A commenter in the threads brings up an interesting point: some of the most racist, sexist, and obnoxious comments come from FB Connect users who post these things using their real names, with a picture of their face and a link to their FB page attached to their profile. I often hear it argued that anonymity makes it easier for people to be assholes on line—and this is true, to a certain extent—but the FB connect experiment shows that sometimes, assholes are just assholes, and they don’t care if you know it.
And it is nice to occasionally know who’s panning your work. Several of my government posts were plagued by a Facebook commenter who would rile up everyone with his vile extremist bullshit. Thanks to Facebook, I know he’s a high school senior from Missouri.
We expect our commenters to audition, not just show up. This is the only way to make the kiddies line up for their turn in the pool.
