Real name, handle, or anonymous? A manager's guide to member privacy modes

Bitir lets you control whether members appear to each other as their real name, a chosen handle, or anonymously. Picking the wrong mode for your group hurts engagement in subtle, specific ways. Here is how to decide.

The three modes

Bitir offers three member display modes, which the group manager sets per group:

• Real name. Members appear to each other by the name they registered with. Good for groups where members already know each other in real life.
• Handle. Members choose a short display handle for the group. The manager still sees the mapping between handle and phone number. The rest of the group does not.
• Anonymous. Members appear as "Member 1", "Member 2", etc. Even the list position is stable per group so that members can follow a thread without losing context.

In all three modes, private member posts are still routed to the manager with full identity. The member privacy mode controls what other members see.

Rule 1: Default to handles

Handles are the right choice for the majority of coaching, therapy, and wellness groups. They give members enough continuity to build a relationship with each other — the "Kestrel" you replied to last week is still "Kestrel" this week — without exposing personal information.

Handles also have a less obvious benefit: they lower the entry barrier for members who have been burned by public-name platforms. A member who has stopped posting on LinkedIn because of its cost to their privacy is the same person who will happily share something genuine under a handle inside a private Bitir group.

Rule 2: Use real names only when the real world already knows

Real names are the right choice when the members already know each other face to face. A youth football squad is a real-name context. A primary-school class parent group is a real-name context. A corporate engineering team is a real-name context.

Real names are not the right choice when the group is constituted around something the members might want to keep private from the other members. A weight-loss group of strangers is not a real-name context. A therapy group is not a real-name context. A pelvic-health recovery group is definitely not a real-name context.

The test is blunt: if a member might plausibly not want their next-door neighbour to find out they are in this group, do not run the group under real names.

Rule 3: Anonymous is a tool, not a default

Full anonymity is useful in a narrow band of cases. It is the right choice when:

• The group is explicitly time-limited (e.g. a 6-week support group) and members will not need to build a long-term relationship.
• The content is inherently sensitive — bereavement, addiction recovery, gender transition, trauma processing.
• The group is large enough that individual threads do not require continuity of identity.

Full anonymity is the wrong choice for most long-running groups, because the member-to-member relationship is how engagement grows over time. When every post is from "Member 7", no one can build a connection with anyone else.

What the manager always sees

A point worth being explicit about: Bitir's privacy modes are about what other members see, not what you (the manager) see. As a manager you always have access to the full identity mapping in your own group. This is deliberate. A group manager has safeguarding responsibilities, and stripping their ability to identify a member in a crisis would make the tool unusable in exactly the contexts it is needed most.

Make sure your members know this. In the welcome post for any group running on handles or anonymity, write the line explicitly: "You appear to the rest of the group as [handle/anonymously]. I, as the manager, still see your name and phone number."

Changing the mode mid-group

You can change the privacy mode partway through a group's life, but be careful. Moving from handle to real name is usually fine if the group has already built trust, and some members may ask for it ("let's just use names now"). Moving in the other direction — from real name to handle — is harder because the group has already seen each other, and the handle will not genuinely anonymise anyone.

If you need stronger anonymity than your current group allows, the better pattern is often to start a new, separate group rather than try to retrofit privacy onto an existing one.

Phone numbers are always encrypted

In all three modes, every phone number in Bitir is encrypted at rest with AES-256. Member phone numbers are never visible to other members regardless of privacy mode. The privacy mode only affects display names inside the group UI.

A real example

Dr. Amelia Richardson's anxiety groups on Bitir run on handles. She uses a short script in the welcome post that explains exactly what the handle does, what she can still see as manager, and why the choice exists. Members routinely cite the handle convention as one of the reasons they feel safer writing honest reflections. Full story: Dr. Amelia Richardson — anxiety support groups on Bitir.