[djsumdog]

I agree with a lot of this post. A lot of the left-leaning intellectuals that are now criticizing the harder-left stances in academia; people like Brent Weinstine, Jonathan Haidt, Sam Harris, et. al. ... I've heard all of them say they want less anonymity and more accounts tied to real identities.

Whenever I hear this I think, "What? No! That's the opposite direction we should be going." Identities that are hard locked to real people makes it so easy to harass, mob, cancel and abuse people. At least in the US, most employers are at-will, allowing for Viewpoint Discrimination.

Anonymity does have its issues. It also does allow people to harass with more impunity. But in many ways, it also exposes more of the deep self and the controversial ideas people have that they are less and less likely to discuss outside of anonymity.

Even semi-anonymous platforms like Reddit are going back on previous commitments to free expression of ideas; and the effect is that Reddit is becoming more one-sided/one-direction, just like the platforms everyone is fleeing into.

Always use your e-mail to sign up for things. I rarely ever allow applications to connect via social media/OAuth. There was a time on the Internet where we thought all identity providers could be interchangeable. I ran an OpenID IDP for years, but fewer and fewer sites allow OpenID logins:

https://battlepenguin.com/tech/the-decline-of-openid/

[clairity]

how about we have a whole range of options so that we can express our full selves via the various venues made available?

sometimes you want (pseudo-)anonymity and sometimes you don't. being able to pick and choose seems to offer the greatest freedom, rather than pigeon-holing everyone into one option.

[jimkleiber]

This! While sometimes I want to use a pseudonym, there are many times I want to say "I am the human who I say I am," and currently, that means hoping a platform will magically verify me (if they even verify anyone) or, I suppose, posting a copy of my ID to the internet, and even that doesn't work so well.

While there are many routes to be semi-anonymous, there are very few to being verified (or maybe I just don't know about them)

[julianeon]

On the contrary, I advise everyone to use real-name identities wherever they can. I understand that pseudonymous and real name accounts have fundamentally different approaches, but I think, for the majority of people, pseudonymous accounts are a mistake.

The reason is simple. In 2020, everybody is a brand. Things have become competitive to the point that the inevitable happened: business has occupied free time. We could lament that, or we could accept it, because it's the reality today, and I don't think we're ever going back.

Personally I think pseudonyms are a legacy of a time when the Internet was not taken seriously and whatsupdoggg69 was a perfectly valid username in a place where nothing mattered and Internet work had no monetary value.

That's changed, a lot. That viewpoint - which, to be honest, was probably questionable, even then - seems definitely wrong now. It seems more and more like the wrong path, and you don't have to go down it.

You need to start posting under your real name, and then keep doing that, so people know they can go to your advice, expertise, friendship, a place to pay attention, etc. That has a lot of monetary value.

My philosophy here is: unless you intentionally chose to leave money on the table, you should never leave money on the table.

So if you're working in 2020 at a prestigious or a first-mover startup (which covers a lot of startups), don't go on reddit and post memes under some name that will always be worth $0.

Instead, go on Twitter, post under your real name, and start becoming known as the go-to person for your niche of the industry.

If you are working at a startup, and building a name launched out of a startup (no lawyer is going to attempt to claim your real name social media handle), you can launch a consultancy, just off that.

Assuming your consultancy brings in 100k a year and businesses often sell for 10x revenue (a pretty reasonably assumption), then doing that over 10 years can build you a $1,000,000 consultancy.

Given those numbers, I think it's positively stupid to turn down $1,000,000 for the sake of a few forgettable jokes and political opinions that, let's face it, in the case of the average person, are not changing anything.

Instead, do the smart thing, claim that $1,000,000, and get used to using real names & real name content for everything.

[mirimir]

Why not do both?

As you say, using your real name builds your brand. However, you must then be very careful to avoid saying stuff that damages your brand. And as you basically say, you must therefore censor yourself online.

So why not do other stuff using pseudonyms? That's exactly why I started using them. I'm retired now, so there's really nothing about my meatspace identity to protect. But when there was, having the freedom to express myself honestly online was important to me. In particular, because I had to police my meatspace behavior so carefully.

[julianeon]

I've given this a lot of thought (I also practice what I preach - I 95% post under my real name).

I advise against that, because in my experience, when you have a real name and a pseudonym account, there's a strong temptation to post all your edgy, attention-grabbing content to the alt, and all the boring content to your real name account.

Which is really bad for your main account, actually.

Note that some of the most popular personalities on Twitter - Elon Musk, Balaji Srinivasan - take this "carefully moderate your opinions unless it's a pseudonym" approach and stomp all over it. They are the total opposite of that. I think there's a lesson there, too: to really reach the stratosphere (including fame and wealth), as an unknown person, you probably need to take some risks and post risk-taking content, and associate it with a name+face where people can rally to you.

To be clear, I'm not making the moral argument that pseudonyms are cowardly or a moral failing, so don't use them. I'm making the purely self-interested argument that your content is worth money and you should monetize it under your real name, because it's the best vehicle for that.

[mirimir]

That works for some, but for others it's been disastrous. And sometimes, it goes from popularly edgy to canceled in a flash. But yes, I agree that keeping a real name account totally boring is also risky.

[jessaustin]

...left-leaning intellectuals...

Didn't you get the memo? We're supposed to like government surveillance now. After all, now FBI/CIA/NSA are on our side and we can totally trust them forever.

[danso]

How would people who want to be the next Haidt or Harris build up authority (i.e. a reputation/brand) if identity becomes decentralized and ephemeral?