balance online

[boreal_cryptid]

how do you balance safety and self-expression on the internet?

now, i understand it could be easier if one lives in a big country, and speak english. then they have a better chance of keeping their anonymity, probably.

but... people from small countries, from (more) rare cultures, generally people with more "unique" life stories?

some details can be insignificant enough to just keep them to yourself. but others are too important for genuine self-expression.

some of those details can be shared in a more vague form. like saying "i'm indigenous" instead of naming your culture. if you write about indigenous experience, there's no point in not saying you're indigenous, yes?

this problem exists for me all the time. i've been thinking about sharing some of my unique traits for a long time, and have decided that it's worth it. because i literally cannot avoid them and still feel artistic fulfilment.

i write about my unique experience more open (and not by stealth ©) on my website, but avoid being too specific in other places.

like, otherwise keeping a personal web corner would be soulless, pointless and generally... insincere. i've tried being very (very) vague or omitting some important parts all together, but it feels fake. that person wasn't me.

of course, super sensitive info is out of question. i'm not talking about home address or second name. or even photos of one's face, to be honest.

so question for others: how do you balance? is it a problem for you at all? do you generally feel safe?

(no need to specify what exactly part of your identity or life makes you anxious ofc!)

[Junebug]

It's easy, most people don't know or care that you exist. Informing people about your traits on the internet is basically meaningless; considering nobody has any involvement with you beyond either looking at your website or talking to you here, you can basically say anything about yourself and nobody can know for sure if it's true. People will actually know you from experiences with talking to you over time. Anxiety generally leaves a person thinking strangers are more involved with them than what's the case in reality. This looks like a case of that to me. So there's not a reason to be anxious on the internet because the baseline is that nobody cares.

[boreal_cryptid]

@Junebug, your response is mostly fine and advice is good and true, genuinely. the last part about "no reason" feels invalidating, though i assume it probably meant to be supportive.

i want to add one thing for others here: please do not assume all people are safe. people could have real reasons to be anxious about their safety. it includes me.
i'm not saying about encouraging someone's paranoid ideation, just do not invalidate.

[Junebug]

@Junebug, your response is mostly fine and advice is good and true, genuinely. the last part about "no reason" feels invalidating, though i assume it probably meant to be supportive.

i want to add one thing for others here: please do not assume all people are safe. people could have real reasons to be anxious about their safety. it includes me.
i'm not saying about encouraging someone's paranoid ideation, just do not invalidate.

I admit my way of putting this was quite dry. About validation, well... you asked the question in the first place so I am giving you the answer I have. And I simply disagree with you for the reasons I've given. If you want validation for a particular belief then this is not something I am going to give you. I'm going to give you my honest response to what you've described. And it does include a perception of danger from the internet that I think is out of proportion.

[Chris Pittman]

I have seen some anonymous blogs that dox people in the neo-Nazi/white supremacist scene. These fascists often have to go to great lengths to hide their identities to avoid being fired, swatted, debanked/deplatformed, subject to lawsuits or criminal charges, or being physically attacked for their views, etc. Despite these measures these people are often unmasked by these blogs anyway and they do face the resulting consequences. Anonymity can be a very, very hard thing to retain online, even among those who are forced to make every effort to remain anonymous to avoid serious and damaging real-world repercussions. With AI face detection becoming more accessible, this will likely become even more difficult in the very near future.

Is the answer perhaps to express oneself online in a purely "safe" way, and to seek out other avenues for self-expression, to supplement this? Perhaps spaces where people are vetted in real life somehow?

[villain]

I don't think your concerns are unwarranted - anyone who was around for gamergate should be well aware how dangerous having personal information on the internet can be if, for example, people suddenly decide you ARE someone they want to track down and harass in real life. there's not really a right answer, I think as you identified in your original post its a push-and-pull between desire to be known and desire to be unidentifiable. I write a lot about my local music scene on my site, and it is a bit of a worry that if a malicious person were to do a bit of rummaging they could quite easily deduce my location from it. My passion for the scene and desire to uplift those in it and introduce those bands to a more global audience outweighs this, for now. I hope you can work out what balance works for you, but I agree it's hard not to want to share your specific experiences!

[havensworn]

I think I get what you're saying, I live in a place where people are only a few connections away from each other and things are surveilled extensively, so it is hard to be truly anonymous in a way that won't bite you if anything goes south. The internet is a way to get away from that socially though, so it's why I'm here lol.

To answer your questions @boreal_cryptid, this is going to be from the perspective of being in english-speaking spheres:

Balancing just feels like risk management. Like you said, no extremely identifying information. I tend to just be vague on things that are easier to narrow down at a glance, say: never mentioning a name about the country I live in, what culture I come from. But I still talk about it broadly, because it's hard to keep a clean separation when you have lived in experiences that matter to you. If anyone really wanted find out, I'm sure dots can be connected. Putting anything out there on the web (and irl tbh) is always a risk, it's just something I'm okay to trade in sometimes to be authentic.

