

Using Real Names has Real Consequences - ikram
http://open.salon.com/blog/kent_pitman/2011/02/12/using_real_names_has_real_consequences

======
parfe
I hate using my real name online.

The most recent wikipedia fiasco involving programming languages being deleted
just goes to show how dangerous it is. The poor editor who marked the articles
for a delete discussion was stalked to the point of people on HN discussing
the idea of contacting the guy's boss with the intent of disrupting his career
in academia.

And all because the guy thought an article didn't have enough notability to
belong on wikipedia.

~~~
coderdude
There are always going to be a few bad eggs out there that would just assume
hurt people's real lives in order to satisfy some kind of Internet justice.
It's a shame really. I prefer a handle to using my real name but even in my
about and on whatever I create you can find my name on it. Check out my whois
to see where I live! It's a risk I've learned to deal with as part of life as
a contributing netizen.

~~~
nitrogen
Speaking of whois, I'm really glad I don't get the quantity of whois-based
junk mail I used to see with the domain I registered ~10 years ago. That's one
category of spam that seems to have improved over time.

P.S. It's a nitpick, but "just assume" should be "just as soon."

~~~
whatusername
Do you get the Domain Registrar of America renewal letters? (Or whatever they
are called). Or is that just something sent to us rubes in the colonies.

~~~
nitrogen
I always try to renew my domains months in advance, so it's possible I've been
missing out on those letters for the last few cycles. I used to get a lot more
than that though. It's been a long time, but I seem to remember getting daily
junk mail sent to the exact contact info I used on a domain registration and
nowhere else. I believe the registrars implemented new policies on whois that
helped with that, but again, it's been a decade so my memory is foggy.

------
steerpike
I have pretty strong negative reaction to this push for more and more sites to
demand a real name for signup and I'm not sure if it's a product of my
internet usage history or if I actually have a valid gripe.

I think it's fundamentally important that as a general principle the internet
allows a person to play many parts and to play those parts under discreet,
consistent personae if required. The most basic example being that my 'work'
persona needs to be distinctly separate so that people can't mistake my
personal opinions for official statements from the national broadcasting
corporation I happen to work for.

Sites like quora and facebook are a distubing and distressing trend to me, but
I haven't really seen a great deal of 'push back' against the practice.
Especially from younger web users, and I wonder if it's just a 'generational'
thing?

~~~
mechanical_fish
_I haven't really seen a great deal of 'push back' against the practice._

What exactly happens if one uses a pseudonym at Facebook or Quora? Does Big
Brother come to drag you off to Room 101?

Perhaps few people bother to push back against the Real Name policies because
there's nothing much to push against. If I decide to use a pseudonym, I doubt
that a site would rush to stop me: Better a user with a non-"real" name than
no user at all. And even if they enforce the policy, I doubt that they expend
much effort. How could they? As patio11 once pointed out at great length:

[http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-
programmers-b...](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-
believe-about-names/)

... the One True Personal Name problem is intractable. It's so difficult that
entities which actually _care_ about identity, like major governments, don't
bother to solve it: They issue numbers instead.

The Real Name policies also aren't the big threat, IMHO. A company with a Real
Name policy is actually being very above-board: Explicitly asking for your
real name, and then visibly stamping it on everything you submit, is a clearer
signal of a site's privacy policy than any actual written privacy policy. It's
intuitive. People understand names, and pseudonymity, and anonymity as they
apply in the real world. What they _don't_ understand, and the source of the
bigger problems, is that on the web the things that you type under a pseudonym
can be traced back to you anyway -- by cookies or IP addresses or traffic
analysis or cross-correlation of credit card numbers or mobile phone IDs or
word frequency analysis -- and that companies like Google and Facebook are
built around building those links and then selling the data. The problem with
Facebook isn't the parts that are explicitly public; it's the parts that ought
to be private but aren't.

~~~
MartinCron
My wife tried making a pseudonym Facebook account for helping me test FB
integration on my site... Facebook refused to let her create an account with
the name "Peaches Gnome"

Anyone out there who is actually named Peaches Gnome will need to prove it to
Facebook. Imagine the troubles that the Zappa kids go through.

~~~
fwdbureau
I did the same thing two days ago for the exact same reason, with the name
"Aleph Zadik", and it worked like a charm. Is there a human being deciding
what looks like a real name or not, or is it algorithm-based?

~~~
gaius
FB started out when you had to give your "official" email address to sign up,
which would usually be firstname.lastname@university.ac.uk (or .edu for
Americans).

People who insist on using their "handles" are hankering back to the world
where online and offline lives were mainly seperate. That just isn't true any
more, it's as if you used a fake name in the phone book and wondered why no-
one called...

~~~
fwdbureau
I agree with you that using nicknames is hankering back to the "old" way, but
I can't see why it wouldn't be possible anymore to separate on & off. Simply
because a couple of IT moguls (Schmidt, Zuck and such) have predicted one
future for us? We humans have enough talent and imagination to escape, distort
and nullify those bleak predictions. AT least I hope so.

And yes, using a nick on FB means exactly this: you don't want anyone to call
you. I simply don't want to network with my friends & family on facebook
(better ways are available), but i needed access to the API ^^

------
dionidium
I'm glad I didn't use my real name when I was first on the net at age 14. Why
would I want a public record of ideas I now realize were (at best) half-baked?
There's no upside to such a record, especially since an undiscerning reader
might mistake those comments for something I said last week and not the
rantings of an adolescent who hasn't exist for 15+ years.

As an adult, I attach my real name to just about everything (it's on my HN
user page). I might not want to own everything I said as a teenager, but if
you won't own what you say at 30, then when will you?

