• Slate, Friday, March 11, 2011 11:38 AM

If Slate's Farhad Manjoo ruled the Web, he'd make all online commenters log in with Facebook -- or a similar third-party site -- so they'd have to share their real identities to express themselves in a public forum. Not only that, but Manjoo would have all Web sites require that people reveal their real names when engaging in any "public" behavior from a restaurant review to a poll question.

Extreme, perhaps, but Manjoo is confident that his idealized Web would be a better place for everyone. Citing various social science studies, he posits that people know their identities are secret -- whether offline or online -- behave much worse than they otherwise would. Formally, this is call the "online disinhibition effect." Web comic Penny Arcade once called it "The Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory." Manjoo calls it the bane of online existence, the greatest barrier we face to a better Web ecosystem.

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