 Helping to support here so but so I would like to introduce my my friend Paula Bielski and her research partner good Spockman They've been doing a lot of work in anonymity on the internet and how I know a lot about Paula's work She since we met in 2006 or quite possible probably before has been researching peer-to-peer how strangers trust one another through internet platforms and what levels of anonymity is different what levels of anonymity that different platforms have in order to Connect people and and how trust is built through these online interactions So she and I have spent some time talking about this and I suggested that she come in and talk about some of her research Because I thought it would be interesting to all of you Well, so yeah, you guys come on up and and and present. Thank you so much Rachel Wonderful is really wonderful to be here. This culminates a month and a half of my field work here in the Bay Area We're gonna tell you a little bit About this project about the anonymity project that has started in Germany and it's just a really about to begin Formally and good Spachman come over here. Good Spachman. He's standing in the corner Good Spachman and myself are working at a place called the Digital Cultures Research Lab I'm a sociologist and good as an anthropologist We work with all sorts of people who qualitatively So we don't do number crunching who quality look look at digital cultures So all sorts of aspects from computing histories to the philosophy of wires and cables so all sorts of things including and anonymity and Goods as well as a few other people at the University of Bremen at the University of Hamburg at Lüneburg University Where we are based which is just south of Hamburg. We wrote together a large proposal last year that Won a lot of funding from the the W foundation in Germany to study anonymity and all sorts of assets of anonymity Not only how it's being reconfigured due to the digital, but also Due to urbanity to do mobility to all sorts of post-modern modern questions That's will Address this wonderful large project and I'll tell you a little bit But what I've been doing in the field in the past month and a half Hi, hi, I think you have to grab talk here Hello, yeah, hi My name is good Okay, my name is good. And Yeah, I guess I'm gonna I'm gonna give you a little bit like say like ten minutes of the hard part of the German part of this thing Because actually it was a very sweet lie that you said we've been doing a lot of research on anonymity We actually have been very doing very little research yet anonymity. This is a research project that will start in October so what I'm gonna do is something that Academics already hate a lot and I guess maybe you even hate more I'm gonna talk about a research project that Hasn't happened yet the conceptual thinking that we might Think something will come out of but maybe it's still interesting the kind of framework That we are working in so my personal interest in anonymity came comes out of another research project As Paula said we are ethnographers. It's not because I hanging around with people in different and strange places I was hanging out in Japan 10 years ago and I was researching a platform called Nico Nico doga Does anyone know this here? Okay, so you know like Nico Nico doga a very big video platform the main competitor of YouTube in Japan what works in several respects Fundamentally different to YouTube and the most noticeable thing how it works different is that people write their comments on the video Well, you could do that for a time in YouTube as well, but Okay You could do that on YouTube as well But on Nico Nico doga many many people were writing very short and Anonymous comments without any further pseudonymity pseudonymity or anything people just left their traces and that meant that these comments could merge in something which they called cookie and Cookie is an atmosphere a collective atmosphere that arises when you are Consuming something together So instead of watching your video alone at home It felt like as if you are watching the video just like you are in a very noisy rock concert Well, lots of cheering would happen lots of affirmation would happen because interestingly Once you are in this form anonymous people would all start to write very similar things They would lose the need to always be very original or be confrontative but instead they would develop all sorts of strange ways of Collectively playing along with the video and that is under the condition of anonymity There's also all sorts of other Practices that are happening on this platform Which are all can only happen when they are anonymous one of them would be that people delete each other's tags So that's a hard thing to do if you just have tagged something and I delete it But they could do it because tagging was fully anonymous There was no identity behind that and this deletion games around tags made tags much more effective Another thing was authorship if you would be an author and put up a video You would hope that people over time recognize your style and name you instead of you yourself saying this is Joe I made this fantastic video of my children. Look how awesome. I am so people in Japan said This practices are different practices whereas YouTube is a medium for the bullies Nikonika doga was a medium for the bullied because this was a lot about Collective expression and it's all on the condition of anonymity. So I felt in love with anonymity I talked with a colleague another anthropologist Michi Knecht and she's done a research on Totally different fields on gamete nation and she said also very interesting stuff happen around anonymity And once you start thinking about it, you think like what a big and fundamental topic it is It's really at the base of I'm getting a lot European Egalitha like Liberty Egalitha and fraternity like all these basic values of European culture, maybe Western culture and to my mind they are deeply tied to anonymous practices You're like Liberty. I don't have to explain in the time of Snowden, but also Egalitha the possibility that you encounter each other without being notified as sound like like pinned down as someone with a woman or Like whatever Different forms of encounter