Editor,
The Daily Lobo has no obligation to provide a forum for commenters on its content, much less to enable the anonymous name-calling, word salads and spam that populate many comment threads, but by restricting the privilege of posting comments to Facebook users, the Lobo is tacitly endorsing an agenda of profit-motivated surveillance and sousveillance. You can do better.
On superficial examination, Facebook comments aren’t a terrible idea. Facebook is widely used by college students, the comment interface is intuitive and the commenter has a strong social disincentive to write offensive drivel.
However, there are two things about Facebook that should give you the creeps. Your data, such as your location, likeness, cookie tracking and thoughts, are Facebook’s products, for sale in aggregate to advertisers and taken by force individually by the government. That’s the surveillance: kind of a yucky invisible bargain for what seems like a cool and useful tool, but hey, capitalism, right?
The second sketchy aspect of Facebook is sousveillance, the recording of an activity by its participants. It is the one that is most immediately germane to the criticism of the Daily Lobo’s decision. You post stuff about your life on Facebook so other people can see it and maybe they post stuff about you. Generally people post within social norms to win or maintain the approval of others.
Facebook knows this and has expertly turned it into a game: the way other people press the like button lets you re-calibrate your expectations of social norms for your next post. This could be cool for community-building if it weren’t being surveilled and analyzed by multinationals with a profit motive.
Specifically disturbing is that behind the ideology of the default Facebook settings are the assumption of no distinction between your personal and political identities! If you want to speak on Facebook about something controversial, political or taboo, you are being watched by people known and unknown.
You risk alienating your family, friends and acquaintances, and perhaps attracting unwanted and unwarranted attention from institutions that may be interested in stifling you. This tight chain between personal identity and political speech specific to Facebook is a slippery slope to a choice between conformity or silence.
There are good reasons for anonymity. The Supreme Court opinion on McIntyre vs. Ohio Elections Commission says it best: “Protections for anonymous speech are vital to democratic discourse. Allowing dissenters to shield their identities frees them to express critical minority views … Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority … It thus exemplifies the purpose behind the Bill of Rights and of the First Amendment in particular: to protect unpopular individuals from retaliation … at the hand of an intolerant society.”
Not to belabor the point, but the most influential and liberty-promoting comment section in American history, The Federalist Papers, was written anonymously.
The end-game is that with this system, the chances for insightful minority criticisms appearing in Daily Lobo comment sections will decrease with time. Now in order to dialogue with the Lobo, you either have to write something long-winded like this letter, or become complicit in a spooky pyramid scheme.
I have a recommendation. Write a clear and inclusive comment policy, moderate comments according to the policy, and incorporate architecture that allows users of many different social internet platforms to sign in so people can attribute comments to their preferred online identities. Make room for those who wish to remain anonymous, too.
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Elliot Pearson
UNM student
