PicoBlog

Hello there,

Wish you a great new year!

Presenting to you my first piece of 2023.

It is about a concept I came across recently and found very intriguing - pseudonymity. I had to investigate a little this time and landed up finding Corporate Chat (read more about them in the article).

The process of writing this piece was fun. I got to speak to some folks who use pseudonymous accounts and I felt like ‘Sherlock Holmes’.

I hope you enjoy reading this article.

Nisha

A year ago, Balaji Srinivasan, an angel investor, tech founder, and WSJ bestselling author of The Network State, spoke about the ‘The Pseudonymous Economy’ at the Cryptocurrency and Hayek Conference hosted by Coin Center and the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. In his talk he predicts, ‘people will be known more by their crypto domains than their real names’ and ‘AI and blockchain are changing the fundamental way we are representing ourselves online.’ 

The pivotal moment (to me), in this talk is when (towards the end), Balaji talks about transferring reputation to a pseudonym and that got me thinking - while the concept of pseudonymity is spoken of mostly from a crypto and Web3 perspective, it is quite prevalent on social media platforms like Twitter, Reddit and YouTube as well. However, for platforms like Twitter or LinkedIn that are built for individuals to feel like micro-celebrities, what happens when an individual is no longer known by their real name? 

Does it create better social networks? Are individuals more authentic and is there more trust? Let us find out. 

What is Pseudonymity?

Pseudonymity is when a different name than an individual’s real name is used to create an identity online. 

This happens for the following reasons:

• The risk of cancellation is high when an individual starts becoming a huge brand online

• People create back-up identities or alt identities to be able to express their true selves and certain beliefs that they may not through their personal accounts 

The biggest difference between pseudonymity and anonymity is that people start recognising the account by the pseudonym and follow it for the content it creates. Example: Dream, the YouTuber, IceFrog, the creator of Dota, a series of hugely popular strategy video games (this individual is also one of the oldest pseudonyms known) or the CarDealershipGuy on Twitter. While the concept started out with crypto and  Reddit/ Quora, it is now expanding beyond and is becoming mainstream on other social networks and professional career websites. 

Pic credit - Banksy - a pseudonymous England-based street artist

What is the difference between Anonymity and Pseudonymity?

Anonymity

Anonymity implies that no one is aware of your true identity, while they are undoubtedly aware of your online activity. It means that you can carry on with your movements while staying anonymous. Your actions and your true identity are kept separate by anonymity.

Pseudonymity

The term “pseudonymity” refers to using a different name on social media, such as a pen-name or nick-name. It is typically utilized to conceal your true identity while maintaining your identity under another name.

Source: WazirX blog

Pseudonymity is catching up in the professional networking space. 

At the same time when Balaji gave this talk, three youngsters working at highly reputed tech companies came up with an idea. A pseudonymous discord server called, ‘Corporate Chat India’, a community of working professionals to give each other genuine professional advice. The channel has since grown to host 10,000 professionals on it. Says one of the Founders of Corporate Chat India anonymously, 'We started for three reasons, 1) platforms like LinkedIn (despite having the largest number of professionals) do not give you genuine professional advice 2) review sites like Glassdoor seem mostly run by company admins and finally 3) salary inflation over the last year made it necessary for people to discuss CTCs openly and no one could, if they were using their real identities.' Initially they started with a Reddit page and then moved to the Discord server. 

So, what happens in this forum? People discuss career, salary and culture of companies, albeit the biggest surprise is they were doing so positively, despite using pseudonyms. 5,00,000 messages have been exchanged till date and says a user, ‘the quality of folks on the platform is great and the issues addressed are relatable. It is almost like a rite of passage as you know where to help and when you can seek help. As professionals, we need a third space to discuss our professional lives and surprisingly on a pseudo platform we wear a mask and are our true selves!'

An example of what one of the threads on career advice looks like. 

The team at Corporate Chat India also has an active Twitter account and have now launched an app, called Grapevine. The idea is to build for pseudonymity and make the interface easy. Their goal is for people in India to chat about workplace culture, salary transparency, career advice and interview tips. The Founder clarifies, 'we do not want to be a nefarious platform; all we want is for clear communication and for people to help each other without restrictions. In a pseudonymous platform, there is no incentive for people to fake it. People are able to speak about personal issues freely and that makes this a powerful concept.'

A similar global use case. 

Blind, is an anonymous app for the workplace. It is a place where 5M+ professionals worldwide share advice, provide honest feedback, improve company culture and discover relevant career information. The company is based out of the United States and threads like these are commonplace here:

It is interesting to read through comments that are mostly from pseudonyms accounts. If you notice a pattern, very few to nil comments are derogatory or unprofessional. People are sharing/ adding to an existing dialogue from their own experience and mostly exchanging notes to help each other. 

Fishbowl is another platform many professionals from the tech community are on. 

Says Balaji in his talk, ‘'The ‘pseudonymous economy’ prevents both discrimination and cancellation. Hundreds of millions of Reddit profiles are pseudonymous and this concept is already mainstream. In the United States, not only GenZ, but many baby boomers have pseudonymous accounts too.’ 

Coming back to our original question.

Will pseudonymity create better social networks and personal brands?

‘Humans have a lot of reverence for legends, says Varun Mayya, Entrepreneur, Investor, Creator and Software engineer, ‘it is hard to relate to a pseudonymous identity, but at the same time, it prevents an individual or their views from getting canceled.’ 

Varun believes that though nascent, this trend is going to pick up. Going forward we will see virtual people and 3D Avatars. Tools like Synthesia.io are making it easy to create virtual people/identities. He continues, ‘we are on the path towards recreating the human being and this is only the beginning.’ Varun has recently invested in God In A Box, an AI platform that is a direct implementation of ChatGPT into WhatsApp. 

While Pseudonymity does have its use cases (in alt professional networks, on Twitter and gaming), it is also a double edged sword as it allows an individual to be who they are (on the one hand), however, not revealing their true identity can limit the potential of influence they can wield (on the other). As humans, we still rely on relationships and the personal touch despite having huge ‘personal brands’ online. Therefore, even if a pseudonymous identity does create genuine content and becomes influential, its monetising potential or ‘human’ potential will stay limited unless the person behind the brand is revealed. After all, a personal brand is personal for a reason. 

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