Some people want to be able to have the same kinds of social interactions they have in the real world, but with the convenience of the internet.
We've gone thousands of years with certain social norms (e.g. not being anonymous most of the time), and so far replicating those social interactions faithfully online has been difficult. There's nothing wrong with free speech unrestrained by social expectations, but there's similarly nothing wrong with wanting to avoid that sometimes. Why should you get the internet all to yourself?
I come from an abusive family. In the past, moving on from that would mean simply moving to another town. With the internet, abusers are now free to stalk and harass regardless of geography; the old norm of pulling up stakes and heading on is gone. Requiring real names would mean that every jilted ex-lover, every insane sibling, every schoolyard bully can see exactly what you're doing, any time they want. Frankly, I'd rather deal with a few more trolls than deal with that.
Some people on both sides of this argument feel that their way of doing things should be the only way of doing things. This causes even the moderates of each side to resent their opponents, and not without reason: if either side pushes for either technical or legislative means to implement their vision, the step from feasible to all-encompassing is small.
>Some people want to be able to have the same kinds of social interactions
they have in the real world, but with the convenience of the internet.
And that requires forced real names for everyone... why? The whole point of
anonymity is that you can opt-out of it if you want. Just partially, or fully.
It's all up to you.
Anonymity is a fundamental right every human should have. You're of course not
required to be anonymous at all times, but you should be able to be if and when
you chose to. Anonymity is hard to gain when you don't have it to start with.
Voluntarily giving it away is easy, though.
To be clear, I don't think everybody on the internet should be using their real name all the time. Anonymity is great, and (in all seriousness) I hope 4chan is around for years to come.
The problem is that if even a few users are anonymous, the entire community takes on a different character. You might not care, but some people, at least some of the time, might want to avoid places like that. This requires a website to force you to give up your anonymity. If you don't want to join a community like that it's your choice. If a website you're already a part of wants to become like that you can yell at them. That doesn't make it inherently bad though; it's just a preference.
If there were legislation being passed about it, that's another matter entirely.
Yes, and it's been entirely possible to maintain anonymity with a book or a letter to a newspaper for almost as long as writing has been popular among the masses. Maybe longer.
Being required to use your real name on a site where you would reach your readers (the same as a newspaper or mail except the conversation can move in both directions) removes your option of being anonymous.
"Anonymous most of the time" is the key difference between a village and a city, and cities are wellsprings of progress because this makes them safe havens for eccentrics and heretics of all stripes.
No, but you shouldn't tell anybody who wants to go camping sometimes (i.e. avoid modern technology for a bit) that they should just avoid civilization forever.
We can have both anonymous and non-anonymous communities on the web. It's a pretty big place.
Yeah, and the music industry wants us to pay for plastic discs.
Things have changed and people who want to force down some old model of social interaction on the internet are dinosaurs who couldn't differentiate a paradigm shift from a potato - just like said music labels with their shiny plastic discs.
We've gone thousands of years with certain social norms (e.g. not being anonymous most of the time), and so far replicating those social interactions faithfully online has been difficult. There's nothing wrong with free speech unrestrained by social expectations, but there's similarly nothing wrong with wanting to avoid that sometimes. Why should you get the internet all to yourself?