by Cindy Cohn and Colette Vogele
Every new website that allows users to participate faces the same question: do you require users to use their real names? Facebook has taken a firm position that it will require real names, even at the cost of disappearances of human rights activists around the world. Other sites have suffered as anonymous speakers poison the conversation and use the shield of anonymity to harass women. What's a social site to do? Join two of the Internet's top lawyers, EFF's Legal Director Cindy Cohn and Colette Vogele, as they debate the question.
In today’s online social world, most people maintain several different social profiles that span across friends, business networking, online dating and entertainment/lifestyle. One person’s public persona on each of these different types of social sites could be vastly different than the information they will share on the others. What are the psychologies and mental models at play that provide a preconceived notion of what personal information should be shared in different contexts? What challenges does each profile team face in overcoming such pre-existing beliefs?
Discuss why online social users create unique personas between these different sites, why the content that is shared across these different communities can be so dramatically different and what challenges the social media industry faces in regards to contending with fundamental human psychology. Particants on this panel include leads from Match.com, LinkedIn and TripIt.
9th–13th March 2012