This month's Frame: How Stuart Hall's identities framework can help understand the rise of Discord and Telegram
A framework for understanding the benefits and limitations of different digital identity models.
The one question Elon Musk wanted answered before acquiring Twitter was: How many Twitter users are bots? While it proved to be a particularly difficult question to answer with precision, the broad response was "too many". But why are there more bots on Twitter than on Linkedin or Facebook? Partly because Twitter doesn't expect users to use their real identities. Why is that the case? And conversely, why should we need to use them on Facebook or Linkedin?
These platform design choices are often framed as a trade-off between convenience and safety. A platform based on real identities will be more secure and trustworthy, at the cost of more friction in the sign-up process.
While this is true, it arguably misses a broader cultural point: how people conceive of their identity is quickly evolving—and digital platforms have largely failed to account for this change.
The framework
The Jamaican-born, British sociologist Stuart Hall advanced the idea that in the later part of the 20th century, the definition of "identity" underwent a profound transformation.
Within a few decades, we moved from the traditional view that "the human person is a fully centred, unified individual", whose identity largely remains the same over their existence, to the realisation that a person doesn't have fixed or permanent characteristics. Rather, their identity is a "moveable feast" formed and transformed continuously. Within this more modern paradigm, the subject assumes different identities at different times, and they are not necessarily tied to a coherent self.
Hall called the former view "enlightenment identity" and the latter "postmodern identity". While these concepts were born out of observation of the physical world, they can be particularly helpful to understand the shifts currently happening in the digital space.
Using the framework
Linkedin and Facebook are based on Hall's "enlightenment" view of identity. One individual should have only one account, which is tied to their administrative identity. This makes for an architecture where identities are extremely rigid.
First, they are characterised by permanence over time: a person’s profile is the sum of all the digital actions undertaken since the account was created. Said differently, they don't allow people to start over. You are forever brought back to who you were.
Second, they are characterised by permanence over space: you can only have one identity at a time, whichever community you are currently engaging with. You have the same digital identity, the same name, in all the online communities within that platform.
But as Hall points out, this static view of identity has already broken down in the physical world. Increasingly, people feel that their identity is a fluid concept. They're happy to play with their identities, the different facets, histories and experiences that constitute them, and show one or another depending on who they are with and what image they want to project. It’s no wonder that this model is also breaking up in the online space.
Testament to this paradigm shift is the fact that in the absence of native features enabling the expression of Hall's postmodern identities, users are developing their own workarounds. For example, having a curated Instagram alongside an authentic one (their Finsta). They increasingly prefer to engage with small, private groups, where they can be different "selves", rather than broadcasting one monolithic curated identity to thousands of followers.
Sensing that this disconnect presented a market opportunity, a new generation of communication platforms like Discord or Telegram have recently focused on providing better ways for users to express different identities.
On Discord, users can have different pseudonyms in different communities. Telegram just rolled out a feature letting users own multiple user names. They can then select the most appropriate to use in a given context, and even buy and sell them in a marketplace.
Additionally, Discord and Telegram alike are "chat-first" interfaces, rather than "profile-first" interfaces. Which means their design is better suited to support fluid self-expression in the moment, as their user is defined primarily by what they say, rather than by the sum of their past actions on the platform.
In essence, both platforms' identity architectures are aligned with Hall's postmodern definition of identity: one that is both multiple and impermanent. Research we recently conducted shows that users, particularly younger ones, are finding that this new model is much more aligned with their needs.
Hall's framework points to at least a couple more learnings for incumbent social networks.
First, the social graph that they have built around users' real identities is an asset and a moat, but also a liability. While it might be well suited for some use cases (eg. building a "directory" of contacts; developing a professional portfolio), it will be much less so for others (eg. self-expression and identity discovery). Adding the option for a layer of pseudonymity on top of administrative identities should mitigate that risk.
Second, while it does make sense from a data perspective to aggregate all the accounts (eg. Instagram, Facebook, Whatsapp) of a user, it can also get in the way of how people hope to express themselves online, and compartmentalise aspects of their lives. It might be wise to let them decide if and how they would want to do so.
A final thought
Despite it being plagued by anonymous bots, Elon Musk ended up acquiring Twitter. He's now the CEO of Twitter, Space-X and Tesla. And while he's known to be an incredibly detailed-oriented engineer, who spends countless hours on factory floors optimising processes, he's also a sanguine kibitzer, who runs amok picking fights with random trolls on Twitter. Perhaps too much complexity to be coherently contained within a single monolithic user name?
News
Helping The Trevor Project launch in Mexico
We’re delighted to relay the news that last month, The Trevor Project announced the official launch of its free, confidential, 24/7 digital crisis services for LGBTQ young people in Mexico. We’re humbled to have played a small part in helping The Trevor Project understand the Mexican context, by having organised and facilitated ethnographic research with LGBTQ young people in Mexico.
We have been working with Meta to try and understand the nature of connections that help across a range of life outcomes
In an increasingly unequal world what form of social connection can help create economic mobility? Harvard professor Raj Chetty provides some compelling answers to this question using big data from Meta in a recent event at the RSA. We’re delighted to share that we are partnering with BIT, RSA, Harvard University and Neighbourly Lab to answer these important societal questions for the UK.
