> I think a lot of folks forget that Facebook wanted to come in and clean up some of the filth in social media. They felt that by attaching your _real_ name to

> I think a lot of folks forget that Facebook wanted to come in and clean up some of the filth in social media. They felt that by attaching your _real_ name to your posts, instead of a handle as was the traditional practice, that you would have something to lose (social standing, esteem, etc) and so you would be more thoughtful about your actions. The contrasts at the time were reddit, SomethingAwful, and 4chan. There was _definitely_ extant toxicity on the internet and there were funny posts in the early days of GMail that you could stop them from displaying ads by inserting lots of expletives and bad words in your email (and so some would have GMail signatures that just lumped bad words in together and explained it as an ad circumvention thing). This is such a great point. The pre-Facebook Internet was full of anonymous random garbage. But everyone knew it was inconsequential garbage. Adding real names and likes changed all that: today garbage has gained legitimacy and is displacing prior forms thereof.