Unlike Mr. Fleischer, I am of the opinion that Professor Strahilevitz presents an original thesis regarding methods of exclusion* and their use as related to the quality and quantity of available information: communities will tend to use the more efficient "bouncer" approach when reliable individual information is available, and other methods of exclusion such as exclusionary amenities or signaling when such information is not available. In addition to finding the book a pleasant and interesting read, I found Professor Strahilevitz's idea quite innovative. Ironically, I think that the author's talent at explaining his thesis works against him, in that it leaves us with the impression that it was all just intuitive and not so surprising at all! Professor Strahilevitz guides us through his reasoning in such a subtle way that his thesis appears to be an inevitable conclusion.
The book led me, like Ms. Miller, to wonder how Professor Strahilevitz's theory applies to the realm of online communities, and how it should affect they way we think about these communities and how to shape internet policy. I think that Professor Strahilevitz's thesis would be, to me, particularly interesting in the context of anonymity in online communities.
I have heard people on one end celebrate and on the other end lament the anonymity available on the web. On the one hand, some argue that anonymity on the internet promotes creativity, allowing the honest exchange of ideas without the fear of stigmatization and ostracism. On the other hand, and in my experience by far the more vocal (and probably correct) side of the debate, others argue that anonymity eliminates accountability, and leads to the degeneration of online discourse: because people can--with no fear of consequences--say whatever they want and insult other people without contributing positively to the discussion, they do.
There are several ways these concerns might be addressed. Supposing the internet were a purely national construct, we could require people to use unique identifiers such as their social security numbers to sign in, or even go a step further by requiring hardware identification (fingerprint/retinal scanners, etc.). But the internet is not limited to U.S. citizens, and imposing such restrictions would make the internet much less accessible to a non-negligible population, which we might think would deprive us of much of the value of the internet.
Online services have come up with their own ways of excluding the riffraff, using sometimes interesting methods. One of the biggest developments has been in the administration of public discussion boards or forums, where the threat of "trolls" or even crawling bots that post obscene messages or shady ads for medical supplements can become a real problem. In that arena, the websites often exclude bots through the use of "captchas", which attempt to test whether a human is at the other end, leading to an arms race in captcha/text recognition technology (I must confess I think it has gone too far: I now have so much trouble reading the captchas I often have to try several times before getting it right--am I a robot?).
In response to the anonymity problem, some services have attempted to increase accountability by taking measures to tie each online user to a specific person in real life. As a result, when it launched, Google Plus was criticized for accidentally deleting legitimate accounts in the process of purging accounts that used fake names, or pretended to be celebrities. But in a way, such measures probably greatly increase the value of the services to potential advertisers, who would rather have individualized information that they can tie to a real person.
In my mind, the most innovative solution to exclusion which cannot explicitly be lumped into any of the three categories of exclusion presented by Professor Strahilevitz is peculiar to some online communities. I don't know what I could call it except maybe "exclusion by irrelevance." It works in through two mechanisms. The idea is that on some websites, like Slashdot.org for example, posts by users are reviewed and rated (as "Insightful", "Funny", "Interesting", "Troll", etc.) by other users. The first mechanism is that posts that receive the most number of up-votes are displayed more prominently. The second mechanism is that users who get more up-votes earn "karma", so that their future posts automatically benefit from a presumption of being interesting and are displayed more prominently. Conversely, a user who tends to post inflammatory comments will see his karma drop, and his posts will be relegated to the bottom by default. As a result, the exclusion is created over time, and is not in absolute terms an exclusion: the post might still be present, it simply won't be read. This allows filtering of undesirable contributors by the community for the community.
The idea works in similar ways with Facebook "likes," or Twitter "followers." When deciding who to follow on Twitter, or which video to watch in our Facebook feed, we often refer to the number of "followers" or "likes," in that way relying on our peers' evaluation of the person or content. In a way, this operates as a form of exclusion of the material that doesn't get as much peer attention.
In a way, these methods of exclusion by irrelevance can be tied to the idea of information as well. Information as to previous posts by a user, and information as to our peers' appreciation of something helps us determine whether to exclude it or include it. The "peer review" system of websites like Slashdot serves as an information gathering tool.**
Having identified a peculiar online exclusion mechanism, it might make sense to tie it back to non-online communities. Do similar mechanisms exist in real life?
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* Contrary to Mr. Fleischer's assertion, Professor Strahilevitz's thesis is in no way limited to exclusion based on race, and does not seem to characterize all exclusions as undesirable. He discusses throughout the book many other types of exclusion: introverts by extroverts, casual gamers by hardcore gamers, sex offenders, etc. Of course, exclusion on the basis of race is the most controversial one, and the least socially desirable one. But Professor Strahilevitz makes it clear that some forms of exclusion (although certainly not the ones based on race) are in fact quite innocent and even desirable.
** Slashdot also uses the idea of gamification to promote ratings by its users: not anyone can rate posts by other users, and it is typically a "privilege" one earns by contributing. That way, the riffraff doesn't get to vote on its own content.
Slashdot.org's idea of displaying comments in accordance to the "demand" sounds like the most perfect example of the "market of ideas"... I have never viewed this mechanism in that way.
Posted by: Pedro Echeverria Faz | January 12, 2012 at 02:07 AM