were one repository for the personal and payment information for millions of gamers. This is what we call in the computer security context an "attractive nuisance." It's like waving a big fat flag that says "hack me!"
So the security on such a repository would have to be on the same level of the best e-commerce or bank site, and the privacy practices would have to be very well defined and consistently kept.
For example, who gets to decide what defines the terms under which a person can get their personal information released for griefing? What's griefing? Is this information available to anyone claiming to be the registered minor's parent? How is age verification done?
If you think about the problems, you'll start seeing why this hasn't been done yet. The policy and technical and legal problems get ugly fast.
Yrs
Shava
Shava: "So the security on such a repository would have to be on the same level of the best e-commerce or bank site, and the privacy practices would have to be very well defined and consistently kept."
I took that as a given. In truth, I assumed that something considerably better than today's security would have to be in place. It's not a simple problem.
Shava: "For example, who gets to decide what defines the terms under which a person can get their personal information released for griefing? What's griefing?"
Griefing is defined by either the members of a community or the sponsor of that community. In the MMO context, griefing is defined by the operator, and is agreed to by accepting the EULA for that game. If the operator declares an act as an offense, it employs appropriate sanctions. The offender has already given permission for those sanctions to be employed.
Communities make laws and require that their members abide by them. When they do not, sanctions are employed. Internet anonymity obviates a wide range of potential sanctions, making predation in online communities easier.
Shava: "Is this information available to anyone claiming to be the registered minor's parent? How is age verification done?"
This system requires physical identity verification. People visit a physical location in order to establish their identity. They do that exactly once. Yes, I understand that this is costly, difficult to administer and subject to abuse.
I would want to rely on biometrics as much as possible. Beyond that, social metrics would be managed using whatever conventional means was available. That means birth certificates, passports, driver's licenses, etc. In time, this system would become the final source of documentation. That, instead of having someone forge a driver's license on their home printer.
Shava: "If you think about the problems, you'll start seeing why this hasn't been done yet. The policy and technical and legal problems get ugly fast."
Yep. And if nobody ever hears about the possibilities of such a project, the will required to overcome those hurdles will never precipitate.
I think it's one of the great advantages of the internet that everyone is free to tell his opinion, to contribute or to critisize something. With 'being free' meaning having no real consequences if someone does not agree. Would the internet be as big and diverse as it is now if everyone could be held accountable for whatever he says? Now people are free to try new things out, without knowing for sure that everyone agrees. What you are suggesting would increase the level of social control on the internet immensely. I think the internet as it is now is a wonderful and unique place that should not be limited in the way you propose.
I work with biometrics every day, and let me tell you, there are not a fool proof system. I can't say more, company policy crap, but biometrics is a far worse technology and a far worse security answer then a picture ID and an attentive attendant.
The point, JB, is I really don't think we NEED that level of security or control over a person's internet identity. Not for something as useless or truly pointless at gaming or forums. We have enough problems with internet identity with online shopping, phishing, identity theft, etc. etc. why extend the problems and difficulties we face with those systems to our lovely world of gaming and forum bashing?
Okay, JB go live in your nutty father internet (aka myspace.com) while I stay here where I want to be. If the internet required such compulsory info, I'd fake it. I'm already pissed enough I have to give real life data to ISPs and if they shared those with an universal handle (besides your IP, which already sort of happens for those of us with static IP), I'd fake it again.
soulwynd: "I'm already pissed enough I have to give real life data to ISPs and if they shared those with an universal handle (besides your IP, which already sort of happens for those of us with static IP), I'd fake it again."
I don't like giving out my information either. I fake it too. I don't want 6,000 sites having my personal information. That's why I like this system. I can reliably give it to one organization and then never have to let anyone see it again.
That ISP that wants your personal information? They don't need it anymore and they don't get it anymore. You identify yourself using that third party that everyone trusts, and the ISP accepts your identity because they have to trust that third party as well.
What does the ISP actually need? They need to know enough to hook up your computer and to charge you for the service. That's all they should be allowed to know about you. This system is intended to aid you in privacy. Heck, calling you on the phone doesn't even require them to know your phone number. If you grant them the right to call you, they could do it using your identity number. When you change your home phone, you update the central repository and they can still reach you. Don't want them reaching you anymore? Disable their right to call you.
The exception to the increased privacy is that everything you choose to do publicly on the internet will be correlated and searchable. I can search for everything you write on MMORPG.COM, and the same thing would be extended to the rest of the internet. For me, that's not a big deal. I'm not quite sure why it's a big deal for anyone else.
heerobya: "I work with biometrics every day, and let me tell you, there are not a fool proof system. I can't say more, company policy crap, but biometrics is a far worse technology and a far worse security answer then a picture ID and an attentive attendant."