and also fraternity the possibility of forming forms of collectivities They partially run on anonymity. So something important is at stake and of course You also know something important is at stake. That's at the moment changing Changing majorly through ICT. It's changing through surveillance It's changing through this causes of transparency like an idea that transparency is a high value And maybe in a more important value than anonymity and we kind of had this feeling a wait a minute There's something deeply productive about anonymity that we got Going to say that's I don't know like how much more I should I should I talk more about this like unbaked acts because this is not empirical research This is just a bunch of research was kind like philosophizing about anonymity. So tell me more about this or more empirical stuff The other guys are doing in the project. What is it? How long will the project last? Okay, the project will last for Three years it's gonna consist of Four ethnographic projects all of them producing people like Paula and myself hanging around with people One will look at police work, especially in Northern Ireland and in Germany and like and how anonymity is Our anonymity is playing out there. One project will look at gametes donation Spum donation egg donation and the big consequences that anonymous Practices anonymous and infrastructures anonymous anonymity regulations have In this area, especially I mean like this is a very intimate area obviously because this is about Later forms of you know, who your father is who your mother is so that's that's the second project the third project we'll look at how social media is is Like especially in the early moments of of building new social media apps how designers how information architects how marketeers how developers negotiate How and where what parts of the platform is in what kind of way Anonymous and how that is then marketed or kept secret Okay, so this we believe is a very very important decision that you have to make early on when you create social any any form of social media and and we are interested in the kind of intelligence that is almost like like Playing out around anonymity. We want to learn how people think about anonymity in this respect fourth project looks at all the forms of anonymity that rise out of your purse and All the cards that are in there from your health card It's like it's like a German German thing until to the to your health insurance card to your Credit cards and all sorts of other customer cards And what what is at stake here anonymity and we'll follow that up into the data databases and the fifth project will have a Lot of artists some of the media artists some of them other artists Reacting to these kind of like ethnographic research with their own work so that we have another level of and like Conceptual thinking coming out of art project and our thinking about anonymity is that is always partial You know, there's no full anonymity anonymity ever that is always some tension of perceived and real I mean like whatever real is that is never kind of like Universal that is always you're always anonymous in a certain direction Someone has someone someone has access someone has not has a duration. It's very important How long you know you will stay anonymous? Will you be anonymous forever or will that be that only for the next month all these questions? We have to we have to find out in detail We will research this in a framework where we always look at practices practices are like what people do again and again and again technology and infrastructures and the whole set of legal but also Moral forms of regulation, which we think that in all these cases will be at stake and will be negotiated by all these actors and maybe one last thing Because we believe that on a very fundamental way anonymity will deposes big question One of the big question is like how do you run reciprocity and you have anonymity like how do you give back? It's a very interesting like an anonymous anonymous Fierce you often give something and who gives it back if you donate your semen who gives it back You know like that that kind of like that that kind of like openness of not being able to give back is for Anthropologists and if not cause very interesting because we believe that there is something for the gift economy and that always Has some underlying needs of reciprocity and they they are undermined that that's interesting to us the second thing is Of course the question of personhood because Anthropologists don't take for granted that you as you. I don't know. What's your name? Lewis that Lewis is Lewis is Lewis and that's what it is and we all know that Lewis is Lewis and all fine We think that Lewis is many many many things and all sorts of elements and anonymity cuts through Lewis in many So Lewis is maybe a for database only a name and there is a piece of meat and there is like all sorts of other things So these kind of like how does personhood reemerge under conditions of anonymity is something that we are Very interested and the last point is of course, it may be very important for you accountability. How do you help people? Accountable for their actions, which is another very very fundamental question once you enable this important cultural technique Of modernity which we call anonymity. This is what we want to research And which we haven't yet answered. Yeah, but Paula has some answers already Exactly things gets and another thing is that if you're interested in following the stuff that we'll be doing in the next few years There is a website and a blog That's called reconfiguring anonymity net and I'll put that up at the end of this presentation So you guys got an overview of what? We'll be doing but what we did at the ground level right now is they kind of sent me as an ethnographer Here to the Bay Area for a month and a half to do sort of I don't call it a discourse analysis But maybe a more of a mapping of the different discourses that are happening in the Bay Area in the tech industry around Forms of anonymity and really what is happening around anonymity in this space among developers among activists around people who Analyze data among people such as yourselves who work in education All sorts of