Anonymous social media!

Hi

I used to read Invisible Man Comics when I was a kid and imagined what if I became invisible? (Oops! I still do :)). You do anything and nobody knows who did it. You kick your enemy and you must see the expression in his face, wondering what that was? You may do good or bad, but no one recognize you. Fun isn’t it?? 😛  The same happens in Anonymous Social Media.

You may come across those confession pages in Facebook that keep you anonymous! But I am not talking about those networking platforms like Facebook with a difference that you are anonymous. You may post updates and chat anonymously. You don’t need a user profile to post in these apps. A number of apps which dominates anonymous social media were released in 2013 and 2014. As CNN notes, the two most popular anonymous social networks, Secret and Whisper, have garnered more than $60 million in investor dollars. According to The Guardian, Yik Yak, another recent addition to the genre, has already raised nearly $12 million. Even Facebook has entered the arena by launching a quasi-anonymous app called Rooms.

Reddit CEO Yishan Wong repeatedly states that “We stand for freedom of speech.” The anonymity always gives us the courage to what we really want.  Many post events like corruption like social evils. As we know we often don’t respond to social evils just because we are afraid. Anonymity gives you the liberty to point out and post about social evils.  People can have active debates on social issues and share their opinions. Many post awful life experience and seek life advises. They say openly since they don’t have to care about what others think. And any other person can help them or quote their own life experience that they never dare to share publicly.

There are two sides for every coin and anonymous social media is not an exception.

By now you may have guessed the worst side of anonymity. As I said earlier even if you do the worst, you will not be caught!  Netscape co-founder, Marc Andreessen, is one of the leading critics of anonymous social sites. He called out the various investors and developers who are pumping money and effort into Whisper, Secret, and other apps by voicing his opposition and saying people needed to decide if the systems are legitimate from an “ethical and moral point of view.” In his Twitter dialog, he lamented that many of these experiments start out fun, but “end with broken hearts and ruined lives”.

Main problem is abusive and slander posts. Anyone can post anything defaming a company, a person. Also it created chaos in American schools. Some spread rumors and gossips through the site making individual’s life hell. This was completely against social media ethics. In order to prevent this anonymous social media sites are instantly removing abusive posts. The contents are filtered instantly. Also some apps changed their algorithm to filter abusive posts. But these can be effective to a certain limit only (YouTube is an example of this limitation even though it is not anonymous). Some anonymous social media formats are not public and rely on controlled anonymity like tellM and rumr. In this case, users only interact with their contact list, allowing people to connect with people they know anonymously.

These sites may not be as big as Facebook but surely they will play a key role in future social media changes!!

Thank You 🙂

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