This house regrets the rise of anonymity in social media

I will be arguing that anonymity in social media is good and not something we should regret. First of all, I will say that there will never be 100% anonymity in social media. The moment you mention social media, we all of us accept that this is a tool which will never be 100% made up of authentic people. Moving on... ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ My opponent says that social network sites like Facebook and Twitter allow people to use fake identities. First of all, I think that yes, it is true that you can use names which are funny or names of iconic fictional characters etc and these names are not your real name. However, these days, social networking websites, especially the most popular ones nowadays have strict security measures that make it very difficult for a person to pose as someone else. (Regrettably, debate.org is not yet such a website and we can see this from the amount of spam and troll debates, but at least, they too have certain measures which include you completing 3 debates before you are actually allowed to vote :) ) My opponent himself agrees that Facebook has, in his words "complicated measures" that make it difficult for a person to create a fake account for unhealthy purposes. Yes, ultimately you will be able to create a fake profile if you try hard enough, but arguably your fake profile will not be very good at achieving its aim. Most probably if you had a fake profile on Facebook, for instance, you would want friends to get an audience. How many times have we gotten friend requests from fake profiles on Facebook and we know those are fake profiles by just spending a minute to look at the user's wall, mutual friends etc and deciding that that particular account is fake. It really is not difficult to spot a fake account. The point here is my opponent makes it sound like it is so easy to create fake identities on social networking websites, but this is certainly not the case. Some other measures include the ability to "report" or "flag" fake users or posts and comments that are damaging to the community. If a person is gullible enough to fall for a fake friend request, they should be more educated in how to use social media safely, and it is not the fault of social media. ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ My opponent then says that since people are anonymous, they become more free to speak their mind. However, I would argue that people are already speaking their mind on social websites without being anonymous. A famous porn star ridiculed the Quran on social media in full view of the world. Ultimately, Facebook banned him and deleted his profile. Thus, being anonymous is not the issue when people are already being so open in their opinions and arguments online. Yes, there are fake profiles whose only intention is to spread falsehood but I would argue that these arguments and ridicule ultimately open the door to discussions and making people think. If there are people who love reading these mockeries, these show that they must want to know more or they are interested about a certain topic or issue, and ridicule is one of the ways for them to discuss them. It is no point trying to block people from making fun of certain ideas because, in reality, people are going to have them anyway. My opponent then talks about social predators. I would argue that it is up to the user to accept someone as their friend. It is up to the user to choose to meet up etc. If an anonymous person chats you up you should be alerted. Again, the user should be more aware of their safety not just online but in their real-life interactions. ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Finally, I will bring up my argument for why anonymity is a good thing on social media. Anonymity allows people channel ideas they've always had without fear of being judged. We wish to express our interest and ideas on a host of different things but most of the time, we fear what people will think about us. Anonymity allows people to do what they want to do in the privacy of social networks. This opens up possiblities never before expereinced.