aspects are very important And an enemy is very important to all sorts of dimensions of people working in the tech industry as you know But a lot of times it's not thought about or let's say it's thought about too much or people feel hopeless Or don't know what's happening in general on the discourse. So I just came here and I said well What is the state of the art right now? What is happening right now? And my methods are pretty simple. I just go and chat to people really and I Do conduct interviews between an hour to three hours where I sit and chat and just really listen to People's stories of what they're trying to do in this space really What are they trying to develop if someone is developing an app? That's more of a quantified self type app. How does he deal with people's identity in this sense? He's collecting data. She's collecting data. What are they doing with this data? And how does it work or how does it work for a browser? How does someone browse through? And the web and how do they browse anonymously is that possible? What kind of features are being enabled or in different browsers? What if someone's working in mapping and collecting data and they need more data, but they also have this struggle They don't know what to do. So there's all sorts of aspects And I spoke to everyone from activists as I said to people in larger corporations to a guy Developing an app to a woman who's active in the identity space. So so all sorts of people I did about 20 interviews and a few Roundtable discussions between with larger companies or larger groups So I'm not saying in any way I'm an expert But I just wanted to share with you some of the stories and some of the problems I see in this space Yeah, so I'm just gonna go through it And I don't actually know how much you guys know also a bit of maybe contextual theoretical background about anonymity So I'll take also some quotes from some of the my favorite quotes from some of the books that I've read around this topic So there's a philosopher named Paness Who's I believe in New York and she says anonymity is a matter of being unable to associate particular pieces of information with specific Person so let's remember that and nimmy is relational I know that in the field when I was talking about and nimity a lot of people start talking about Privacy and that is very much related but privacy is kind of this more general The thing and anonymity has really a lot to do with Relationality who am I talking to right privacy is just everyone that I don't want data going out there to Random unknown person X, but that's not really relational when we start a relation That's where anonymity starts in some ways to develop And I'll give you guys also a list of some readings if you guys are interested in catching up So I'll give you where this quote came from later, too Many of you have read Laurence Lessig's work on code The second edition came out in 2006 But already in the late 90s he was saying code on the internet is a regulator and the people live life on the internet subject to that Regulation so the ways that we want to engage with anonymity is also regulated by the code that we are then a part of we have Become code right we have become encoded online and that code has a life of itself that regulates the our forms of practice We can't practice certain things because we become part of certain certain regulations as we become code online Which I've I've noticed in a lot of discussions And also Pena says that she suspected many forms of anonymity are spontaneous Unintentional or even avoidable. So this is also came out with a lot of the stories that of the people there I was talking to they said anonymity is not about the really the mega crypto guy Who's trying to like hack something huge or it has nothing it doesn't always have to do with I Don't know something big something massive or an uprising or a political situation. This is a long quote But I'll read it from a Software engineer who I interviewed here in San Francisco and he said people are frightened and intimidated and experienced various forms of social pressures There are all sorts of threats. They're exposed to or they think they're exposed to for example They feel that there is a certain role. They have to play or certain way They have to act these are all personal threats and anonymity is a is about acting a little more free from these things So he says that we have real Micropressures in our society too and people come up with these examples of totalitarian regimes and say that we are not like them We have free society anonymity is just needed to fight regimes like in the Arab Spring or in China, etc And he says then you go and talk to these same people and see that they do have their own concerns And spontaneous moments they choose to be private. So this spontaneity and anonymity is really important too We forget that just as we do offline we make certain cuts. We put on different hats We say certain things we conceal our names Sometimes we conceal where we're going to whomever or to our mom or somebody to our teacher or to whoever it is That we're talking to so these moments of how we engage in anonymity We tend to be very spontaneous and not something deliberate that we're deliberately need to log into something and crack something and be anonymous Right, so this is also worth taking into account that anonymity is a quantity spontaneous thing and trusted systems as less except depend on data They depend on an ability to know how people use the property that is being protected So this is also think that we are the way we are anonymous I noticed this by a lot of stories that people are saying really the way we're anonymous how we can engage In anonymity is now not our choice We can't take off a hat and put it on a lot at the time other people have our data other people know are Tracking what we are doing online, and we don't have that availability to take away that idea to delete what we've done before to Unlink the links that are happening that someone else can make right so this Trusted systems depend on this data, but they're also collecting it And they're also controlling. I think the forms of anonymity that we can engage in And let's go say all of the good that comes from