Poole/Jennings

I haven't changed my stance on anonymity. It is not inherently good or bad. People can be truthful or not; write interesting and useful posts that add to public debate or lousy posts, either way. It's like my old advertising professor used to say:

"There is no such thing as bad advertising, just crummy ads or insufficient audience. Saying 'advertising is bad' like saying 'motherhood is bad'."

In many ways, people are discouraged from being authentic on Facebook. I know the fact that several coworkers, my wife's relatives, etc are "friends" I greatly limit what I write. I think long and hard about posting anything controversial or self-incriminating.

There are many topics with which anonymity allows for more honest discussion such as church sex abuse or workplace whistle blowing. Another good example of anonymity being useful without devolving into ugliness is Wikipedia. People don't have their names and profiles attached to what they write. But Wikipedia manages to be a useful community. Granted, you need to register or post your IP address. But your friends and relatives don't see your content in their Facebook feed and your name isn't attached to it. 

Interestingly, I found 4Chan to be a good argument against anonymity. The site is chaotic and sleazy, as Chris Dannen said. If the result of people expressing themselves in a “...completely unvarnished, unfiltered, raw way" is racism, child porn, etc, maybe Zuckerberg is right. Similar to the oft-cited (by me, at least) example of comments on youtube, anonymity does also lead to people expressing the ugliest parts of humanity.
Plus, the first thing I saw when I went there was my Malwarebytes saying it blocked a potentially malicious site.

So anonymity cuts both ways, depending on what people choose to do. With Wikipedia, people choose to use it for good. On 4Chan and youtube, very often people choose to use it for their worst impulses.

The style of the Jennings post is totally ADHD. I would prefer something more coherent and in a narrative style. On the plus side, there is a concise quality that I like. Lee Simmons was able to distill a 15 min speech to four bullet points I could read in under 10 seconds. So I guess this style could work, depending on what the writer is trying to accomplish.