[zyx321]

Well, I'd call that pseudonymity. Anonymity to me is having no name at all. As long as there are persistent identifiers and/or karma, you are discouraged from speaking freely.

Take for example the 2010/2011 My Little Pony craze. Could you imagine young men in their mid-teens to early twenties generating hype among their peers for a show targeted primarily at little girls with literally nothing to go on except the name of the executive producer, the title logo, and two pieces of concept art?

On a karma-driven pseudonym system like Reddit, most would be too embarrassed and/or afraid of getting downmodded to hell.

Pseudonym systems, especially Karma-based ones, are a lot closer to real names than to anonymity.

[thanatropism]

Not if you delete your reddit account once a year like me.

Hell, I have two different news.yc accounts, one at work, one at home. I don't "shitpost" on either, so it might just be an interesting machine learning task to match the two, given that I don't post all that much :)