Facebook gets a pass in part because they've been a lot less aggressive in enforcing the policy. They'll shut down a pseudonymous account when someone brings i

Facebook gets a pass in part because they've been a lot less aggressive in enforcing the policy. They'll shut down a pseudonymous account when someone brings it to their attention (most notoriously, the Chinese writer who was going on Facebook by his longtime pen name, Michael Anti), but they don't go searching them out. The upshot is that pseudonyms used mainly within circles of friends can exist without getting hassled --- to the point that this commenter on an earlier jwz post, with numerous pseudonymous friends, refused to believe that Facebook even had a "real names" policy at all: http://www.jwz.org/blog/2011/08/nym-wars/#comment-93494 http://www.jwz.org/blog/2011/08/nym-wars/#comment-93494 (The largest such circle I'm aware of involves dozens of kids with pseudonymous Facebook accounts at a local middle school; I heard about this from a parent, who in turn is aware of it because their kid sometimes forgets to log out. So much for Zuckerberg's line about pseudonymity being a marginal concern of old fogies.) They certainly could be more aggressive in tying Facebook accounts to real people, for instance, by requiring everyone to "verify" with a credit card or mobile number after a certain period of time. But they don't.