monitoring could be achieved while protecting privacy It may take a bit more coding to build in routines and breaking traceability It may take more planning to ensure that privacy is protected But if those rules are embedded up front the cost would not be terribly high It is far cheaper to architect privacy protection now Rather than profit for them later and remember less to go so wrote this in the late 90s Even though this was the second edition so he's saying well This is easy guys and this was this was how many years ago right and this is the problem with I noticed this space And you guys can later correct me if I'm wrong is that it's nothing really I mean stuff is being done but there's a small not much of a a Discourse or an idea that things are hopeless and a lot of people in the field that I've talked to said This is really hopeless and this was actually a something quite sad that came out of the field of the stories that I've heard This said I don't know how to innovate in this field that really makes a mass amount of people use these technologies, right? Something that less they hope that could just happen in the next years back in the 1990s, right? so I'm going to skip over this and Another technologist said that this was the problem. So these are a few problems of why There's this hopelessness is a feeling of this this challenge in this space one technology said the computer was fundamentally designed down to its CPU architecture as a tool for espionage people are not aware of this and not aware that the fact of espionage Prevades daily life. There must be a deeper awareness that understanding cryptography is fundamentally a tradecraft of computer literacy So one technology said yeah computer literacy and saying we know how to use the computer doesn't equate to we know how to Encrypt our systems. We know how to protect ourselves. That's not we know how to use Facebook We know how to browse he says and that's it for everyone They don't understand that to understand the computer is to understand how to encrypt So that's one problem that this lack of the link this awareness that I want to know more about the computer I want to understand how to use it. It's not only about typing. It's not about how about browsing around in Facebook It's a route encryption. That's literacy um and He and I'm gonna skip over this as well another technologist said that we're not Technologists, this is another problem. Technologists are not interested in developing these simple tools for people to use Simple tools to help user anonymity are relatively easy to create But sorry, but the engineers around me are trying to work on difficult cryptography systems I'm trying to impress one another with more abstract solutions that might not be directly applicable So this is also someone who's a really quite advanced software engineer He is at a large university and he's actually Developing encryption systems, but he just says well, it's kind of a race to make the coolest and the most abstract It's not about when developing tools for mass amount of users to use So that's also something that's not there in the space and another huge issue in this anonymity space Is that I found is a brown data and data collection and one data analyst said that as someone who works in Transport we want so much more data than is available today Moreover, there's already much a lot of data in our company But obtaining it is a constant battle between the product developers and privacy team So developers who are driven on data do not have a sensitivity to users anonymity We want their data in order to create better tools and same thing for this guy He said convenience trumps over privacy practices in the current climate on a daily basis Users are not willing to take the time to engage in practices offers and in practices that offer more protection Because it might be costly and slow what we have to develop for the users are tools that are automatic and don't cost us anything So as somebody who develops creating fast and efficient ways help the user be anonymous is really difficult So here are some difficulties that I really noticed with talking to these guys. There's a lot about technologists just don't have Basically the the drive to invent just very easy tools for people to use also people are not aware that In order to use the computer and in order to be littered in the computer We have to take the time to actually engage in these Kind of a little bit more arduous power practice, but teach yourselves how to encrypt and Also this this idea both speed and convenience. That's also very much linked to it So so I noticed when I was talking to a lot of these people that that's a what I wanted to summarize I think maybe I would like to open the field to you guys is really this this feeling that we don't really know what to do There's no money in this. There's no ways of preserving our our ways of being anonymous Slowly some stuff is coming out But how much is good is going to be in a space and I also noticed that this is a lot happens in the open source space That a lot of tools like these are being developed there and that's really great But how much is that can be sustained and how can it be scaled? That's that's the question that a lot of these people were asking So some of the tools of course of tour browsing proof of work tokens contextual identity You guys know what tour browsing is I think a lot of you guys know what I don't want to Maybe I could run through some of these things you guys probably know that them But some of these are just some of the stuff that people when I asked Well, what are some of the ways that people can gauge an anonymity? They said these are some of the forms of tour browsing or tour browsing is blocked Maybe something like a proof of work token can work and a proof of work token is something that it's like a captcha But a little bit harder like you have to read a page of a certain book And it takes a lot or longer than I don't know 15 20 minutes And then you do that and then you prove that you have that you have that proof of work token for a while until Let's say you've reached something and you vandalize something and then you have to go again and do the proof of work token So you are identified with