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Social media companies don't like people creating accounts under fake names. And this summer, Google Plus started actively hunting for names that didn't seem real and shutting the accounts down. Online activists dubbed Google's actions the nym wars, short for the pseudonym wars. As NPR's Martin Kaste reports, they see it as part of a worrying trend forcing people to use real names online.
MARTIN KASTE: You remember the famous New Yorker cartoon: On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog. Believe it or not, that cartoon is now almost two decades old, and a lot about the Internet has changed. These days, on some sites, it's no dogs allowed.
JIMMY ORR: If you want to leave a comment, you have to be a Facebook user.
KASTE: Jimmy Orr is managing editor of the online Los Angeles Times, one of several news sites that are now building Facebook into their comments section. He says it makes it harder for people to hide behind fake names.
ORR: I'm impressed with Facebook's efforts at authentication. It's for real. You know, if I were just to join up on Facebook, for example, to leave a comment, and I made up a name, chances are it would not show up.
KASTE: Part of the L.A. Times site still operates under what Orr calls the old Wild West system, where all you need to comment on a story is an email address. He says those sections have more trolls, commenters who bait each other with racism or personal attacks. The sections with Facebook logins, on the other hand, are pretty civil.
ORR: The reason for that is trolls don't like their friends to know they're trolls. If you are who you are, you are less likely to leave a comment that really makes you look bad.
KASTE: Neither Facebook nor Google would comment for this story. But over the years, their executives have expressed a certain impatience with Internet anonymity. Here's Google chief Eric Schmidt at a tech conference last year.
ERIC SCHMIDT: One of the errors that the Internet made a long time ago is that there was not an accurate and non-revocable identity management service. And the best example of an identity management service today that's reasonably reliable is Facebook.
KASTE: Keep in mind that's the head of Google talking. There's a lot of money at stake here for both companies. Social networks are in the business of collecting information about their users, and that information is worth more when it's connected to real names. Schmidt went on to suggest that the anonymity of the Internet is a historical aberration.
SCHMIDT: You know, 200 years ago in a small town, you could not sneak around if people didn't know who you were.
KASTE: To be clear, Schmidt was talking here about the kind of technical anonymity that facilitates cybercrime. But people who use pseudonyms for more benign reasons worry that this real-name culture is going to spread everywhere, with Facebook logins required everywhere they turn.
GARIDIN WINSLOW: There's a concern about being shut out of the conversation.
KASTE: This is a woman who blogs and tweets under the name Garidin Winslow. To her, it's an extension of the time-honored literary tradition of pen names. Someday, she hopes to write a novel under the name. Winslow also wants the freedom to express herself online without offending the sensibilities of, say, her boss or future bosses.
WINSLOW: I think it's better to err on the side of caution. Your employer is going to be searching for you on the Internet. They're going to be looking for you by name.
KASTE: Real-name policies have kept her off of Facebook and Google Plus, but she is on something called Diaspora. It's a new social network, still in the process of rolling out. At Diaspora headquarters in San Francisco, co-founder Max Salzberg says this network does not insist on real names.
MAX SALZBERG: Certainly, with Diaspora, it's not a requirement and, in fact, it's not even something we can enforce because Diaspora is open source.
KASTE: Open source, meaning the software is open for anybody to see or rewrite as they please. Salzberg actually agrees with Google's Eric Schmidt a little bit.
SALZBERG: There is a place for people to be able to use their real name and have some sort of like verified, like, this is actually Max Salzberg responding to your question.
KASTE: But what the big social networks need to understand, he says, is that there's also a place for pseudonyms.
SALZBERG: I think that anonymity and pseudonyms are slightly different. A pseudonym that's well-constructed is, you know, something that that person values and sort of wants to maintain at certain levels. And it's still, like, an authentic personality they have.
KASTE: Innovations like Diaspora mean pseudonyms are not likely to go away, but as Google Plus and Facebook increase their reach, the question is on how much of the Internet will those pseudonyms be allowed. Martin Kaste, NPR News.