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It's worth pointing out that there's a difference between "anonymity" and "not-my-real-name". Most people on the Internet are probably not anonymized by their screennames/handles/nicks/whatever-the-kids-call-them-now because they work hard to integrate that online identity across services. It is a real, tangible identity even though it is completely separate from the physical person.

We shouldn't underestimate the value of that identity, or of stepping outside the identities we have in the working world. Some people would rather be known totally and solely as the guy who posts funny stuff to Reddit and contributes to open source projects, not as the 34 year-old IT worker who gets yelled at every morning by a boss he hates.

the important thing about pseudonymity is that it is transient. if, an hour from now, i decide i want to be sex_girl_69, i can do that and you're not going to know that's the same person as me. i can always come back to being notatoad again tomorrow.

you only have one real identity, and it is forever. a pseudonym might be a completely functional identity and just as real as your legal name, but the point is that it has a degree of freedom that you will never have with an identity built around a legal name.

On the internet ... yes it will. The freedom is simply there.

Hell, even in the real world you have all this freedom. When I introduce myself as Swizec in real life, nobody questions anymore whether that's my legal real name or not. They just take it that that's what they are supposed to call me.

Pseudonymity is a much more real concept than people are willing to admit to themselves. In fact, at this very instance, everybody in the world is pseudonymous. Most just choose not to exercise this freedom.

Why do you suppose more people on the Internet choose to exercise this right then in real-life?

I had never considered that the level of pseudonymity available on the Internet is available in real-life as well. Really the only thing that the real-life has which you can't change would be your DNA.

Really? When I introduce myself people often ask if it is actually my real name with a lot of doubt in their voice, and my name is a lot less crazy than "swizec".
Hell, even in the real world you have all this freedom. When I introduce myself as Swizec in real life, nobody questions anymore whether that's my legal real name or not.

A bit, but in real life if you walked up to your colleagues and said "hi, I'm throwaway347" they would say "Swizec, what are you talking about?".

And if you were in the Mall and bumped into two people you know, one of them could say "Gregor (or whoever), why is that person calling you Swizec?" and vice-versa, and your multiple identities would be known to both and no longer separate or as useful.

On the internet, you can come back to HN under another name, and ask for advice about your failing company finances, or your awkward personal relationship with your cofounder, and you don't need to trust the people here to keep your confidence because you haven't shared anything tied to your identity. IRL you need to pluck up the courage to share your problems with someone who a) you know enough to value their advice, and b) who didn't know them, and c) will now know them forever.

is not-a-toad from kipper?
no, i don't know what that is.
In the end, isn't user's choice a compelling factor in deciding such matters? We know what you're trying to do, but you can't force people to be social, at least not without some awkwardness and discontent.

Let us speak clearly: They tell us why it's good for us that we use our real names, and they may be right. But they don't tell us why it's bad for them that we don't. If it's not bad for them, then why restrict user's choice? People socialize in different ways, in my opinion, a good social network would be flexible enough to allow different people socialize in a way that is most comfortable to them.

EDIT: My legal name is not "Ben Beltran". Nonetheless, almost everybody in real life and online knows me this way, few know my actual long name and most think I'm called benjamin. I believe this name attaches my statements to my person more than my legal name does. I consider this my "Real Name"

I'm not sure what you claim is so trivially obvious; sometimes a decision to restrict peoples choices ends up being good for the company simply because it is good for the user experience.

Consider how facebook never allowed too much freedom over pages, no background images or changing the font or auto playing music. These were all hotly requested features, and why should facebook care if someone put a tiled image background or had a different font? They cared because in reality people often don't make the best decisions and for anything social, other people being morons and using red comic sans over tiled lolcats causes the value of the service to decrease.

I'm not sure if the same is true about Google+, but I did think it was jarring that people named things like "Texans for Marijuana Legalization" started following me on Google+. If there was people named anything close to the average xbox handle, it would definitely make me less likely to use the service (things like vagblaster77 or dankbluntz4lyfe)

It's bad for them, because it breaks the whole concept. The concept is that if you start with requiring real name, you prime people to give you the "real" things you like, your "real" preferences etc. It sets the tone, you are not longer spontaneous, you are "serious". Of course, it's all scaremongering: social networks don't have real informative comment, most people share jokes, mindless pleasantries and play games.
social networks don't have real informative comment

I beg to differ. I mostly use facebook to keep in touch with my extended family. Most of it is updates on our children. While that is probably of little significance to anyone outside my extended family, it is important to us.