someone who is trusted because you've done the work to be trusted Do I think that's what I how I understand it So that's one contextual identity That's also how this works on some browsers of how browsers are trying to develop ways of browsing that can be Contextual that it's not that I'm browsing as pal all the time But this also has to do with pseudonymity Certain browser add-ons etc. And there could be more do you guys know others other forms any thoughts on? No, just wondering if anyone knows um Sorry Going to the library Yeah, yeah going to the library music here there. Yeah, that's true tails Yeah Yeah, okay, okay Okay Mm-hmm. Yeah, I forgot to put that number. This is just some of yeah PGP keys is a good example, too Yeah, but I was just wondering maybe I could open the floor to you guys Because I just wanted to take 15 minutes to present that I have other of course stories And I really open to some questions, but the more more is I would really be interested in hear your stories of where you see The this space may be problematic or not or really how does do you guys at Wikipedia? Enable user anonymity or think maybe around user anonymity as well Any thoughts your question? Yes Hi. Hi. Hi It's a bit quiet one two, and you is it working Maybe I can shout oh Okay, sorry I So I'm interested in in this area that you said before anonymity is Is actually relative? So for instance in in the context of our technical community I Wonder if someone is anonymous or not because it's a consistent username, so I don't know really who's the person But even if I would have full name telephone number and address doesn't matter because that person is leading somewhere else And we are no end to meet and it's not even the point because we are discussing some software change for instance So in the case of a username and we have plenty of usernames I mean actually Wikipedia is more about usernames than than anything apart from Anonymous like as in not even a username contributions Is it really anonymous or not? I don't know who's the person I don't know where he's in the planet, but it's a consistent identity that comes and comes back and keeps a discussion That keeps a contribution so at the end I Don't know that person, but I know that person because we've been working together for two years So is that the nonimus or not anonymous? Yes, you want to come up? Yes, you have to come up here to us for the camera. Yeah, let's forget the space people at home Yeah, it's like I try to be anonymous Okay, I Think I would first drop that question whether something is Anonymous or not anonymous Because I think that doesn't make sense in this general way At least that's how I am currently thinking about it when I think about it And this is like as I say like the beginning of a research project and the point about research project Is that about thinking would change many many more times? But at the moment I think the best way of conceptualizing is that you look for the cuts For example the cut between your clear name and another name or the cut between your clear name and flash Or the cut of the clear name on a certain statement or your IP address You make all these kind of cuts for certain people under certain circumstances and you look for these moments of cuts And it's not like full full anonymity anonymity is never given I mean think of alcoholics are anonymous you go there you show your face. You are there You are like in one way absolutely non anonymous, but you make certain cuts and you say that this is not relevant just by The common consensus and then you have a feeling actually this is anonymous so so it's it's it's It's it's this practice of cutting and that's maybe also a slight difference to the discourse about privacy we have Like there is a hidden assumption I don't know whether that's relevant to your question But we have a hidden assumption in our research particular hypothesis that Privacy is not a good way of thinking about these questions often because it's too clumsy That's maybe a German perspective because there's a huge privacy protection discourse in Germany You're like everyone wants to and we think that behind this privacy thinking is always this kind of like you could build a wall around your Castle somehow and make like these walls and these fences and that somehow would do in in in in digital cultures And of course, that's ridiculous. We can't do this anymore. We can't and you know, it's all about being public So privacy discourses don't make sense anymore or make sense But in other respects certain things surely should probably keep private But I think an on anonymity gives us a more flexible way of thinking of it's almost like a What's you know the the the the doctors who cut The it's a small surgery is The technique of a surgeon and not the technique of I don't know what the other one that be Which so that's kind of like the idea how we want to conceptualize it But this is just like a general framework I cannot like the precise answers I think that would have to come from you in a longer interview How and where do you enable these cuts for whom when for what duration under what circumstances you say we're gonna undo These cuts because you actually have been posting this or you've been doing that and so on so it's a complex set of rules that Cut yeah, that's that's by the way, not our idea. That's the idea of Julie Pena's to give credit Credit still yeah, you someone else had a question. Yeah, so my I'm going a little bit more general and then not actually answering your question and Just giving some thoughts because from my perspective the issue and it shows my bias in way I've see things but my perspective is that the issue comes down to What are the incentives for the people writing the software right and the incentives? Traditionally here especially here being an area is money-making period like there is nothing else other than making money ever and That makes them make choices from the very beginning They have a limited amount of time to do what they need to do to make their product and sell it They are not going to care about something that doesn't help their bottom line and actually potentially even hurts their bottom line because ads are you make money and ads do better