Thought experiment. Imagine there's a service (HackerNews, 4chan, whatever) that you use. It gives you the opportunity to opt-in to real identity, at which poi

Thought experiment. Imagine there's a service (HackerNews, 4chan, whatever) that you use. It gives you the opportunity to opt-in to real identity, at which point, you will only post with your real identity, and only see posts with your real identity. If you opt out, you may still post and discuss, but you remain pseudonymous. You may share your details and information, or you may share nothing. You can see all comments and reply to anything, but the people who are real-identified don't see your posts or replies to theirs. If you let this system run, I strongly believe that the number of people posting with real identities would be a fraction of a percent of the community, often doing it to make a specific point and then logging back out. The "open internet", without enforced identity, is just a more interesting and useful place to visit than Facebook, or any other "exclusively real identity" destination. (note: I replied to parent because this is related; I don't disagree with it at all)