Online Identity Control in Korea as an Example of Coping with Online Bullying Discussed at Le Web 3

Personally I find it rather peculiar that Le Web 3 sessions started with the discussion of the "Dark Side of the Web". It looks like recently we have heard of so many issues related to all the bad things that internet communications can result in - thus the choice of the very first topic, I think. Anyway it was an interesting discussion and I thought that it would be a good idea to share some of the aspects discussed with you so that you could join yourself.

In general, two major solutions have been offered by the speakers. Dan Rose from Facebook is definitely sure that the only solution to the problem of coping with online aggression is simply using the real names. He mentioned that Facebook offers no real value to the people that do not want to be open and use their real names in communication - as they just will have no people to actually communicate with.

But how true is this? I myself am a strong believer in using real names in online communications as much as possible. But this definitely does not mean I am not getting all those spam massages from the guys in Egypt looking for "friends" in Russia. And even if they show their names (probably real) on the profiles, will it stop them from spamming me with those friendship requests? I don't think so actually. Besides, people are not actually obliged to use their real names - thus how can we actually talk about trust? I can easily name myself with some popular name of some movie star (if not on Facebook) and get lots of friends for whatever reasons I may have. So for me Facebook - same as any other social network (it's just that I talk of Facebook because this is the point of view from Facebook's Dan Rose) - is not a complete solution.

Whatever it is the only practical (and actually already working) solution that was offered to cope with online bullying and other problems was offered by Jaewoong Lee, head of the largest web portal in South Korea. He told proudly that Korea is a very wired country with the overwhelming majority of people using the internet more than one hour per day. And online bullying thus is a very serious problem for Korea (it looks like an obvious relation: the more internet users, the more hostile internet users bullying other users).

And it looks like the problem grew to be so important in Korea that the government of the country actually had to implement a system of controlling online identity. As far as I understand Mr. Lee's explanation, internet users get special "keys" from the government to use them on the largest Korean web sites to confirm their real identity. He actually sounded pretty enthusiastic about the system but the problem is that as soon as this online identity system was implemented, people started abusing it by stealing other users' identities. That's why Mr. Lee had to draw the conclusion that this is still not the complete solution to the problem. And that's good actually as if I only try to imagine such systems implemented globally (and to actually work it needs to be implemented globally - otherwise how am I, a Russian girl, supposed to confirm that I am actually Svetlana Gladkova on Facebook and LinkedIn). Just imagine all the governments creating databases of all the users and exchanging them heavily - I don't think any such initiative would be a solution and eventually it will certainly be abused.

So it looks like whatever they discussed there's no real solution to the problems of balancing between ensuring online security and online privacy. I myself tend to believe in using real names as one of the measures to prove that a person is actually real. But definitely it is not enough. Building trust just because you have a name is to be doubted. Whatever it is, there's no real solution to the problem as of now and even when you gather such high-profile people all on one stage at once, they won't invent the solution. Especially when they are actually more concerned about pitching their own product (as was definitely the case with Facebook's Dan Rose - looks like after the Beacon scandal the only goal they have is trying to get their image back clear and undamaged). It was a great discussion and an interesting talk but hoping to find one complete and comprehensive solution as a result of such a talk proves not to work still.