and you know all about person and That there that's and that you know the antithesis of an So maybe I am more in the camp of fatalists About this whole discussion that it does take work from the user The only people in the conversation that can be empowered are the user but it's a tremendously up though Sisyphian Work effort so yeah, that's yeah, that's really interesting because I think it comes back to what I said that I know I think I noticed also that the only really Interesting work that's happening in this space is from the open-source community or people who right are not in it for the money I didn't notice that and it also another thing just to Give another little point to that is that it's not only about the adage agencies as you know It's also anyone from who wants to develop one feature on their app that has something to help I don't know you walk your dog on a better route or something right It doesn't have to be that that also gains you gain data and you write de-anonymize the user Are you identify the user in a some way and you? Link and you don't make those allow the people people to make those cuts. So yeah, exactly and it's Yeah, I do. I'm also fatalist in some way after this this month and a half here, sadly Yeah, sorry good, but maybe just to add one quick thing if if you think that money is to be made where demand is I mean at least I mean German is Germany is a pretty big market and the whole country is obsessed about privacy They call it privacy, but there is like 80 million people screaming for products that are not there And they also like maybe they are there that it's more complicated But I mean like it's not automatically given that there's no money to be made Go ahead sir. Oh, yeah, so this is sort of a philosophical Question I guess around I thought it was really interesting Exploring the relationship between ideas of freedom or liberty and anonymity I recently read something by David Graber that looked at that relationship of having freedoms from a different perspective of actually acknowledging obligations so To have a freedom of speech for example would mean that you live in an environment where people feel obliged to let somebody speak without Some sort of violent recourse So how does anonymity affect people's obligations to one another and by extension? How does that affect? The ability to have certain freedoms This is this is a wonderful question This is the kind of question that we want to research and they can I have to say the research only begins But totally like like our thinking comes a lot out of the same school like David Graber comes from and and this This is also maybe one answer why the one of products the one of wonderful, but easy Cryptographic product is not gonna cut it Because anonymity throws out problems and these problems have to be solved very specifically So anonymity has to be solved inside Wikipedia And you have to find inside Wikipedia solutions where you make as much cuts where they are Meaningful as possible without destroying the economy of obligations. For example, that drives a lot of user-driven Platforms, that's not an easy thing to do on the other hand. There's huge chances In in gamut donation some other researcher called Monica Conrad to credit her has Has shown that people who have donated sperm They sometimes then have the feeling that they have given something and now they're getting it Back by the world. So there is enough. So it's actually quite a very pleasant like new form of Connectedness to an anonymous. It could be everyone But and therefore I am I have a new ethical stance in the world So these kind of like obligations produce all sorts of Stances in the world which are really interesting interesting to follow up and some of them are quite surprising That's what we hope to find out I'm just noting something that's happening in Wikipedia and it's closely related to Dan's question We definitely have all the tensions that you're describing with you know analytics versus privacy issues and Everywhere, but but one thing that really Surprises me about What's happening in the media is that there are editors who want to strip each other's anonymity And I'm not sure if you've seen this before but but basically it's just so that there's some kind of stability for What's being written so so editors who want to what I want to strip each other's anonymity Yeah, that's other than it says some it says crude is if you don't log in then ordered as editing something from IP address Yeah, yeah, so you're just is that a question you're just frustrated that this is or this is a situation I would love to hear related stories Would it be helpful to answer the questions? I mean you posed this initial question and none of us have quite actually answered it I so I don't know. I don't know how much background it would it would be I think to Respond to this question may require some backgrounds. Let me give you what I think of as sort of the 62nd version Which is we enable anyone to edit the site anonymously Anonymously in quotes, however the that definition of anonymity Actually post your IP address as associated with that edit and And we also record a certain additional so that is the IP addresses is public and we also record certain other characteristics such as a characteristics of your browser primarily That people with so anyone in the world can see the IP address and then additionally people with a certain amount of permissions Can look at things like the browser The browser fingerprint in order to fight spam essentially, right Some people consider the spam problems severe enough that they would like to essentially either block all such edits or under some circumstance that we may block entire IP ranges, right like You know an entire university may be blocked for vandalizing rival university or something like that, right? So that's sort of the state of the art and the question is should we be taking more at least a Question that is a recurring theme of discussion for us is should we be taking more steps to protect those IP addresses? Should we be taking more steps to surface some of that fingerprinting information? Perhaps there's some sort of unique ID in order to help more casual users fight Fight spam, how do we how do we