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Comment by imzadi | Hacker News Reader

I think a lot of the more thoughtful commenters probably stop commenting when their real name becomes involved. Even if what they are saying is not inflammatory, there is always a chance of making a misstep or just having a bad opinion without fully understanding it. In the modern age, everything is forever. There's no room to evolve. If you say the wrong thing now, you're stuck with it, even if your actual beliefs change and grow, the fragment left behind is what remains reality. The only people who want to openly comment under their real name are people who don't care or who are already intentionally inflammatory.

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Mark Zuckerberg touted real name comments as the solution to online trolling and bad behavior. Of course he means Facebook profiles to be that identifier. Plenty of local news websites comment sections are clogged with flaming by people who are not deterred by having their meatspace name attached to their comments. There’s a lot of spam from FB comments too.

Conveniently, real names are more valuable to advertisers, I presume

> Even if what they are saying is not inflammatory, there is always a chance of making a misstep or just having a bad opinion without fully understanding it. In the modern age, everything is forever. There's no room to evolve.

Is this actually true or is it just something people say? I feel like there's plenty of room for people to grow or change their beliefs these days, it seems like every other day someone in power or in the spotlight says something like "oh that was something I used to believe but I've changed since" and that's kind of the end of it. Rarely do I feel like someone is entirely blacklisted for some opinion they held in their past but no longer hold, unless that past behavior was either abusive or straight up mean. Maybe I'm just not tuned in enough though.

It's pretty easy for a basement dweller to link a pseudonym to your real name these days, so easy that I just don't bother with pseudonyms anymore. If I don't feel comfortable linking some statement with my real name forever, I just won't post that statement anymore. Does that stop me from hitting the "Reply" button sometimes? Sure, and the community is probably better off because of that.

The only thing I worry about is that some belief or comment could be totally benign today, but who knows in 30 years it might be totally taboo. Surely things I've said 30 years ago would get me fired in today's environment of heightened sensitivity. I don't worry too much about that because in 30 years I'll be retired and un-cancelable, if I'm even still alive.

How easy? How can you extract more than my city from my pseudonym and IP?

A vicious consequence of being blacklisted/cancelled is you're no longer in the public arena to broadcast a change of heart/mind, especially if that belief was incomplete or action criminal.

"What's become clear to you since we last met?"

Do you have any examples in mind of this? I’m struggling without having something concrete to anchor on

It's hard to know how true "the Internet is forever" is at this point.

But that doesn't qualify in my mind as "proof you won't get in trouble on the Internet". Especially, I certainly don't want someone else dictating that what I post goes on a specific which can be linked to other things later.

just off the top of my head I can think of many people getting cancelled and/or losing their jobs due to jokes they made online many years prior, despite disavowing the opinion and/or clarifying that it was just a joke in poor taste

(if your response is that those people deserved it, then you are necessarily also admitting that, no, there isn't really room to "grow and change", if the thing you said offends the wrong people in the wrong way)

Any examples you can share? I personally have never seen or heard of this happening, but obviously that doesn't mean it doesn't. I have no thoughts about who deserves what

I don't comment a lot on some of the "controversial issues" not so much because of fear of any consequences, but because frankly, it's just not worth it. You can carefully construct a nuanced measured criticism of something or the other only to have someone come back with the most extremist interpretation of what was actually said.

I feel that "anyone can comment everywhere"-model just doesn't work for these types of discussions without heavy moderation to restrict the assholes; maybe one policy is "less bad" than some other policy, but it's still bad.

Another issue too is the possibility for online stalking. Putting out real info means that anybody across the globe who has some sort of vendetta can now track you down.

Agreed here. Using a real name is a deal breaker for a lot of people, and as a result you lose their contributions, which hypothetically could be more informed.

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