Very few people actually understand the responsibilities that come along with being a digital citizen. To me the responsibility is less to the community, and more to myself as a person. We live in an age where online is going out of fashion very quickly. There are of course still little sections of of the internet that are in fact completely anonymous, or at least claim to be. The concept of anonymity implies that we can do anything we want to do, or be anyone we want to be online, however a lot of what is done online is kept on record. I’ve often heard the joke that when my generation starts running for public office people are going to be bringing up comments they made on youtube videos when they were 12, but there is actually some merit in the story. Everything that is done online is going to be kept somewhere, every picture, and every bit of information exists somewhere in the digital world.
Since online anonymity is more of a myth than a reality there are responsibilities both to ourselves, as well as the community. If everything that’s done can be traced then it’d be best to act responsibly. A few months ago a website called The Silk Road got shut down. The site was actually an underground drug marketplace using a completely anonymous currency and was supposedly the safest online database in the world. The website was shutdown and the owner of the site was arrested. Another owner of a website called megaupload had his house raided. Many people see the internet as a place where there is no responsibility, but there are real life implications with what we do online.
