There's no better way to rile up an online community than to mess with its privacy standards. And yet, as digital networks evolve, we'd better make sure our models for online social interaction are nimble enough to change when they need to. In this three-part series, Youth Radio's Noah Nelson looks at the privacy strategies--and failures--of three of the most influential online phenomena: Blizzard's World of Warcraft, Facebook, and the infamous image board 4Chan. The future of the Internet resides somewhere in the DNA of these three communities.

The latest battleground in the war over Internet privacy? Aztheroth, better known to the uninitiated as the World of Warcraft, the most popular massively multiplayer online (MMO) game on planet Earth. This month the champions of Anonymity clashed with the forces of Accountability in the form of a public relations nightmare over a proposed change in policy on the forums for Activision/Blizzard's World of Warcraft and forthcoming StarCraft II franchises. The battle began on the 6th, when Blizzard made the following announcement:

The first and most significant change is that in the near future, anyone posting or replying to a post on official Blizzard forums will be doing so using their Real ID -- that is, their real-life first and last name -- with the option to also display the name of their primary in-game character alongside it.

The idea behind Real ID is to transform the anarchic and often crass message boards into a place more palatable for the casual consumer... or anyone who doesn't cotton to being called a %^$^ noob every 1.21 picoseconds. While one solution for cleaning up the wild west of any online forum is to hire more sheriffs (a.k.a. Community Managers), that takes resources. You've got to pay a real human being to unleash the power of the "banhammer" when @rk@n@ught_6937 threatens sexual violence against another user's pets in a discussion thread about a software patch.

Or there's the free option: rely on the oldest form of moderation, social pressure, to do the dirty work for you. Blizzard's proposed forum changes would allow users to vote comments up and down, Which puts a degree of control in the hands of the users and assigns a number value to the social pecking order. And then there's the silver bullet of discussion moderation: the mandate to use your real name. @rk@naught_6937 might be willing to describe his revenge fantasies in graphic detail, Dave Lizewski not so much. The idea behind using a system like Real ID is to bring a sense of accountability for online interactions to places where there are few consequences for anti-social behavior. Blizzard's move comes on the heels of the social gaming revolution represented by the Facebook-based hit Farmville (from Zynga), and that's no coincidence:

If economists were praying for a teen-led consumer spending surge this Holiday season, the October retail numbers have surely shaken their faith. Analysts are calling the teen apparel numbers for October- a traditionally slow month, admittedly- a "big disappointment". Preppy icon Abercrombie & Fitch reported a 39% drop in profit, and is bleeding market share to most cost concious retailers like Aeropostale.

Digging into the numbers reveals a bit of a jumble. Same store sales are up over last year in many cases, but analysts warn that those numbers are up from the economic abyss that was last October- when the country was still reeling from the credit crunch and the Presidential election was still on the line. In short, things are better than last year, but that's like saying a hernia is better than loosing your leg to a great white shark attack.

The worst part is that for a minute there, it looked like things were going to be okay. From Bloomberg:

U.S. consumer spending in September dropped for the first time in five months, according to Commerce Department data. Spending fell 0.5 percent after a 1.4 percent jump in August. Consumer confidence in October also declined. The jobless rate reached a 26-year high of 9.8 percent in September.

After the jump, video games bring a bright spot... sort of...