Anonymity: Goodness or Evil?

As a distinguishing feature of on-line communication, anonymity is very common in digital era. What has it brought to us? I think it’s a question worthy of discussion. When I saw that picture of the baby and mom, I immediately thought of a famous case “Little Fatty” in China, which has similar process but opposite intention. A young boy’s picture was used by thousands of anonymity to make various funning posters.
The boy was called as “Little Fatty” and was known by public. He said it brought a great difficulties as well as feeling of humiliation and fear of being taken photos, but he and his family can’t find out who they should sue when they were ready to file a lawsuit. It was lucky for the boy to adjust his mood quickly to accept these and be used of being famous by that special way. As we know, sometimes this type of anonymity might cause suicide or revenge behaviors of the victim if he or she couldn’t balance the feeling.

On the other hand, we can’t ignore the benefits of anonymity. Kidnapping and selling people is a serious social problem in China, as many families without kids in rural areas prefer to purchase kids. In addition, some crime group use kidnapped kids as their tool of begging. Under this background, some people established an on-line platform named “taking photos at hand”, and called on anonymity to take photos for the kids on street suspect to be kidnapped. This platform has already helped some families to find their lost kids (Taking Photos At Hand Saved 5 Kidnapped Kids). However, there are also some mix-up happened sometimes. I remembered that I participated in a spreading of a photo with a young man and a little boy who begged in the subway in Shanghai. The anonymity who took the picture suspected the little boy was kidnapped as the young man treated him badly. The staff in the subway noticed this picture posted and delivered by thousands of anonymity and found them, but after checking their identity, the young man was the boy’s real father. In this condition, I wonder if anonymity even with goodness might cause trouble to some people. On the contrary, absolutely those families who lost kids need it very much as one hope. This results that when we are carrying goodness to help them, we have to undertake the guilty of the possibility of disturbing others by taking photos without others’ permission. Should people continue this action?