Where Anonymity Breeds Attempt By Julie Zhuo Analysis

Improved Essays
Julie Zhuo’s essay, Where Anonymity Breeds Contempt, does not effectively reach content providers because of Zhuo’s lack of consideration to the provider’s own experiences on the topic of trolling. Throughout her essay she argues that content providers need to take control over trolling by not allowing anonymous commenters, watching over comments, and asking users to report trolls. By following these steps, Zhuo believes that trolling will decrease. Trolling is when someone makes hateful or rude comments online- usually anonymously. Zhuo’s essay was published in November of 2010 during a time when Facebook and Twitter were the most popular social media sites. Also during time, Julie Zhuo was and currently is employed at Facebook as their director of product design.
In terms of background information, Zhuo is writing to her peers in the content provider field, they have a lot of background knowledge and experiences- just like her. Yet, she often ignores her audience’s work life. She gives the definition of trolling and she defines it as, “the act of posting inflammatory,
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Mostly because it shouldn’t have been written to content providers. Even though Zhuo can relate to them, she failed to see their point of view. Content providers have years of background knowledge that allows them to see the flaws in her essay. If Zhuo insisted on writing to providers, her essay would more effective if she stressed to her peers about the opportunity they have to influence their users about the importance of not trolling. At the end of the day, Zhuo needed to attack the issue at the roots and not just try to kill the final product of troll comments. Trolling is the hands of the users- not the hands of content providers or Julie Zhuo. If she spent time talking about a site’s potential impact that they can just by clearly defining how comments should be written on their site, then change can actually be

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