>> It wasn't until Facebook's meteoric rise that it became mainstream and commonplace to put one's real name next to one's off-the-cuff words online.
Do you believe this is a good or bad trend. I personally see it has universally bad and is could directly be attributable toxicity of those communities, as the most extreme people, the people that either have nothing to lose, or do not fully understand the risk are the only ones that engage in any meaningful way, those groups then feed upon each other. Everyone else either leaves or self censors so the only remaining conversation is an extremely toxic one where people are talking past and over each other yelling into the void. There is no moderate middle as the moderate middle shuts up for fear of pissing off both extremes.
Anonymity is a bed rock foundational element of free speech, even the founders of the US understood this which is why most of the Federalist papers, and many other pivotal writings in history were written under Pseudonym's.
This idea that "real names" policies improve discourse is simply false and IMO lowers discourse
Do you believe this is a good or bad trend. I personally see it has universally bad and is could directly be attributable toxicity of those communities, as the most extreme people, the people that either have nothing to lose, or do not fully understand the risk are the only ones that engage in any meaningful way, those groups then feed upon each other. Everyone else either leaves or self censors so the only remaining conversation is an extremely toxic one where people are talking past and over each other yelling into the void. There is no moderate middle as the moderate middle shuts up for fear of pissing off both extremes.
Anonymity is a bed rock foundational element of free speech, even the founders of the US understood this which is why most of the Federalist papers, and many other pivotal writings in history were written under Pseudonym's.
This idea that "real names" policies improve discourse is simply false and IMO lowers discourse