zlacker

I expect that's where we're heading. But then, as somebody who writes online mostly under my own name, maybe I'm just biased. Come on in, the water's fine!

I think there are cases for anonymous/pseudonymous speech, but I think that's going to have to shift away from disposable identities. Newspapers, for example, have been providing selective anonymity for hundreds of years, so I think there's a model to follow: trusted people/organizations who validate the quality of a non-public identity.

So a place like HN, for example, could promise that each pseudonymous account is connected to a unique human via some sort of government ID with challenge/response capability. Or you could end up with third-party ID providers that provide a similar service that goes beyond mere identity, like the Twitter Verified program scaled up.

Disposable identities have always been a struggle. E.g., look at Reddit's very popular Am I the Asshole, where people widely believe a lot of the content is creative writing exercises. But keeping up a fake identity over the long term was a lot of work. Not anymore, though!