Others though use social networks to find jobs, talk about their most recent artistic project, discuss research, and keep in touch with business contacts. And those are within my social circles. If we step further out, they have been used as a tool with major political consequences in many places.

The author's example of screaming in the street is moot: most meaningful social interactions happen in a setting with far more information about the people you're interacting with: e.g. a college bar, a tradeshow, a cocktail party, a museum.

You're very rarely interacting with no context at all, and most interactions are among friends, where you have much more information than is contained in a Facebook profile.

Agreed. But 99.9% of your real-life statements aren't stored permanently as they are online. This allows us to be more honest with our friends. We don't have to worry that something we said 10 years ago in a bar will be available today verbatim to those friends and to whoever those friends share it with... and with a strong possibility of people who we don't even know listening in. (In the digital sphere, privacy restrictions are much easier to circumvent than the space-time limits of real-life.)
And more careful selection of who knows it, generally, with less ability for people to verify what they've been told if they stand outside the trusted circle. Moreover, memory isn't permanent in the brain but social network companies seem to be interested in making it very permanent in the data center.
True, but let's not conflate the issues of identity vs. verification vs. permanence. People can still lie on their social networking profiles, and anything in the real world can still be recorded. Even if social networking companies didn't push to make their data persistent, any viewer of that data could cache it for all time.
Of course, the revolution actually started back in 1985, with The WELL and the idea that YOYOW (You Own Your Own Words.)
This strikes me as less an argument for pseudonyms and more an argument for impermanence. It seems to me that the thought experiment is more like putting a mask on, and then yelling your revolutionary ideas, rather than doing it in public and just hoping to not be recognized.
Not really. If I shout something on the street, it's virtually impossible for the people around me to figure out who I am (unless they already know me). With real names attached to everything, even if the statement is impermanent, it's essentially trivial for "bystanders" to track down your identify.
If one of the bystanders cares enough, they'll use their phone to take a picture of you. From there it's entirely possible to link that picture of you to other pictures of you online (facial recognition and all that), and then to your identity, if there are any publicly accessible pictures of you online that are linked to your identity. Or they could share it with their social network, hoping that there's some overlap.

Similarly, if I hear someone shout something that interests me, I can begin a conversation with them which may lead to getting details of their identity, unless they're actively concealing those details. Or follow them home, and so forth, as you start moving to less and less ethical options.

Attaching real names to statements online does make the process ridiculously easy, though, and it would probably be useful if social networks had a "do not expose my identity (in comments, etc.) to people who are not already my friends (or friends of friends)." That seems (to me, at least) to be rather more similar to how the real world works.

Having a real name attached to your online identity could actually help a revolutionary message. If I hear someone on the street shout some anti-government messages I would probably ignore them. On the other hand, if a well respected and know person makes that statement on a social network they might get a better response.

My question is Why are we trying to emulate real life on the web? Yes, anonymous comments have no personal touch. But how about meeting up for a beer for some real conversations as opposed to writing on each other's wall ?

Exactly. But since it seems pretty much impossible to retain impermanence in the digital sphere (real-life impermanence relying, of course, on the fact that the information is never recorded to a reliable medium) anonymity is a necessary crutch.

The author's real point is that argument made by google and facebook ("there's nothing wrong with more-or-less eliminating anonymity online for the same reasons that we do just fine in meatspace without much anonymity") doesn't go through, because of the differing levels of permanence between digital and real-life interactions. Therefore, if you want to argue one side or the other, you have to do it with those differences in mind.

It surprises me how much the argument that those anti-Real Name believe this way because they "don't understand and have never ran their own business" or are old-fashioned. This argument is used around here to explain away anyone that doesn't agree with your favorite startups's angle...

Its so much more complicated than that. The clearcut assumption that those who express this particular ideal are immature and inexperienced is ridiculous.

Revolutionary? Disappointing is the word I would use.
Well, if you yelled "down with government" on a street in North Korea you wouldn't be anonymous for long. If you yelled "f*ck the police" in the hearing range of an American cop you'd probably be identified and harassed. What's at stake is a social compact that we respect free speech and privacy. Real name policies violate that from the outset. Of course, it keeps comment sections civil but you don't go to a random bar with a sticker stating your full name and address. But that doesn't make the interactions any less meaningful. It's not so much the anonymity but being able to keep a relaxed distance from being judged for what you say or who you are.
The scenario where a person doesn't want to use their real name because they are fleeing an abusive relationship or are they are a rape survivor, etc I don't have a solution for.

