Thanks for sharing this. I had no idea people felt this strongly about their data. In user testing, I picked up that people are afraid of apps publishing to their walls, or worse, friends' walls behind their back. I got that people don't trust developers with their Facebook credentials because of the abuses in the past, but what you're saying is that you don't trust Facebook itself. Thank you - now I know this going forward.
Another perspective: people wear hats. We cater the hat to the audience we're addressing. This isn't just a web phenomenon - we've crafted our identities in the real world for thousands of years in order to manipulate the target audience in some fashion or another. For that reason, it's not a smart idea to link a single human to a unified web presence.
Facebook login makes sense in its convenience, but in reality, it grates against something that's pretty important to a lot of people: how they present themselves in front of an audience.
True. The flip side is the ability to craft and re-craft your identity everywhere you go, which lets people misbehave because no one can figure out who they are. Abuse, profanity, hate are all easier if you wear a mask.
"Abuse, profanity, hate are all easier if you wear a mask."
Maybe, and it may in fact be that relative anonymity is a net loss for a community. But I find that it's rare for a conversation to rise in quality above "Okay" if I know everyone I'm talking with. This is part of why discussions over web forums and the like are so interesting. If everyone can say what they really think, then everyone can talk about more than just surface issues.
Sure theres the people who try to use their mask to hurt others, but theres plenty of people who don't. And some degree of anonymity is required to get those outlier conversations that make you wish they'd go on longer, regardless of how long you've been talking.
EDIT: Of course, the first rule of Internet pseudo anonymity is that people you haven't talked to for a non-trivial length of time don't get webcam privileges, ever.
What we found in opening up Tiny Review to other login options was actually pretty civil. We haven't seen much offensive content at all, nor spam. It might be that we're still small yet, but I think I agree with you. Letting people refine their identity for a particular site usually frees up their expression and you get good results. While you're small, it's not a problem. Once you scale enough to have a large userbase, you normally have the time and resources for content moderation.
