Indeed. We've been round this when Facebook etc (most recently Glassdoor) instituted "real name" policies.
I'm rather confused about HN's response to this because normally when a media platform voluntarily tries to censor certain kinds of bad behavior there's a massive backlash here, and now there's seemingly overwhelming support for simply removing a whole category of people from being able to speak at all, along with whatever real ID policy gets put in place to make it work.
Well, yeah. I can go without the opinions of any underrepresented group. (A lot of theoretical computer science work in my field was done by pseudonymous children, but it's not like I need that to live.) Doesn't mean they can go without me hearing what they have to say.
I was thinking things like complexity theory. The Minecraft kids are generally more on the applied side of things: software engineering, usability work, that kind of stuff; and afaik they don't really publish in ways that are easy to cite in academia. (I'm only familiar with that sort of thing in passing.)
I'm rather confused about HN's response to this because normally when a media platform voluntarily tries to censor certain kinds of bad behavior there's a massive backlash here, and now there's seemingly overwhelming support for simply removing a whole category of people from being able to speak at all, along with whatever real ID policy gets put in place to make it work.