Internet Anonymity: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

The internet provides us with certain degrees of anonymity. For instance, it’s really easy for any of us to go on YouTube, make an account with a random username and then comment on any video of our choosing. Same goes for online message boards, news sites, Yahoo Answers and a variety of other outlets that allow people to post anonymously or with a username.
 
Being able to post whatever you want without your identity attached to the message has its advantages, as well as its disadvantages. One advantage is it enables people to be able to say whatever they want without the fear of being judged or tracked down. This concept works great in the message board setting, where people seek advice for a large array of issues.
 
The same idea of being able to say whatever you want without being tracked down can also be a problem. When a person uses a username and is certain that no one knows their true identity, they feel a sense of security that allows them to say whatever the heck they feel like saying, which for some people, ends up being extremely hurtful and unnecessary. The website that seems to always feature extremely rude and unwarranted comments is YouTube.
 
You can choose virtually any video on YouTube and there will be people who feel the need to put down the video. I understand we all have opinions and yes, the First Amendment gives us our right to express them, but if your opinion is nothing more than “dude your so gay. Go get laid” to a person’s video blog about his day, then I feel like that kind of opinion doesn’t even need to be published.
 
The other website that comes to mind when I think of internet anonymity is the International Movie Database, IMBD.com. This website is a great resource if you want to know every movie a particular actor has been in, and also every person who has ever supposedly met, went to school with or dated said actor. It is definitely a great database, but its message boards are filled with people putting down movies, actors, other users or claiming they are BFFs with celebrities.
 
I think a great way of eliminating some of the unnecessary harsh comments on the internet is to put a real life name with the username, similar to what eBay does. Since eBay users are buying and selling merchandise, the company needs them to be legitimate, so to sign up for an account, you have to prove you are that person and you have to provide an address to verify that. That concept might not work for some websites and maybe even affiliating an email address with a person's comments might be enough to eliminate the cockiness that comes with some people’s anonymity. It just seems like something needs to change in the online world to prevent internet bullying and harassment and maybe that thing is altering the level of anonymity (to some extent) that we freely give everyone who has internet access.