I’m thinking about how emails ended up becoming. Where our first email addresses were so wacky, and slowly we just wanted out real names.
no idea what happened but a few years ago there was buzz about a company called keebase which was to do identify verification across platforms.
it seems to have something to do with “blockchain” though so I never got much use from it because anything with blockchain smells scammy to me. maybe something like that (without bitcoin) which would be useful.
I have two accounts, one with my real name, that I want to be tied to my real life identity, and an anonymous one. They are simply for quite different purposes. I very much understand and appreciate the need for privacy by default. But for some stuff I dont mind that its public, and I actually prefer that. Like this post, for example. I’m fine with IRL people knowing some of the stuff I post on the internet. But most certainly I also want privacy, and them not knowing everything.
Why wouldn’t you use your real name?
I… I’m not sure? I feel like it does introduce a bit of bias. The anonymity helps to add some blindness on upvoting comments. For example, I doubt a girl with their name intact would post openly about how to go about having an abortion in a red state.
people who post on social media with female sounding names are also subject to regular, random abuse from strangers, especially if they become even a tiny bit prominent.
