There have been many hardships for anonymity. Yik Yak experienced push back due to the platform becoming a host for bullying. This lead to the organization implementing geofencing, effectively disabling the application when the location is reported as being a known middle school or high school. The founder of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, has been pent up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London for years after several governments began pursuing Assange (although one aspect is for sexual misconduct, the motivation for pursuing such a charge is questionable). 4chan has become the target of ridicule and attacks such as Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS), although founder Christopher Poole has said that functionality has been implemented at the switching level to ensure users will not undergo further interruption.
Hosting an anonymous platform comes with its own set of difficulties. This is due to the more controversial content being posted about others and the additional pressure placed upon founders and moderators to effectively censure content. History has shown that removed accountability always falls upon someone, even if that someone is simply providing a framework for truly free speech. It either goes one of two ways, with the administrators implementing additional functionality to establish more granular accountability or the administrators taking the heat for content, either in direct fashion or indirectly by circumvented means.
No matter the risks involved in hosting [sometimes pseudo] anonymous platforms, there are those that recognize the value and therefore continue in the quest to provide people with platforms for truly free speech. Supporting these efforts enable more freedom in expression as well as a wider and truer aspect of consumption. While some of the resulting content is outside of social norms and tastes, some flows into mainstream media and provides a path back to the originating forum, perhaps providing a new source of information/entertainment/networking.
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