But for everyone else god forbid that you have to think twice before posting something on the Internet. I use my real name for basically everything online (save video game networks which is more just out of habit really) and I try to consciously filter myself because I know I am writing in ink.

Short of the extreme edge cases where a person is attempting to hide from someone because they fear for their life, the main argument against using real names always seems to boil down to someone waiting to share something radical and controversial but not having it tied to their physical persona.

Social networks like Facebook and Google+ are more about those close connected relationships that you would get if you lived in a small town (at least that is how I look at them) and if someone wants to spew their ideas anonymously then let them find another saloon in the wild wild west that is the Internet.

You don't seem to have made an actual argument there. You say:

"the main argument against using real names always seems to boil down to someone waiting to share something radical and controversial but not having it tied to their physical persona."

But you seem to just take it as a given that the idea that someone may want that, or that it may be a social good to protect that, is so bizarre and far out that an argument need not even be made, it's sufficient just to state it.

Well, I disagree. People should be able to say controversial things without any fear, and I can give you two enormous use cases: Democracy, and childhood. Democracies need to be able to freely debate things that are, by definition, controversial, to function at all. Children need to be able to say stupid things without them being tagged by them for the next fifty years.

I'm pretty confident you haven't got an argument more powerful than those... and "reidmain gets annoyed when he sees things (s)he thinks are stupid on the Internet" certainly isn't it.

If it sounded like I was saying that anything someone wants to share anonymously is not worth being shared then I apologize.

I see the need to be able to say something controversial and not fear reprisal. My main argument was that services like Facebook and Google+ are not geared towards that. It is a personal opinion but it is just how I see these sites being used.

Things like EA Spouse definitely need to have the ability to exist on the internet. I just don't think that this woman would need to be able to share it on her Google+ account.

Lets have an honest conversation here. The only reason why Google and Facebook want your real identity is because of marketing dollars. I should know, because my company makes a lot of money from being able to identify individuals in the audience we advertise to. The more I know about my audience, the more money my company makes. They are the same audience whether I know who they are or not, but when I know who they are, I know not only what they will buy but what triggers will push them in to that position that they buy.

In the old days you gave your friends your pseudonyms. My friends knew mine and I knew theirs. That is the way public communication should be. We don't walk around outside giving everyone we see a brochure with our full name, city of residence, and pictures of everything we've said in the past year -- we certainly shouldn't do it online where the information is as easily accessible by someone in your hometown as it is a Mexican kidnapping gang.

I won't be naive and say they don't want it for that exact reason. I am not Google's customer and I realize this. I am getting a good service from them for free for their ability to use the information I am providing.

We don't walk around giving everyone we see a brochure of all that information because most people don't want it. Heck even your friends don't want a lot of it.

I'll give my name out to anyone who asks, my address and pictures out to those I trust.

I see the Internet as a untrusted source. I don't post my address online (although I'm sure it is available somehow i.e. yellow pages or through some government service) and all the pictures and ideas I share are targeted primarily at my friends but I realize that once it is out there I shouldn't be afraid of someone else getting their hands on it.

Short of the extreme edge cases where a person is attempting to hide from someone because they fear for their life, the main argument against using real names always seems to boil down to someone waiting to share something radical and controversial but not having it tied to their physical persona.

May I point out that those extreme edge cases, while rare, are also extremely important? That person fleeing an abusive relationship is probably far more in need of a swift effective communications medium to get social support, practical advice and even to just plain tell their story than most people are.

And you are forgetting other cases that are just a touch less extreme but still relevant. The young adult struggling with their orientation may be desperate to avoid having certain people discover this fact while equally desperate to find others in a similar situation for that support and advice.

I am the first to say that Google and Facebook are private businesses and how they handle their business is up to them, but if we are going to have a real discussion of the reprecussions of their decisions then we need to remember that these edge cases are real and they are important.

May I point out that those extreme edge cases

Personally, I'm not convinced that if you add up all the very valid reasons people have for wanting to be anonymous, that you have a percentage of people which could be described as "extreme edge cases."

You are right. I didn't mean to downplay these edge cases as much as I did.

Is the concern that Facebook and Google's decisions are going to permeate so far it will become common place or that because these two social networks are the big dogs that it is unfair (for lack of a better word) for the edges cases to not be able to participate?

