Jyri Engeström

Jyri takes a philosophical view to the Google+ names hoohaw:

Jyri Engeström

A service that aims to become the default arena for online social exchange globally should allow pseudonymity (which is really what we’re talking about when we talk about anonymity) and, in some cases, even encourage it. No one should be booted off the system just because they are using a made up name. It’s the only way members of an oppressed community can get away with breaking the social conventions that keep their spirits nailed to the floor.

This is not an edge case. Nor is it just about the two billion people who live under oppressive regimes. If you are a person who “thinks different”, think back. Were you ever the nail that sticks out, at some point in your life? Like in Åmal, the home town of the two girls Agnes and Elin, the community preventing you from being all you can be is the neighborhood school, church, friend group… often it’s your family.

The rules of an online social platform should be based on the harm principle. The harm principle holds that each individual has the right to act as he wants, so long as these actions do not harm others. Pseudonymity in itself does not harm anyone.

But current day social platforms resemble Louis XIV’s France more than modern democracies. Account deletion, the online equivalent of the guillotine, is exercised routinely across the board. To be the default social platform, the contender needs to introduce a form of self-government that looks more like democracy than tyranny.

The question of governance of hosted social networks: can the ‘rulers’ of our imagined communities unilaterally make changes without the consent of the governed? Without the agreement of those harmed? Are we powerless? Do we have no say?