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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 u

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?

alanh 16y ago
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the push back might only be visible, if you will, in lower adoption rates than we'd see otherwise; that is, so very visible at all.
- steerpike 16y ago
  I don't think you could ever describe facebook as having low adoption rates and it doesn't seem to be hugely affecting the uptake of sites like quora.
  - alanh 16y ago
    I never said low, I said lower. :) Quora… how popular is it really outside of the tech community? Do we really have any idea about what its adoption rates would be otherwise? I don't.
  - thesethings 16y ago
    Quora has publicly stated after they added a non-Facebook login option, that registration went up a lot. They have openly questioned that call. (Though I have not seen them seek the same feedback about the real-person-only policy). I think a lot of people who really like Facebook, still don't want it to be following them all over the rest of the web. So FB's high adoption doesn't necessarily mean people want it to use it everywhere.
r00fus 16y ago
Agree completely about the need for pseudonyms online... If I'm asked for a real name, I'll format a handle that sounds "real" (ie, first last). The Idiocracy hunting down quotes and pictures out of context are part of what necessitates the anonymity.
yuhong 16y ago
AFAIK disclaimers about personal opinions being separate from official statements has been used on Usenet for years. I know because I read Google Groups often.
mechanical_fish 16y ago
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-believe-about-names/ http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-b... ... 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 16y ago
  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 16y ago
    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?
reneherse 16y ago
What is a "real name" anyway in this context? Certainly Facebook does not require a "legal" name to sign up, and any remotely plausible name seems to work. Several of my friends and I use full or partial pseudonyms on Facebook; (In fact, I've changed mine multiple times.) As an alternative to that, my girlfriend keeps different Facebook accounts logged into different browsers to keep her personal and professional identities separate. Identity is fluid, seems so should the names we employ in this even more volatile medium of the web.

alanh 16y ago

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the push back might only be visible, if you will, in lower adoption rates than we'd see otherwise; that is, so very visible at all.

steerpike 16y ago
I don't think you could ever describe facebook as having low adoption rates and it doesn't seem to be hugely affecting the uptake of sites like quora.
- alanh 16y ago
  I never said low, I said lower. :) Quora… how popular is it really outside of the tech community? Do we really have any idea about what its adoption rates would be otherwise? I don't.
- thesethings 16y ago
  Quora has publicly stated after they added a non-Facebook login option, that registration went up a lot. They have openly questioned that call. (Though I have not seen them seek the same feedback about the real-person-only policy). I think a lot of people who really like Facebook, still don't want it to be following them all over the rest of the web. So FB's high adoption doesn't necessarily mean people want it to use it everywhere.

r00fus 16y ago

Agree completely about the need for pseudonyms online... If I'm asked for a real name, I'll format a handle that sounds "real" (ie, first last). The Idiocracy hunting down quotes and pictures out of context are part of what necessitates the anonymity.

yuhong 16y ago

AFAIK disclaimers about personal opinions being separate from official statements has been used on Usenet for years. I know because I read Google Groups often.

mechanical_fish 16y ago

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-believe-about-names/ http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-b... ... 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 16y ago
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 16y ago
  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?

reneherse 16y ago

What is a "real name" anyway in this context? Certainly Facebook does not require a "legal" name to sign up, and any remotely plausible name seems to work. Several of my friends and I use full or partial pseudonyms on Facebook; (In fact, I've changed mine multiple times.) As an alternative to that, my girlfriend keeps different Facebook accounts logged into different browsers to keep her personal and professional identities separate. Identity is fluid, seems so should the names we employ in this even more volatile medium of the web.