Why have anonymous apps become such a big deal lately and why
are we building Plum to be anonymous? The
lack of anonymity on social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn mean that those
systems are little more than billboards for the best parts of your personal and
business life. Where do you go to talk
about the real issues you have? A
pseudonymous forum or apps like Whisper and Yik Yak are likely
destinations.
Side-bar: Pseudonymous
means that you have some sort of permanent made-up name that represents you to
other users. For instance, your Twitter handle might be @3CircusRings and
people will know your real name only if you share it. They will, however, be
able to tie everything that @3CircusRings tweets to a single identity.
Facebook and LinkedIn expect you to use your Real Names and Facebook has even gone
so far as to drag
some people into the spotlight in order to enforce their Real Name rules. We believe that people want the freedom to
discuss delicate subjects without revealing who they are in real life or they
want to be completely open and honest without fear of social, corporate, or
political retribution. Gabriella Coleman
of the New York Times seems to agree in her column Anonymity Online Serves Us All. Another
example is when seemingly-innocent tweets result in suspension from school, as
the following ACLU article describes; In Disturbing Trend, Kansas School the
Latest to Punish Student for Harmless Tweet. You can see why someone
might want to hide behind a pseudonym or even complete
anonymity.
Side-bar: Anonymous
means that there is no traceable representation as to who you are (pseudonymous
or real-life) to other users.
Anonymity can be used
for both good and bad reasons. Anonymity is not, however, a means of avoiding
personal responsibility/accountability nor a tool to advance
criminal/rebellious causes. We can assure you that Plum will never support such
applications of anonymity and will actively remove users who exhibit such
behavior.
The need to discuss sensitive topics with honesty has led to
the popularity of apps like Whisper, Secret, and Yik Yak. These new applications give the user the
ability to spout off in just about any manner. The down side is that the only thing the
poster has in common with the readers/responders is the proximity to one
another or their college affiliation. Having
discussions with complete strangers can be fun but imagine how much more
productive those conversations can become when the participants have something
in common?
Besides letting you connect others with common interests,
Plum will let you be as anonymous as you want to be. When you join Plum, you can choose to be
completely anonymous for all of your posts or you can choose a completely
arbitrary Plum name. In the latter case,
Plum places you in the driver’s seat by allowing you to control when to use
your Plum name or when to turn it off and be completely anonymous. You can make this choice for each chat you participate in and/or each group you
join. In this way, you can build
a history and longer-lasting relationships with specific users while remaining
completely anonymous with everyone else.
We hope that Plum is a way for you to meet and build new
relationships and that some of those relationships can grow outside of
Plum. To safely facilitate two people
getting to know each other’s real identity, you can reply to a specific user’s
post/comments using a one-on-one chat.
It is during these one-on-one chats that you can optionally share more
personal information, such as your real identity or actual location. For similar reasons Plum, will not be adding
support for pictures and video until the community has grown and matured enough
to handle the issues that can arise from those types of content. While we understand that multimedia is a
great way to express yourself, it is also the easiest way to accidentally
expose the identity of yourself or another user.
