There's a reason why LinkedIn reads like garbage, and even if it's obvious, people neither point it out or stop.
I know it puts off some people who mistake that for anonymity and think this is ruining the web, that people can't behave if they aren't talking under their own name, I respect that.
I am not looking for anonymity. I don't pretend to hide from authorities. However pseudonimity allows me to express myself while not engaging my current or future employers directly.
Its interesting that we got to a point where anyone would consider anonymity to be ruining the web.
When I was growing up in the 90s and early 00s anonymity online was the whole point. Everything online was behind usernames, and usernames weren't expected to be connected to your real identity at all.
Thank you Facebook, you did a wonderdul job of convincing an entire generation that they should put their real name, profile photo, hometown, etc online and tied to everything they say online.
You consider that the norm because that's what you grew up with.
Before then, people would sign everything on the internet (and its predecessor networks) with their real names, work/home addresses, phone numbers, and more.
That's why when you create a new user on a *nix box, it asks for that information.
Correct me if I'm wrong here because it is before my time, but prior to WWW wasn't the common use for the internet government and academic research, and technical communications of those actually building the internet protocols? Unless I'm wrong there, I just wouldn't really lump that in when comparing how the average person uses the internet.
FWiW shitposting on UseNet started very early on - binary porn coming from German airbases was a thing and while many official things were sent from @MyRealName there were plenty of handles used and an0n postings.
Or, consider Publius as the author of the Federalist papers, a pseudonym for Hamilton, Madison, and John Jay.
> That's why when you create a new user on a *nix box, it asks for that information.
That's your local account, not information that is visible to anyone outside of your network.
There are a lot of unix tools to ask networks to query that information and they'll happily do it for other unix systems they connect to. When I was in college in the last 90s, I'd often lookup phone numbers and such of students at other universities using command line unix utilities.
Or do you mean shared mainframes with many users on the same system? That'd still be local to the system, you just happened to have access to that system.
Are you sure you're not just thinking of ldap/directory lookups?
That was the early 1980s as I recall them.
I haven't run across this sentiment with regard to personal websites or blogs. Who is saying that?
I do see it for forums, comment sections, and social media. Those often bring together people who did not consciously seek to interact with each other, and do tend to reward antisocial behavior with attention.
As a student (who also has no corporate experience), I share this feeling. The few times I've been asked by other students about my blog, I've always been excited (perhaps a little too much) to share my thoughts and opinions in a conservation.
My address is on my profile here on HN
The only reason I don't have a blog yet is inertia/laziness. It'll happen eventually.
Now I’m working through my backlog of drafts, dumping a load of stuff ASAP, and then trying to commit myself to some form of publishing schedule to force myself to “catch up” on the project backlog.