[droithomme]

It's often argued in these cases that identification and real names will increase the quality of comments by eliminating trolls, stalkers and troublemakers somehow.

When measured empirically, one study found that anonymous commenting from people without user accounts increases the ratio of good comments to poor quality ones. The reason is that so many more people comment. There's a certain fixed number of trolls and troublemakers who have a lot of free time and will go through whatever hoops are needed to set up an account with a registered name, which may or may not be their real one. Legitimate commenters though are not as motivated to jump through hoops and comply with demands they use a consistent, or real sounding name.

http://blog.topix.com/2008/01/anonymous-comments-by-the-numb...

As far as people with video accounts on youtube who are contributing content and allowing for the business model, youtube has many cases of attractive women vloggers who are routinely stalked by unhinged fan/viewers. Do these vloggers benefit from a degree of anonymity, or the ability to use pen names? Yes. In addition to attractive women, there are also many aliased vloggers posting political opinions about police and military brutality, citizen journalists anonymously uploading video from protests, etc. Maintaining penname aliases on vlogger content accounts clearly allows these contributors to increase their own safety by making it more difficult to stalk and harass them in real life by not just trolls and dysfunctional people, but also from government agents intending to both silence them and do them harm.

[bhartzer]

I have no problem using my real name, In fact, I'm already using it on YouTube. The only 'vloggers' who would benefit from anonymity are the ones who have something to say that could be consider 'controversial' by someone else.

[ben0x539]

> The only 'vloggers' who would benefit from anonymity are the ones who have something to say that could be consider 'controversial' by someone else.

You don't think there's a large group to which that applies?

Given how easy it is to turn online harassment into real-life harassment with a little internet research, I will not begrudge anyone their separate identities. Your "controversial" opinion could be as benign as "I don't owe my youtube stalkers any attention" before someone is subjected to threats have the potential to seriously affect their life.

I don't have a problem using my real name either (this handle is easily traceable to my full address, I believe), but I'm a white guy, moderately well off and my political opinions are the mainstream, etc. I enjoy a degree of safety and social support that I take for granted, but that's not a luxury available to many who also deserve to participate in internet communities and cultural life.

That Google (and others) are not only not accomodating them but going out of their way to make it harder for them to have an online presence is really surprising to me. I'd have thought Google "gets" it, and I don't see what they're gaining from moves like this.

[roguecoder]

That is not true: http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Who_is_harmed_by_a_%22Rea...

[DanBC]

That's nice for you. But since no-one is trying to stop you from using your real name I'm not sure what your point is.

There are plenty of people that I know on YouTube by their fake names. I have no idea what benefits I get from them using a real name.

One problem that YouTube needs to sort out is "replygirls"; another is the appalling quality of comments.

(A last one is the unfortunate placing of ads. I keep seeing an ad about being a father (and backing up photos?) - there's no way to tell youtube that you never want to see that ad again. I imagine that there are many people who find that ad unbearable because they have recently lost a child. I would be happy to rate ads, and for YouTube to give that data back to advertisers. I tend to watch the ads to pay for the content I'm using. I only skip if it's infuriating.)