This makes me a bit nostalgic for the older days when you just assumed you were chatting with a bunch of other weirdos online, so everyone went by aliases. And

This makes me a bit nostalgic for the older days when you just assumed you were chatting with a bunch of other weirdos online, so everyone went by aliases. And if you ever tired of your old identity, you'd shed that old screenname, sign up with a different one, and maybe never mention the past. Facebook changed everything by encouraging people to match their online accounts to real names, supply photos of themselves, and their family tree. Usernames became actual people. And all of a sudden, anonymity was lost. And now people want to be forgotten again. I shake my head at the heavy-handed way of mass deleting comments. It’s understandable for Facebook where the person and account are closely tied, but for sites like HN, I hope we keep the shared knowledge, but just scrub out the name.