Are we finally waking up to the fact that unless actually anonymous, nothing is actually anonymous?! My pearls, etc.

Blaming users who were mislead and are being exploited is not exactly a constructive way to approach things. Nothing is really anonymous if you look hard enough. Even with a fake profile, VPN and throwaway email your unique browser footprint and data broker lookups will probably identify you. Let's place the blame where it belongs, on the company.

I'm trying to convey that the whole story of a "free, open, $whatever_virtue" is a lie and the people who tell it are universally trying to get something out of us with the lie.

This line of reasoning takes one in short order to RSA-over-shortwave, which I really think should be more top-of-mind, especially for the weenies who dicker over which native chat app is more secure (an argument that makes me worry my eyes will get permanently stuck in a rolled-up state).

First Glassdoor, then OpenTable.

Who will dox us next - Reddit? Hacker News?

I do not disagree with you.

But critics of the past were never anonymous. If you review film or food or anything, and it got published you put your name next to it. You were proud of your opinion and how it was delivered.

I think it's why video is more interesting to the current generation than text. It isnt that video is more appealing, it's much harder to be in(un?)-authentic when your face is out there.

This doesn’t seem like an apples to apples comparison.

If your review was being published, you probably did it professionally and were being compensated to be true and provide valuable feedback.

That is a fundamentally different power dynamic than posting feedback on the internet with no compensation or protection against retaliation except for the promise of anonymity.

> But critics of the past were never anonymous.

Er, yes, they often were either anonymous or pseudonymous.

> If you review film or food or anything, and it got published you put your name next to it.

It probably had a name next to it, because the publisher wanted to build a brand around the reviewer.

It might well not be a name you used for any other purpose, though.

Criticism has a LONG history:

https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-16-critics-cha...

SOme crazy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Sewell

Critics in art, books, music (live, recorded), film, and tv have become personalities in their own right. The plots, drama, name calling, shit slinging of criticism pushes it almost to the level of performance art itself.

The anonymity of the the restaurant critic is in face not name. Its to avoid special treatment, bribes, questions of journalistic integrity. (and bribery in criticism is a whole topic in itself)

I agreed with the poster above me, that Open table should stuff it.

But that that does not change that they WANT to do it. Is there a good reason? Why is a great question to ask. Does every one need to be anonymous when reviewing products, dining, film, books, music? Is there a benefit from identity and candor? Would it change people's takes on things (the internet is filled with people behaving badly so I dont think so)? Maybe you want to be the critic of down and out eateries that I like to frequent, and Im going to follow your advice (or yours mine) because were identified and peers... (a social network of shitty eateries of sorts). I doubt open table is doing it for any of these reasons... there's something more basic there, what is a good question!

Anonymous critique has been an important component of public discussion since before the printing press.

>critics of the past were never anonymous

That is a pretty bonkers thing to say about a review platform that has for many years been anonymous...

Not to mention that influential pre-Internet food critics have often been anonymous/pseudonymous to avoid IRL recognition by restaurant owners, ensuring that they receive the same level of service their readers would get.

I want both the ability to sockpuppet, but also as a consumer of reviews, I very much would rank your opinion based on how much public persona you offer.

Be anonymous! Fine! But I will be highly suspicious of your words unless I see aomg long track record I can evaluate against. Tat can all be anonymous too, but there needs to be a past with which to decypher & interpret you, to decide whether to take you seriously or not against.

No history means no value. No probability there's not some agenda.

> But critics of the past were never anonymous. If you review film or food or anything, and it got published you put your name next to it.

Partially. You would -publish- with your name beside it, but you were anonymous when you went to the restaurant, so they wouldn't know you were a critic.

In the case of restaurants this is true. It's to avoid special treatment.

Unlike art, music, and film. Where "special treatment" would have to be bribery (and that does happen).

ITT: rumors, gossip, and nom de plumes never existed.

Glassdoor didn't make a reviewer's name public, that seems to be a persistent misconception, although there are still things to fault them for. This link is claiming that OpenTable is going to publicly associate first names and profile photos with reviews. This seems much worse, if we're comparing cases.

It's no longer an assured impossibility that if certain populist political-religious extremists attained power, they wouldn't impose censorship and mandate requiring licenses and identity verification to use the internet.

Neither have asked for it

Tech companies sure love to run the domestic abuser's playbook:

* I want to know everything about you and who you talk to (privacy violations)

* I can change deals unilaterally and do whatever I want without your say-so (disrespecting user agency)

* You can't leave me (vendor lock-in)

and love-bombing via marketing campaigns

It amazes me how a company can make a decision like this without anyone in the team stepping up and saying "Deanonymizing users will make people mad".

It really indicates bad management - That either the decision-makers have enough unearned confidence to make this change despite the negative feedback they're receiving, or that nobody who actually understands the user base feels empowered enough to speak up and say that this is an unethical way of doing business.

I perfectly understand the decision to stop allowing anonymous content, but it is absolutely insane to apply this decision retroactively to content created by users who operated with the expectation of anonymity.

Presumably the logic here is that they have 136 million existing reviews, which is an incredibly valuable asset.

If they want reviews to no longer be anonymous, they can either do the right thing and delete/hide 100+ million reviews... or they can do what they're doing, anger a few tens of thousands of people who are paying attention but keep that valuable content.

Why not only make new reviews non-anonymous and disclose it?

Clearly they've made a product decision that they don't want anonymous reviews shown on the site any more. You'd have to ask them why.

Only applying this rule to new reviews would still mean deleting or hiding their existing anonymous reviews, which they don't want to do.

I think this is a really bad policy, personally.

With the first name, photo and time of booking, restaurants are finally free to identify and punish bad reviewers. If you think businesses can't be that petty, just check out how 'Madison Square Garden Uses Facial Recognition to Ban Its Owner’s Enemies'.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/22/nyregion/madison-square-g...