Online, real names provide anonymity | Hacker News Reader

Online, real names provide anonymity

swizec.com

6 pointsSwizec5 comments

That word. He keeps using it. I don't think it means what he thinks it means.

Why not?

Anonymous - "lacking individuality, unique character, or distinction"

As you say, your personal name is unique on the Internet. Assuming there are 1000 more people with the exact same name, and all of them leave the same huge digital footprint that you do (and all of them look the same - you are posting very non-anonymous photos of yourself, it seems from a very cursory search), it will be impossible to distinguish you all apart? I'm not buying that argument; moreover, selecting out 1000 people out of the whole Internet is already a pretty strong focus (as opposed to "hmm, could be anyone").

Plus, you are conflating "anonymity" and "strong pseudonymity;" that's what I meant with the initial comment. (For example: if you were actually posting anonymously, there would be no easy way to link "Swizec" posting the link with "Swizec" replying to my comment. In this case, they are linked not only by the name, but also by your HN profile)

Except Swizec is my pseudonym/nickname.

And if HN worked the way social networking seems to be going, where names are used instead of nicknames, you could have a "Swizec" posting the link and a completely different "Swizec" posting a comment and they'd both just be shown as "Swizec".

And a 1000 people isn't very strong focus at all, depending on your resources and how interested you are. You suddenly need a lot more data than just the name to pinpoint anyone.

First, I never said your real name is Swizec, I just said that your real name (whatever it is) is currently unique on the Internet. You happen to say that on your blog (as of 2012-04-03, 11:47 GMT, anyway): "4121 people share my real first name, my surname, 298. The combination happens to be unique … for now." So, are you saying "If I started using my real name as my Internet handle, I would be anonymous"? Or "...because many other people with the same name will also do so, any minute now"?

In my opinion, false and false: you'd effectively 1) make your identity your pseudonym, and 2) as such, would be trivially cross-linked to your RL identity, even if (and that's a huge if) thousands of people were using the same real name as you are.

In my case, there are actually hundreds of people using the same real name as I am - yet, it is quite obvious which one is which, from the way the identities are linked together (e.g. many of my profiles share the same picture of me, my professional profiles all list the same experiences, my location, etc. etc.). See, your identity is not only your name - it's a cloud of all the things surrounding it.

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