AnonPlus/Anon+ – The Anonymous Social Network

We’ve reported a few times on the Anonymous collective, with the most recent being the rumoured attacks by Anonymous against the Malaysian Government.

The latest story is following Google+ banning numerous Anonymous members, they have spawned their own social network called Anon+/Anonplus.

As is normal with these things, it’d hard to say if it really has anything to do with Anonymous or not – the ‘official’ Anonymous Twitter and Blog accounts have not mentioned Anon+ – so make of it what you will.

The story so far is that Anonymous – or someone associated with Anonymous, or someone cynically riding on the back of Anonymous, who knows? – has set up a site that will offer some kind of social network.

According to TechSpot, the idea (and the “Alpha” Website, anonplus.com) arose when Google+ allegedly banned an unknown number of Anonymous members. The Anonplus site is couched in Anonymous’s usual grandiose phraseology – “they will know that we have arrived. There will be no oppression. There will be no more tyranny. We are the people and we are Anonymous.”

Fair enough. Anyone’s got the right to set up a social network if they want, and they have the right to claim to act on behalf of others, regardless of how accurate that claim may be. But the idea of a completely anarchic, “no tyranny, no oppression” (defined in whose terms?) social network offers some interesting self-contradictions to resolve.

I’ll grant that the world of corporate social networks is a nightmare of “tyranny and oppression” – so much so that the success of Facebook and the excitement over Google+ mystifies me.

Facebook bans a Google+ ad at the drop of a hat, but turns into a nearly-immovable object if asked to help deal with abusive commenters (who, for example, infest tribute pages to the dead). Google+ demands an understanding of 37 different privacy statements. Social networks are not just tyrannical, they’re also a “confusopoly” whose success depends on nobody being able to decode the rules they’ve promised to follow.

It’s an interesting concept though and could gain some traction amongst the tin-foil hat wearing, conspiracy theorists on the net. Those who are probably already surfing with Tor and multiple proxies.

As for the rest of us? I’d imagine we’ll be sticking with Facebook, Twitter and Google+.

There are plenty of people out there who are uncomfortable surrendering so much information to large companies like Google and to closed networks like Facebook, but maybe Anon+ is just a joke – who knows really.

Anonymous’s intervention – to me, a much more welcome intervention than the group’s inability to distinguish between targets, slapping the small and mighty with equal abandon and claiming equal credit whether they’ve defeated a flea-bite nobody or a US military operation – may or may not succeed, but it raises an interesting question.

What’s the line separating rules that are necessary for a social network to function from rules that are oppressive; and when does one become the other?

All social interactions are government by rules of some kind. They may be tight or loose, consensual or tyrannical, explicit or implicit, designed or evolved, but the rules exist, whether or not you follow them (or even acknowledge them).

If all you do is hold a conversation with someone, you will follow at least one rule – the two of you will hold the conversation in languages comprehensible to you both. The interaction won’t happen without that minimum rule.

“If we hack something, we publish it” is a rule for Anonymous – written or not. “There will be no tyranny” is a rule of interaction.

And even Anonplus.com must have, at minimum, one rule: “anybody may join”. The group itself has implied a second rule, that nobody be censored or blacked out.

Censorship provides a convenient handle on which I can hang a question about rules: censorship by whom? Sure, it’s clear that “Anonplus” won’t censor the statements or posts of its users – but what of those users who would wish to constrain, censor or silence other users?

Such people exist in every large group – whether they merely seek to shout down dissent or, since this is the Internet, if they seek to silence those they don’t like by hacking their profiles.

But it does say on the site, the network is not just intended for Anonymous members – it’s for everyone. Well everyone that supports the free Internet with no tyranny and no censorship, that seems to be the goal.

You can check out the development forum for Anon+ here:

http://anonplus.presstorm.com/

It seems like Presstorm has something to do with it, with the forum being hosted under their domain, and the announcement post here: Investigative Innovation: Anonymous and Presstorm Present – Anon+.

Source: The Register