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Comment by haberman | Hacker News Reader

> But requiring a real name, tells me that google doesn't just want to track me to advertise to me. They want to correlate my online activities with my offline identity.

Do you then conclude the same thing about Facebook, which has had a "real names" policy since basically forever?

"Facebook has always been based on a real-name culture. We think this leads to greater accountability and a safer and more trusted environment for our users." --Facebook spokesman Simon Axten, 2009

Is it possible that Google's social networking platform is following this principle for the same reason, and not because of some dastardly plan to build a dossier about you?

I still don't understand why Facebook gets a pass on this issue, when they have had a "real names" policy for much longer.

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Facebook gets a pass in part because they've been a lot less aggressive in enforcing the policy. They'll shut down a pseudonymous account when someone brings it to their attention (most notoriously, the Chinese writer who was going on Facebook by his longtime pen name, Michael Anti), but they don't go searching them out.

The upshot is that pseudonyms used mainly within circles of friends can exist without getting hassled --- to the point that this commenter on an earlier jwz post, with numerous pseudonymous friends, refused to believe that Facebook even had a "real names" policy at all:

http://www.jwz.org/blog/2011/08/nym-wars/#comment-93494

(The largest such circle I'm aware of involves dozens of kids with pseudonymous Facebook accounts at a local middle school; I heard about this from a parent, who in turn is aware of it because their kid sometimes forgets to log out. So much for Zuckerberg's line about pseudonymity being a marginal concern of old fogies.)

They certainly could be more aggressive in tying Facebook accounts to real people, for instance, by requiring everyone to "verify" with a credit card or mobile number after a certain period of time. But they don't.

As bad_user said, who said Facebook is getting a pass? Facebook started out with very limited reach requiring a university affiliation. Seemed pretty safe and close-knit at the time. Membership has grown to anyone and privacy has slid ever since.

Who says Facebook gets a pass?

Everybody thought Google+ was going to be a better Facebook, remember?

But no, it's the same crap.

I have many, many friends with obviously fake names on FB and nobody ever got into trouble. With terms & conditions usually being dozens of pages that nobody ever reads, I don't think you can blame people for not caring about FB's official position as long as it practically allows anonymity.

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