Ever wonder if you knew the person you were talking to you would respond differently? Does anonymity create a barrier to be honest and respectful? Would we take more time and thought in our replies for example?
How do you keep privacy and safety in place while making people more accountable for their actions? Sure they can ban you, mark your posts for infractions but what if we took away the anonymity all together, would that be a good thing? Or would we be more reluctant to say anything at all then? That is the drawback to making people more accountable, the backlash. But is that worse than what we see now?
Game consoles are now trying to bridge that gap. First we have usernames much like we have here. With the explosion in services namely Facebook we want a more personal experience. We all have our friends online and I think many of us still like that detachment of using a username as opposed to something more personal like a Facebook account. In fact some people don't want to be out there period and still play games offline. But with linking Facebook or another alternative to our online personas this could lead to real friendships. Or real enemies. Safety should always be the main priority but what does that really say about society in general then if safety is a concern on a game forum?
What about moving forward keeping anonymity in tact? Has the wild west atmosphere meant anonymity must eventually go? People still join sites like N4G to express themselves and maybe even want to become part of a community. But we still don't know each other and I think if we did there would be less issues. Attacking someones opinion is easier when we don't know each other. Acting immature and trolling articles/topics is also much easier if they don't know you. They feel empowered by their anonymity. Take that away and what do you really have? Do you honestly think someone would be just as willing to bait others? To post something stupid and do it just for attention? Eventually they would learn to act more social and be more productive if you removed that layer they use to protect themselves. We would see a lot less negativity too because people would be making them more accountable for their behavior. Comments would start to be more constructive in its criticisms instead or being destructive and put out there simply to be abrasive to everyone else.
We will always have a system where a few bad apples will ruin things for everyone. I think most will agree they like keeping their privacy but the aftermath of that has led to the type of conduct we see daily. Here and every other forum. Each site deals with these people differently but you will never get rid of it. Not as long as anonymity still exists. Of course you would still have your bad apples even without anonymity but it would be a much smaller percentage than what we see now. The more hateful an individual the less they want you to know about them. The more destructive in their nature the harder they try and make it knowing who they are.
We all want privacy, but at what cost?
Microsoft announced its financial results for Q3 of fiscal year 2026, including an update on its gaming Xbox business and more.
Not looking good. Hopefully Asha Sharma is able to turn Phil’s disaster around.
To me it's still quite remarkable how they can cash-in 5.3bn in revenue in a single quarter, since their hardware is basically dead.
The stock mark is what makes Microsoft remarkable, They have convinced every institutional and retail investor to just keep piling money into them. Like many big tech giants they are just a big growing pyramid scheme. As long as people keep dropping money into ETF's that cover the market Microsoft will always be liquid. At the same time it is completely stifling innovation and competition. People need to start being more discreet in how they invest their money as it's killing the system.
Riiiiight because people will just flock back to them for one or two games per year.
15+ years of bad performance is what they call irreparable in business. It is time for them to sell off the assets and get out of entertainment.
These declines are on the back of extra revenue received from releasing games like Forza horizon 5 on PlayStation. So I’m being sarcastic here when I said they should go back to exclusives. Killing off a revenue stream from Ps5 sales will only make things worse
The charity event will be streamed live from Gamescom in August.
Thanks to the slip-up of an artist working on the title, we now have more evidence that a new Injustice game is in the works.
Anonymity is a problem not just on this website but in life in general. It's pretty shocking how far cyber bullying can go in todays youth lifestyles. I would have never imagined kids killing themselves just because of being cyber bullied.
The problem is people can put down whatever they want without the consequence of seeing how that person will react or retaliation. It creates a disconnect on a emotional level. People saying whatever they want and not regretting what they typed and left for the world to see. Who cares, no one knows them.
Back in my youth, there was no way people could get away talking to each other the same way we now talk to each other online. You would get smacked up real quick.
People just need to learn to log out. Go outside and not take this forum, facebook or any website too seriously. You'll find more haters and d*cks online 24/7 because that's what they do, they love it. The good ones are outside, doing other activities and logging on to tell you their experience, share and move on.
