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> the advice for teenagers going online is that they should protect themselves by not sharing their identity.

To me this is still the basic advice. This is not just for when sommething really bad happens, it's also all the smaller things. Like whether they need their employer to know they had a strong pro-union stance in the past. Or if they really like and promote some artist, that later happens to have an incredibly bad reputation dragging their fandom down with them, etc.

There's just no real upside IHMO...except many companies will expect kids to have some online presence and expose what they're doing to the world, and might give preference to people with a strong following online.

So they are still advised still keep a safe and positive "public facade" somewhere to deal with these kind of expectations, and have their "real" accounts anonymized.

It's still good advice for generic online conversations (not necessarily contributions, but that's not what the adults had in mind when they gave that advice), but became effectively impossible the moment Facebook started letting other people tag you even if you didn't have an account.

> Since then I started working in open source companies that are operating on GitHub. An early meeting someone asked "who's this Demur Rumed making random pull requests?" sheepishly I declared myself, "Please update your profile with your real name

I make a new GitHub account for any new job I start using my company email

I never use my personal accounts for anything work related

I once got a message from HR telling me to update my LinkedIn with a company approved Bio section and a company photo they provided, and I just ignored it. They badgered me a bit, complained to my boss and such, but ultimately it's my account so they could not compel me to change it

I hate that companies feel entitled to do so, though

For open- or closed-source work?

If I'm doing open source coding, whether professional or not, I'd always want that associated with my personal GH account.

If I'm being paid by an employer to do it, it doesn't go on my personal anything, period

I don't own that code so I don't associate it with personal accounts

But I've never done open source work for an employer either

I also only use a separate account for open source work for my employer. There are multiple benefits:

* My employer has no say in my private account. They can't force my to change my private bio or profile name, for example

* It's clear which code I authored as a part of my employment and which I did on my own after hours (extremely important for me).

* I work in IT security do I should give an example :). Some projects my company hosts on GH are not public (yes), or some projects I have access to because of my work. I shouldn't touch them after I leave my current company, or access them from private devices.

> I make a new GitHub account for any new job I start

Beware of GitHub's terms of service, then: "you may not have more than one free Account" <https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/github-terms/github-t...>

Its still good advice and maybe the best advice.

Look at all of us on hn with our cute little handles, or our throwaways.

You know who doesn't like anonymity? People who want to control you. People who want to harm you for you think, and what you say.

This is internet and it started with a dream and then and bunch of people came on and didn't like that dream but they sure wanted that sweet sweet internet cash and ever since they've been fighting tooth and nail at that dream because its a threat to their very ethos. Fuck them I choose internet.