I'd just like to add 2 small questions to distinguish the problem from what is going on.
1 - What was the point in getting real names?
Dummy answer: perform a mapping between online identity (let us say "email") and real word identity (table column "person id").
Why? Your imagination is the limit. But don't be evil.
2 - Now that enough people registered with a real name, got their emails, their contacts, their phone number, their address, and many others, if somebody who did not gave his/her real name shows up, isn't there many ways to recover it using information a) about people he/she interacts with; and b) that other people already gave about this guy?
Researchers are working on it.
And don't tell me about separate identities if you use the same computer, or the same browser, or the same password for them. Linking them is easy, eff.org has many insightful papers about it. As long as you ARE a single person, assigning a "real-life" name to your online identity is just a big graph-solving problem, which was greatly simplified by the people you know and communicate with, as many variables are now bound thank to them.
This is what's great with those social networks: if you do not tell us who you are, it doesn't matter, somebody else will.
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I'd just like to add 2 small questions to distinguish the problem from what is going on.
1 - What was the point in getting real names?
Dummy answer: perform a mapping between online identity (let us say "email") and real word identity (table column "person id").
Why? Your imagination is the limit. But don't be evil.
2 - Now that enough people registered with a real name, got their emails, their contacts, their phone number, their address, and many others, if somebody who did not gave his/her real name shows up, isn't there many ways to recover it using information a) about people he/she interacts with; and b) that other people already gave about this guy?
Researchers are working on it.
And don't tell me about separate identities if you use the same computer, or the same browser, or the same password for them. Linking them is easy, eff.org has many insightful papers about it. As long as you ARE a single person, assigning a "real-life" name to your online identity is just a big graph-solving problem, which was greatly simplified by the people you know and communicate with, as many variables are now bound thank to them.
This is what's great with those social networks: if you do not tell us who you are, it doesn't matter, somebody else will.