I usually comment under my real name. I am willing to be judged by what I publish online.
That comment sections have become cesspools is not, sadly, the fault of anonymity. The cesspools exist and the comments sections surface the worst of our mob tendencies. But anonymity has too long allowed the worst perpetrators — those who love mobilizing the worst, who enjoy hatemongering’s power to terrorize those who have more civil tendencies that they perceive as weakness — to go unchecked. And just like in spaces offline, the more violence and defacement and destruction reigns unchecked, the more nice people feel like they have to leave those spaces.
Google “broken windows theory” because it applies here online as much as it applies in offline communities everywhere. That is, are we ready to leave the Internet to become the virtual ghettos of virtual thugs?
— Reference: Real names, real problems: Pseudonymity under siege
As online services incorporate facial recognition and other biometric technologies to identify users, the notion of participating online using a name not found on your government-issued ID may become a quaint relic of the early Internet.
Real names, real problems: Pseudonymity under siege
