Self Curation, Social Partitioning, Escaping from Prejudice and Harassment
Max Van Kleek, Daniel A. Smith, N. R. Shadbolt, Dave Murray-Rust, Amy Guy · 2015
Portraying matters as other than they truly are is an important part of everyday human communication. In this paper, we use a survey to examine ways in which people fabricate, omit or alter the truth online. Many reasons are found, including creative expression, hiding sensitive information, role-playing, and avoiding harassment or discrimination. The results suggest lying is often used for benign purposes, and we conclude that its use may be essential to maintaining a humane online society.