No they're not. In the area of real names, they're mostly about enabling people you didn't give your nickname to find you and therefore complete the social graph.
That is a good point. I didn't think about how I made a lot of the connections with my friends on the Internet.

Most of my Google+ connections are from email addresses I knew beforehand or links spewed out on Twitter. How I got a lot of these in the old days were probably through nicknames.

No, I really only want my real name tied to professional activities and a few other areas where name /matters/. Honest.

Everything else, I am content to slip away from the Big Search Spotlight in the sky.

I understand not wanting to use your real name everywhere. Do you not want to use services like Facebook or Google+ or you would use them if they allowed pseudonyms?
1) Would you use it equally deliberately if your name was something like "Mustafa Al Zawahiri" in 2002?

2) Do you have any documented cases where using your real name had any advantage over using "reidmain"?

3) Social networks are not really a choice, trend-setters usually herd everyone else.

4) What's your name?

1) That is a good question. I would like to think I would because I would want to prove to those who stereotype that I am not an exception but like any of those difficult scenarios I will not presume my ideals would hold.

2) The only other pseudonym I've ever used is my gamer handle of Warmain. I would say that whenever I made a friend on a video game and we got close enough that we thought to exchange real names it forged a closer bond because it seemed to humanize you a bit more. But then again in video games there are names like xxxDragonSlayerzz. I think the pseudonyms people are complaining about using are not so dehumanizing.

4) My name is Reid. Pleasure to meet you.

It's not just "anonymous" versus "real identity", either. In real life, everyone acts differently with different groups of people; since you're rarely with (e.g.) family and friends at the same time, you essentially have two separate identities, free to develop in slightly different directions. The fact that everyone knows your name doesn't matter if there is no global state associated with a name.

Of course, Circles are Google's attempt to mirror this, although I think they do so poorly: rather than there being a mental "context shift" as in real life, posts from all your circles are mixed together, and you have to decide on a context each time you post. In practice, I share everything publicly because it's the path of least resistance; the result is not much different from Facebook.

I'm actually really interested in the idea of social networks becoming part of physical life and reducing our disconnectedness. When we lived in villages, everyone knew everyone. In a city, nobody knows who you are. But with a physical social network in the picture, suddenly the city is looking like the village again.

Everyone knowing everyone has advantages and disadvantages. Obviously, out-group behaviour can be more easily identified and punished. This is useful for reducing out-group behaviour you disapprove of, e.g. crime, but bad because it discourages out-group behaviour you approve of, e.g. radical political opinions.

One example: I would love to be able to give karma scores to other drivers, and I bet insurance companies would be interested too.

Insurance companies already do this with FICO scores, which are scandalously good predictors of risk for just about anything. (Pick your favorite explanation: they correlate with irresponsibility and that correlates with bad outcomes, or they correlate with poverty and bad things happen to poor people.)

Someone is eventually going to take the old "You are the average of your five best friends" adage and create a score (a set of scores, more likely) based on it. That will either be illegalized within a year or make billions. (My cynical rationale on it getting political heat is that it will be probably better than human judgment, like FICO, hit some people hard, like FICO, and strike people as "unearned", unlike the layman's understanding that FICO scores are dominated by your behavior as opposed to the behavior of other people.)

"One example: I would love to be able to give karma scores to other drivers, and I bet insurance companies would be interested too."

I wouldn't. This can easily be easily gamed just the way social media sites tend to be gamed.

Nothing about this requires a real name. Almost no one on the Internet knows my real name and yet plenty of people know me very well.
I wonder how the US (Chicago, etc) and UK (everywhere) policy of having street cameras everywhere for "security" changes his street-shouting example.

The simple fact remains that "the internet is forever." It is more public and persistent than just about any other place imaginable. That comes with its pros and cons.

I doubt it changes it much, unless they make it easily searchable via Google.
How did anybody read past paragraph seven of that mess? And I skimmed the opening fluff to get that far.
> They are creating tighter links between people's behavior and their identities than has previously existed in the modern world.

Since the advent of the internet, people are self-publishing at a rate never before experienced in the history of humanity. Everything we do today has always existed, except it was never as easy to record and disseminate, nor as cheaply to publish and store for posterity let alone broadcast it to the entire world.

Before the internet, you had to hire an autobiographer, an editor and a publisher to broadcast your minute thoughts; nowadays any bum can tell what he or she is doing, thinking, planning, rehearsing or not twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.