Originally Posted by
nkedel
Where in the paper do they draw a linkage between a "like" feature and self-censorship?
Is your position that somehow we're not a social networking site now, but become one by getting a "like" feature?
Self-censorship undoubtedly happens here as well, with or without a "like" feature, and the only way they draw a connection between social networking features and self-censorship has to do with audience settings -- an irrelevance here, as except for a handful of sub-forums like OMNI, the whole place is open to be read by the world at large.
OTOH, we don't have a "real names" policy like FB does (even if a few of us do use either real names or aliases long-connected to our public identities, and even if it's trivial to create a second fake account on FB), and the various boards are self-selected, so the analogy is weak there -- a point they bring up in the "related work" section that's frankly more relevant to the discussion of FT than the paper itself. Their findings would seem to indicate that by allowing anonymity -- such that people's identity here is specific to FT, or perhaps to FT and overlapping communities -- people will self-censor less.
...
I'll need to defer my answer a bit because I cannot devote the time needed to give you a decent reply, but for the first few paragraphs:1. I take the conclusions to be covering a more basic human interaction principle
2. No, not really. But I think the like-system has some major disadvantages if applied to a discussion board like FT.
3. I think the ordinary poster sees the home of the thread as the audience - Post in the BA forum and the audience are people with interest in BA and who more or less share the tone and attitudes of that forum. The same poster would most likely post in a different way in another forum, and if his BA post is at risk to appear elsewhere, then that self censoring will affect the BA threads too.
4. Very true - the more or less anonymous board will behave differently