strike that balance like I think that's the more expansive version of the question It's just asked and we don't have I mean I think we could spend all of the rest of your afternoon Filling in details on that that's sort of the background Yeah, and that's why we think it's so interesting to research if you could give us a 60 seconds answer I mean like then why do a three-year research project about it? We would be very interested in this discussion About what kind of arguments are coming up of what kind of theories come up here in this group of the people who are Making fundamental decisions about Wikipedia What the consequences of this or that action are about the experience that that you already have when something went wrong when something Suddenly when per shape you cut off like a whole university They never come back and they never posted anything. Whatever happened. This is all very interesting to find out and and also like this whole questions like there is Like maybe there is a situation where one editor really has extremely good reasons to say like hey This guy now should be made public in a normal the very very good reasons on the other hand you will then Destroy a safety for many many other people who are operating on the promise that this will never happen So these kind of like very ambivalent Complicated decisions the arguments around it your experiences around it This is kind of the intelligence that we want to dig out and dig it out from many places And we hope that when we dig out the intelligence on anonymity that has been Kind of like Accumulated here in Wikipedia and we put it together with the intelligence and that has been accumulated by people who are in fragile positions while police You know like police is raiding them and putting that into and so on and then something very interesting patterns will come up Which we then can mirror back which we might be like something that we can give back to all the communities Once we've done all the work yeah And I was just wondering if I could just ask a little detail also related to both of you guys What you're saying is do you know why what reason why would someone want to reveal? Who the editor is can you give me some scenarios like why would someone do that because I would always fight for I think I would fight just maybe you guys would as well just to keep them Pseudonymous or faceless nameless keep them right so they're trolls. That's what they're saying Well, there's trolls and I okay is that So this person's okay, all right Paid editing, okay Okay But is there isn't there a technical solution that I mean I'm totally I'm not technical But to make some sort of as I mentioned like earlier that someone talked about these proof of work tokens or something Isn't there a technical way that someone can stay nameless, but then also not be I don't know a big a paid editor or someone or bought or a spammer. I don't know how it works You see what I mean like it's just a person who's worked on this has a token and you know There's a project in wiki media, sorry So there's a project. There's just I can repeat it. There's a there's an on-going project in wiki media that does care about that Okay, there's an ongoing project That does care about Exactly those users and it's called snuggle snuggle. Yeah, that's cozy It's not cool. No, but that's These are also what I would answer is back to what we're talking about that each platform is not like a Total solution of how we solve this problem generally on the internet and generally on the web. It's each individual Web site or community has to solve it for themselves and it seems like you guys are really doing an interesting Yeah job of any we're definitely thinking through it, which is not I think definitely in the minority unfortunately I You know You know what that quote you had from less egg about how it should be only a little more work, right? I think is somewhat Struck me as somewhat naive in part because the solutions as you as you correctly identify Many of the solutions have to be very specific to particular spaces, right the snuggle It does help us address certain kinds of these spam problems in a Reasonably privacy Respect in kind of way, but it's a solution that would only work for us, right? Is not a solution that's scalable and and similarly what's gonna work for Twitter trolls is not gonna work for us, right? there's Whereas the solutions to break anonymity for advertising work for everybody And so I think that's a that's a fundamental Imbalance that drives part of the problem here So I will also want to mention that we do have also Demand from users to have more Anonymous it in in Wikipedia like one thing is to be editing in San Francisco about static civilizations or in Lüneburg about Cheese another thing is to be another part of the planet Trying to explain things that are happening and document them That maybe your government or your company or you're someone around you with with handle on the police Can have and they are going to be very interested to know who exactly wrote that and they are not going to even go easy on Maybe well, sorry, it wasn't you. It was your neighbor, but I have you now. So in those circumstances, we have the quest of One protection so people can just Really Can I ask a question for some of the like height them or some of the folks who've been around a long time I've always assumed that that use case the sort of government Privacy speech issue was the driving reason why we never allowed Why I'm sorry why we allowed anonymous editing in the first place Is that actually the historical reason there or is it more just we didn't want to bother to implement law? Logins or do we know well you or somebody else who's been around for a long time? veteran My answer was about to link to question. I was about to ask because we have an anthropologist here Why do we have it in the first place? How did it start so it's I when I think about it, right? It could be for many reasons like that man in a cave You know Robin Hood or so for just to come he has some sort of issues in his background like to do some good and He doesn't want to know public to know more about him, right? it's um, I assume like the largest reason when it comes to a kitty that It Goes back