The hard part is getting the attentive attendant.
I'm not here to defend biometrics. They are in the early years of development and they'll get progressively better. Meanwhile, the eyes of attendants around the world will continue to glaze over.
Drolletje: "Now people are free to try new things out, without knowing for sure that everyone agrees."
Yeah, I'm loving that freedom right now, I can tell you.
Drolletje: "What you are suggesting would increase the level of social control on the internet immensely."
Control by whom? How will this control be exerted?
You are proposing to put a lot of faith and trust into something that exists in a world where there is very little faith nor trust in such establishments.
It's a great idea JB, in theory, it would make things easier and simpler.
But the world hardly works in real life like it does in theory.
Take communism, great theory, everyone is equal and happy and provided for hurray! But it never works. People aren't equal, everyone gets the same crap, the powerful few get all the nice stuff.
If you can tell me where we could find a company that everyone could fully trust to store their most private data and never do anything immoral with it, I'd be one of the first to sign up.
Human nature + capitalism + democracy = zero confidence and trust
Unfortunately, there is nothing better.
The system you suggest is RIPE for abuse and mishandling, and only if we could indeed find an individual or corporation that possessed an "absolute morality" would it work. But, like I said, an absolute morality is a pipe dream... too subjective.
heerobya: "If you can tell me where we could find a company that everyone could fully trust to store their most private data and never do anything immoral with it, I'd be one of the first to sign up."
We don't trust the people running the facility. There are ample cases of facilities where that is true. Such security is well understood. I wouldn't be surprised to find that such a system was run by private contractors under military supervision. Heck, with public supervision on top of that. Web cameras all over the place. Downloadable source on the system software.
heerobya: "Human nature + capitalism + democracy = zero confidence and trust"
I couldn't disagree more. The lack of confidence and trust is a recent phenomenon. Post World War II. I point the finger at the growth of mass media and their penchant for a fascination with showing the darker side of humanity. It's that same phenomenon of one thief in town.
Do we not have enough methods of Identifying people. Personally I am against any more registration than we already have. The internet is one of the only places where we actually have some sort of freedom. The last thing I want is to restrict that. The last thing I want is someone logging the last 10 sites that I just browsed (which will have some form of porn in there some where).
I love to roleplay. I enjoy playing the good and bad guy. When I decide to play the bad guy, I am not going to make sure everyone in the world knows so their feelings dont get hurt. Actually I really dont give a shit if I do hurt someones feelings for Pking them. Its a game. If their life and emotions are so intertwined into this game and by me killing their character, they hate me, shrug. They have much greater problems than I care to fix. Its a game. People take shit way to personally...
The only kind of repercussions would be bad ones. Its just one more way for some fucktard to lose his mind, find you, and shoot your family over killing his 23rd lvl elf druid at south shore...
Horrible, horrible idea. Who cares about what some nutjob say in some gaming forum. The people this would hurt is the ones posting political stuff in countries where their views can get them prosecuted, jailed or even killed.
We need the anonymity the net gives us so we can say what we want without fear of consequenses from all kinds of idiots, both privatly and politically. The small price we pay having to deal with the beforementioned nutjobs(just ignore them) is far outweighted by the advantage people have when they can say whatever they want, anywhere and everywhere, political or not.
slask777: "The people this would hurt is the ones posting political stuff in countries where their views can get them prosecuted, jailed or even killed."
So they post in places that allow anonymity. The system described isn't being forced down anyone's throat. If it doesn't provide value, then it won't be used. Today, nobody has the choice of using a network with any kind of identity verification. As for me, I know that I'd really like to have such a system for the vast majority of what I do with the internet.
When I'm ready to call for the overthrow of the U.S. Government, I'll use other means. Just as I wouldn't go into a police station when I felt the need to break a law that I thought was unjust.
I know you are big into the metaverse or multi something thing JB, one avatar, many games, bring the same character to different MMOs and the avatar morphs to follow that rule set, player created content, small specialized games you can move through etc. etc. etc.
To do such a thing, you'd have to have a single identity within that system. Totally understandble, only way to do it, cool beans. No complaints.
But to extend that kind of 1-identity system to the rest of the net and/or world is wwwwaaayy to radical. Too much potential for abuse. Notice how in every sci-fi movie where they have something like this, it ends up being a pain in the arse and/or something the protagonist has to work around/circumvent? It's always because "The Man" is using the centralized system to take control and/or abuse their power.
A.I. minority report gattica etc. etc.
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