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I think Google realized this a long time ago and it's also part of why they failed with Google plus. They just weren't willing to go down into the gutter the way Facebook is and try to suck up people's time to a ridiculous extent. They have remained too concerned, if you will, with providing actual value and Facebook, from day one, has never had that as a concern as their only concern is getting you to use the app as much as humanly possible.

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One factor that turned me away from Google+ when they were hyping it was their usage model. Having context-sensitive associations "circles" was nice, but they ruined it by not also having context-sensitive identity. Instead there was all that stuff about requiring real names everywhere.

In the real world we traditionally rely on other factors to keep out identities separate. A dirty joke told to some friends doesn't get archived and indexed and re-shared with metadata back to your boss. It gets forgotten or attributed to "a guy I know." So it's relatively safe to give your real name in both contexts, and maintain the separation between studious-worker in one context and bawdy-clown in another.

But online, maintaining that "freedom to be a different kind of person" isn't reliably safe when both things come from the same user-ID.

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