You know who loses when a "real" names policy is enforced? Native Americans, domestic abuse survivors, anyone who wants to express a political opinion without risking their job (or in some countries, their life), people asking intimate questions about sex, and many more.
You know who wins? Data brokers who want to buy your data from Facebook.
Provide me with evidence that using a "fake" name makes you more likely to cause abuse, and I'll eat these words.
Not sure how forcing a legal name is involved with online games, but the others can be solved by simply ignoring the troll.
> Twilio numbers used to call and harass people.
And if this creeps into legal harassment, I'm sure the person receiving the calls can work with Twilio and law enforcement.
> If someone feels like they can deliver abuse anonymously then they're certainly more likely to do so.
This is a conclusion provided without evidence. I can easily send someone a bunch of anonymous hate mail using a number of services, but I don't.
> What I bet you haven't seen is a verified Twitter account used to torture poor souls.
I beg your pardon. Ted Cruz has a verified Twitter account, and I find every word he says to be torture.
I'm not saying that any ol' individual will be abusive given anonymity. I'm asserting that more abuse happens when people feel they are anonymous. This isn't a novel concept that I just came up with.
>I beg your pardon. Ted Cruz has a verified Twitter account, and I find every word he says to be torture.
Can you at least cite some examples?
In fact, what evidence there is points the opposite way: South Korea required commenters on sites with over 100,000 users to supply their Resident Registration Number (national identity number), and this reduced malicious comments by ... 0.9%. http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2011/12/30/2011...
So the evidence is against the claim. If you have good evidence for the claim, you'll be the first.