danah boyd | apophenia » “Real Names” Policies Are an Abuse of Power

URL

http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2011/08/04/real-names.html

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An excellent summary of the what the "real name" policy Google are attempting to enforce is, basically, Evil. Me, I'm absolutely in favour of real names being used on-line, and I certainly insist on it in forums I moderate. But those forums tend to be small, relatively closed membership things, formed with the intent of supporting offline in-the-flesh interaction. That's a very different use case to massive social networks, where the ability to feel comfortable using one's real name is a privilege that all sorts of people don't possess for all sorts of reasons.

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