...That said, anything incriminating is a no-no to post online, especially if there's chance of legal repercussions. Generally I function on a sliding scale of "This will not get back to me a way that matters" and "I WILL face consequences if this gets out". I'm not even talking about crime, some places make it dangerous about what you can say and who you can be. I guess that is the balancing act you asked about.

Ultimately the question of "am I sharing too much?" pops up every time I post anything, so I'm not sure if it ever goes away. Even if you try put up walls to make it difficult (more actionable things like a VPN? Having separate accounts for specific thing...) it's still you behind it. So it really is just...operating on what you think is best.

It's hard to always be questioning your every action, I'm not sure what circumstances you are coming from but it's a brave thing to share this post despite that!

[BlazingCobaltX]

some details can be insignificant enough to just keep them to yourself. but others are too important for genuine self-expression.

My intent has always been to remain pretty anonymous online, but over time it's become hard to share things about myself and not reveal some unique details. Some of us can't help but have an unusual combination of circumstances and traits that automatically make us more identifiable. Just today I was dealing with this while changing the photo in my about section. I'd love to share a really cool photo of myself there, but I cannot take the risk of a malicious person coming across my page and outing me to people that are not accepting.

As it is right now, someone with bad intent could go identify me even without the picture. However, I nowadays run with the assumption that 99% will look at my website and not care about any personal information. Why? Because I don't care to investigate more when I see other people reveal personal details. I engage with the information as it is given to me but don't do anything else with it. Realistically, most people - especially in this web revival space - are not that malintended.

However, I don't know what situation you are dealing with and if you are in some way targeted. You could test the waters and gradually reveal personal details about yourself, like an ethnicity or specific experience. See what happens. Unless people know very specifically how to find you, it is likely that not many people will even see what you wrote. Gradually add more information and see with what things you feel more or less at ease with. What I personally do is that I don't put all identifying details on one page, but scatter them out a little bit. If someone wants to parse together who I am, they'll have to click around a bit at least.

[boreal_cryptid]

I don't think your concerns are unwarranted - anyone who was around for gamergate should be well aware how dangerous having personal information on the internet can be if, for example, people suddenly decide you ARE someone they want to track down and harass in real life. there's not really a right answer, I think as you identified in your original post its a push-and-pull between desire to be known and desire to be unidentifiable. [...] I hope you can work out what balance works for you, but I agree it's hard not to want to share your specific experiences!

thank you for understanding, you put it very good in words. i genuinely feel like it's something to think about... and thank you for sharing your example!!!

Balancing just feels like risk management. Like you said, no extremely identifying information. I tend to just be vague on things that are easier to narrow down at a glance, say: never mentioning a name about the country I live in, what culture I come from. But I still talk about it broadly, because it's hard to keep a clean separation when you have lived in experiences that matter to you. If anyone really wanted find out, I'm sure dots can be connected. Putting anything out there on the web (and irl tbh) is always a risk, it's just something I'm okay to trade in sometimes to be authentic.

...That said, anything incriminating is a no-no to post online, especially if there's chance of legal repercussions. Generally I function on a sliding scale of "This will not get back to me a way that matters" and "I WILL face consequences if this gets out". I'm not even talking about crime, some places make it dangerous about what you can say and who you can be. I guess that is the balancing act you asked about.

Ultimately the question of "am I sharing too much?" pops up every time I post anything, so I'm not sure if it ever goes away. Even if you try put up walls to make it difficult (more actionable things like a VPN? Having separate accounts for specific thing...) it's still you behind it. So it really is just...operating on what you think is best.

It's hard to always be questioning your every action, I'm not sure what circumstances you are coming from but it's a brave thing to share this post despite that!

damn, you are very very right about risk management. i think this kinda explains how i feel and act in a way. questioning if something is something (anything?) i want to write or upload is "oversharing", yeah.
thanks for understanding and sharing your example too!!!

[small_cypress]

I struggle with this as someone who likes to share a lot of niche interests who is also fearful of the surveillance of my government and what they may try to do in the future with information on the internet that can be tied back to me, as mundane as it is.

I basically became unable to post on Instagram or anything else identifiable over the last three years over a book deal (that ultimately fell apart) and my work. My social media accounts were being monitored by the publisher, and were easily connected to the non-profit where I worked whose grants were threatened for political reasons. I basically could not post anything remotely controversial for fear of my work's funds getting cut or my book deal falling through (which I cared way way less about than my own freedom of speech or my work's ability to help people).

That's why I re-embraced an anonymous internet life. I don't think anyone will ever dox me, and I have no delusions about anonymity on the internet as is much less going forward, but I still make efforts to separate my name and likeness from my internet presence. I share my city because I live in a bigger one and I'm making part of my site about it, but I can't share my art online under this username because it's posted on my work website under my real name. I feel much freer these days.