[er4hn]

I think that this is a situation where "when guns are outlawed only the outlaws will have guns."

Requiring real world identities to post online had a number of chilling effects on speech online.

- LGBTQ people were outed after having their online persona linked to their real world identity.

- People who need to maintain strong personal/professional life separations have been outed (ex: Slate Star Codex)

- People have had their lives upended by being part of an angry community (ex: Blizzards RealID caused revealing peoples identity to the gamer community. Love my games but wow does that community love doxxing and sometimes SWATing)

- It has not prevented spam / trolls / people being hateful online (ex: Nextdoor)

This has been a long standing conflict (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nymwars). The UKs opinion has always been one of providing as much information as possible to the government for questionable purposes. This is the same government which constantly wants to backdoor encryption so that they can spy on citizens at any time.

[slavik81]

One of my Facebook friends was banned for 'not using their real name' when they came out as trans. The real name policy is awful.