Not allowing pseudonyms on G+ is obviously a tremendous and awful mistake, and I think most (not all, obviously), of the people here on HN agree with that statement because of the obvious cases that boyd mentions. However, I think that huge mistake is different than "an authoritarian assertion of power over vulnerable people". The latter requires intent, and neither I nor danah boyd can know if this is Google's intent. Indeed, I suspect that Google's intent isn't even known to most of the people working on G+, or even the "upper ups". The marketing people probably want better data for AdSense, and the Engineers are probably viewing the problem from the perspective of simplifying the site's infrastructure, etc. etc... I sincerely doubt that anyone is attempting for some sort of authoritarian power grab.

What they are doing, however, is making a really big mistake.