The Real “Authenticity Killer”

Fine if you are a huge social media personality like Scoble. If Scoble got fired from Microsoft then he'd make himself a martyr and his social cred would only increase. He'd lose nothing.

If you are a small-time schmuck with a wife and kids to support, you'd think twice before voicing a controversial comment on your employer. Part of the free speech of the web is having your opinion heard, even anonymously, without risk to yourself.

Yes, that leads to trolling - whether idiots, sock puppets of the left or right, etc. But that's the drawback of free speech - like drunken hecklers in an audience. But I'd rather have the trolls than lose the right to post anonymously or under an assumed identity if I wanted to. If I want to use my real name - fine. But that's my choice to make.

We don't have to play in Zuckerberg's world if we don't want to.

He doesn't seem to take the issues from http://paulgraham.com/say.html very seriously, maybe because his most controversial position to date has been to support anti-discrimination legislation while living in the heart of a blue state. I have to negotiate for food and shelter with members of a nosy, judgmental, sometimes irrational species. My name doesn't make my arguments more valid, and using it is a stupid risk to take because it doesn't offer me any upside. Without a pseudonym, I wouldn't even offer purely technical opinions when it would affect my ability to line up projects in the future (e.g., just because MySQL is crap or iOS turned evil doesn't mean I'd rather starve than touch them).