like bullies, right in school when they know something about you that you share They just start pulling you for for reason So we see that see that within our critic case and I would say the reasons that go back to like, you know, larger security or back to governments, etc portion of it But yeah, my question really stands if you could talk a little bit about history off and I don't want to know interesting Yeah, like the history of the last 5,000 years of lecture to begin It's actually reverse my question if We hypothetically assume that we know everything about everyone in the world Would there be any need for anonymity stats Okay, um, I like on the danger like like I I think that like yeah, I'm in open territory because I you know, like I'm I'm not an anonymity historian, but I believe that Anonymity has been fundamental Cultural technique for getting many many things making many many things possible Save voting cut off the name from your you know, like really fundamental Techniques in our in in our democracy and we kind of like didn't notice That they were that the point of that was anonymity we notice that only now as it is coming under threat and I think the three big threads are it's a strong discourse of Transparency that is new that is not hasn't been such a strong idea only 30 years ago It's ICT which I have deeply. I mean like they are non They are for sure like at the beginning non anonymous forms of media and they have to art always Artificially be anonymized. I mean look at what what an immense amount of work it took in the 50s to make Money transfer possible on the on the web. I don't know. Sorry. That's I'm later But you know what I mean, and that's actually 90s. So see my history So so what what what we are in a situation is that we all are becoming Almost like an anonymity Scientist and specialist and we haven't really fully noticed and once we notice that how much we are actually Anonymity how much we are increasingly hopefully because we need to become anonymity intelligent We can we can bootstrap this this process further. I think that's our that's our agenda that this is needed So I think technological fixes like we just discussed are an important part of this mix But I'm just as much interested in the intelligence that is Accumulated here in how to treat these problems and how to like find these problems. That is actually to me Almost more important than the actual fix and and this anonymity science that is developing Without being called science. That's what we want to kind of bring to the fore and and make make public and and and then support Yeah, we just have to like Okay Okay, how's that? All right, so I'm kind of thinking out loud here So I reserve the right to disagree with myself in the future But I was thinking about what Greg was saying about the incentives and I see another incentive Emerging kind of in the big data space, which is a managerial class Who doesn't have the expertise to make decisions without numbers in an Excel sheet or data's or unique user IDs or whatever Because they're not really close to the problem their experts are But they need to have some purview into what's going on and so they ask for a call for big data Right, it's like but it's a it's incentivized by a managerial class Not understanding the nature of the problems or trusting the experts involved for judgment So data in some but not all instances seems to be replacing good judgment Does that make sense? There's a massive push that and I don't I don't want to come out sounding like I'm Against data or big data or any of that, but there's a yeah, I'm repeating myself now There's just a ton slap in the managerial class to get numbers exactly and I think that you're also mentioned I saw this in the field of an analyst who just simply he said he was very liberal He's quite he considers himself a hippie He has he had a different stance before coming to work and being an analyst and saying well They tell me that this is my job to collect more to know more to build a new feature And this was also worrying that this as you said this top down Let's create something new because we need more features and here's more data to create it That's really worrying right. He's just said well, I don't know what I have to do my job, right? I like my work. It's cushy. Let's stick around and do this So the more I'm wondering how many people have that situation too, right? So Yeah, you had this Yeah, and I totally totally agree with you that the data economy is another one of the forces that brings this problem and the need for a science of Anonymity to the fore because I think we don't we think privacy doesn't cut it needs to be something about anonymity but What should I say in Germany is a whole nation that's obsessed in Facebook bashing they all use it But they bash it endlessly and and and that Like the good thing about three years of ethnographic research is also that you can question some of this I mean like Facebook is always painted as a big bad guy and then think in many ways, you know There is they're very very problematic discourses to put to the fore and hopefully an impossible to see and so on but But it's very interesting once you talk to people with Facebook They have very interesting and more subtle stances than you would expect and so this is also if not It's like listening and not prejudging too much of what is right here Like maybe there is more interesting forms of anonymity science inside Facebook that we don't understand yet To be found but open questions again Well, so I wouldn't have any Anyone have any other questions? If not, maybe I'll just or does anyone online on the chat have another question not really Okay, I'm just putting up for the reading There's also a book by Finn Brunnen Helen Nissenbaum Which just came out that also talks about these types of tools for privacy protection But also addresses a bit about anonymity and feel free to contact us especially check back on this site reconfiguring anonymity net which is the Website for this larger project and we'll have updates on there all the time or if you're ever in Hamburg Or in Lüneburg just give us a shout. We're always welcoming and thank you for welcoming us so much It was really wonderful to be here. Thank you