~~~
noibl
Pseudonyms allow a person to own what they say* without opening themselves up
to retribution from people who misunderstand either the content or the context
of what is said, or who take advantage of power imbalances to advance an
agenda. People should not feel pressured into putting everything on the line
merely for the right to speak freely.

* Maybe not in the sense you mean but in a sense that I think is sufficient -- that statements from that persona can be challenged and measured against other statements in the same context for consistency.

~~~
vacri
Another way of looking at it is: why does a comment from a 'real name' have
any more weight than from a pseudonym? Once you've built up a body of
commentary you've built up a reputation under that handle anyway.

Just recently I witnessed a heated debate between pseudonyms and the weaker of
the two debaters finally said "I am Dave Foo from Sometown, Oregon - are you
going to hide or man up?". The response was "I am Bill Bar from Othertown,
California - what of it? You still haven't answered the questions I asked".
Real names add little in terms of content of validity.

Real names aren't necessary, but if you want a reputation, you'll need to be
consistent with the name you pick.

------
petercooper
As the only person commenting here so far using my full name as my HN handle,
I'll agree that there's a big difference in how one acts when using one's real
name than under a pseudonym (even one based on your full name). I only
maintain the habit because of my journalistic background - bylines are like
gold-dust to me, even if they're on HN ;-)

In my case, I back away from "crazies" and flamewars pretty quickly, remain
civil at (almost) all times, and apologize (or ignore) quickly even if I
_really_ want to tear the other party a new one. But I think this is a _good_
thing. The constant invisible axe swinging around in the room helps me keep my
words and manner in check, lest I get cut.

~~~
camtarn
The strange thing for me is that my name is a very common one, but my handle
is more or less unique. I hand out my personal email address which
incorporates my handle, so I'm very easy to Google when using it.

By comparison, if I used my real name, I would be practically anonymous,
drowned in the sea of other people using my name, including a well-known
footballer and a journalist, both of whom generate huge numbers of search
hits.

~~~
petercooper
That's a great point that hadn't come to mind before. I'm lucky to have an
uncommon but not unusual name so it just about works. If my name were more
"generic", I would probably take the same route as you.

------
Zakharov
There are four levels of anonymity on the Internet

1) Complete anonymitiy, e.g. 4chan - there's either no name, or it's trivially
easy to change one's name. This removes any consequences from what you write,
and hence often results in immature discussions.

2) Pseudononymity, e.g. HN - your writings are connected to an account, but
that account isn't linked to any real-world person. People who spend a lot of
time building up their pseudonym have an incentive to post constructively, but
at the same time those who haven't put a lot of time in can post without
consequence.

3) Unenforced real names, e.g. Facebook - When everyone's using their real
names, there's a psychological pressure not to post things that are
inappropriate or offensive. When are posting with people they know in real
life using real names, there's a pressure to interact in the same way they
would in face-to-face conversation. When people are interacting with strangers
using real-names, there's pressure to interact in the same way you'd interact
with a stranger in face-to-face conversation.

4) Enforced real names, e.g. official statements or blogs - When someone
writes something in this form, you know that they mean what they're saying,
and are willing to be held accountable for it.

Less anonymity means more valuable posts, on average, at the cost of increased
consequences, less openness, and greater risk. In 4chan you can speak your
mind freely, but the vast majority of the content is worthless. In official
publications, you have to be careful about what you say, but it's probably
going to be worthwhile, or at least grammatically correct.

One issue tangentially related to the article is that it's very difficult to
prove your identity on the internet, and make statements in category (4),
without sharing things that should not be made public, such as your social
security number.

~~~
bandushrew
On 'average' nobody in the history of humanity has ever said a thing worth
opening their mouths for.

places like 4chan are full of banality, sure, but the extremes are far higher
(and lower) than you find on somewhere like HN.

Ive read stuff on 4chan/b that has made me piss myself with laughter, and cry
(well, nearly, Im not a crying man, but the _spirit_ was there). Ive read
stuff on 4chan that provided amazing insight into the human soul....and stuff
that made me realise what a bunch of animals we really are.

HN certainly does away with the banal posts (and the illegal ones) but the
cost is obvious, and real.

I choose the times I go to 4chan (very rarely, these days) and I choose the
times I go to HN, but they do both have a place.

------
sploink
Readers might also be interested to know that anonymity is one of the things
constitutionally guaranteed by the First Amendment right to free speech. This
concept has been extensively examined in legal jurisprudence for many years.
See, for example, <https://www.eff.org/issues/anonymity>

~~~
noahc
While it may have an extensive legal jurisprudence, this issue is total
separate. The rights protected in the constitution relate to the state.

For example, we have a right to assemble and the state can not deny that.
However, a private entity can prevent us from assembling on their property.

In the same way we have a right to anonymous speech and the state can not deny
that. However, a private entity (Quora) can prevent us from making anonymous
speech on their website.

The reason for this is obvious, would you want newspapers to have to allow the
rantings of a raving lunatic if he used a pseudonym to sign it because it
can't prevent anonymous speech?

------
ck2
You would not believe how many facebook accounts my cats have.

(for testing purposes, I'd never actually have one myself)

~~~
dhbanes
Cats are awesome.