I think you're looking at a symptom and diagnosing it as the problem. Anonymity isn't the problem. People are the problem, more specifically, poor parenting is the problem. Prior to the 1990's, even when the internet was young you had anonymity and people weren't acting so janky. Post 1990's kids were emboldened by both parents having to work and being too tired or angry to properly discipline OR spend time with their spawn. What you end up with is a sort of Lord of the Flies mentality where these kids/future adult gamers don't understand how to properly react to others on the Internet. think about it like this, most gamers over 30 don't behave like jerks because they were actually taught how to act in public and the internet is still considered "public" by any reasonable person. Look at the difference in messaging between all those beloved 80s sitcoms and cartoons and the shows of today. From the smurfs on Saturday morning to ABC's lineup of programming on Friday nights the messaging was friendship, integrity, understanding, loving people and their differences, etc.,etc. What do we have now "reality tv" where the message is make alliances but trust noone, the 1st chance you get stab your buddy in the back because he'd do it to you. That's not hyperbole, that's the actual messaging and parents or worse, competing stations aren't even trying to counterbalance the brainwashing. Whats really tragic is those messages that were from basically the 60's - the 80's are now mocked. because YOU can't trust anyone and people ARE always lying to you and accepting someone with different beliefs is HIPPIE/CRAZY talk because we should all believe the same and look the same.. wow, does that sound familiar. And before you think I'm going on about "religious" beliefs, I'm not, I'm not even Christian so this is really a matter of not being an emotionally broken human being. Anonymity doesn't make the person an ass, they were always an ass, you just get to see it now.
People and companies talk about getting rid of anonymity all the time, but why? Companies dont care about trolls, they have moderators with Banhammers for that. IF the company wanted to take it to an extreme they could ban the IP address, problem solved. Most trolls troll from home so threat and implementation of IP Ban would solve the problem. So, if it we're that easy, why don't they just do that? I mean there arent even extra steps involved really they have logs of IP addresses and if you wanted to be very targeted they could ban specific MAC addresses. What this anonymous smoke screen is really about is conversational control. When people that are mature speak out it is because they don't fear persecution, oddly enough however if you look around the internet, the fear of personal persecution doesn't extend to their online identity; let me elaborate.
Most netizens have an online identity and its pretty consistent, it's a lot like their virtual ID, as such no matter the login and password, they usually pick the same alias so people they know can find them. For instance, I have over 100+ sites I'm registered on, out of those 85% have my alias as zhirow. If I find a new site, the first thing I do is register my alias because I like consistency. So you might be thinking "Why not just use your real name?" because I don't have to. Plus there's the projected persona versus the physical projection. When your in meatspace, people see you physically first and foremost your "that cute blonde girl", "That scary black guy", "That scary muslim", "That clever asian", "That androgynous person, I can't figure out is a cute guy or girl..." at that moment, unfair as it is, you've been
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stereotyped and now you have to prove to people that you aren't their preconceived idea. That kinda sucks. Now your online persona is a name attached to you but one you have a vested interest in because usually, it's the "real" you, not what other people think, but you can say what you feel, interact with people regardless of age, discuss things you maybe can't in your meatspace area because of societal taboos, religious taboos, or a general disinterest in the community your born into or stuck in. anonymity isn't quite so bad in that context is it? And if you want to take my theory to an extreme let's look at Anonymous or 4chan. Both of these entities have done good and "evil" but they have well known personae: Anonymous is a vigilante style group of hackers whom,hive-mind issues they think are important, 4chan on the other-hand is known to be "A hive of scum and villainy" and they're ok with that, it's well known that is you don't want to see that which cannot be unseen you should probably NEVER go to 4chan.
Companies only talk about getting rid of anonymity because it's in their interest to control conversations. Imagine a world where a game company can learn your entire personal history because they have all your identifying information. Oh you dont like the way xbox is doing things? Well, microsoft knows who you are...and it seems you've a long list of complaints, maybe they don't want to sell products to known trouble makers. Why is it your registrations on anything microsoft related never seem to go through, Why do your forum posts never seem to show up? Why does your connection always seem to lag at a crucial time? You might not think it could happen, heck, you might not think it's important, but I do. It's no different then what Facebook does and that is not a compliment. I have the bare minimum of information on FB and i never use FB logins on sites because they dont need to track everything i'm doing or browsing or liking. I'm the same with google, in general I use the likes of DuckDuckGo or Bing (without logging in) or ixquick. people say privacy is dead but thats a red herring, privacy is only as dead as you allow it to be, people that say differently have just bought into the messaging.
So to summarize and conclude my response: no, anonymity is not the problem.
Many people are inclined to be more impulsive and aggressive when they can hide behind a screen, because there can be no big consequence for it. Social inhibitions are lessened, and the severity of the resulting behavior depends on the individual. But with so many individuals, there's going to be a lot of bad from it. If a person is very bad about it, they're probably just that way with or without the internet.
But what are you gonna do? We have rights to online privacy and that's how it should be. You're going to have to deal with a lot of annoying crap, but you just have to roll with the punches. There's worse things in life than internet trolls and idiots in a comment section of an article.
I always thought the problems were caused by a-holes.