Ask HN: Real name vs. anonymous username – which do you use online and why?

random websites - hide my real name, mostly to avoid tracking

where I think it's safe and want to present my views transparently and think something positive could come from it, my real name.

That is so far the case here on HN, though I've been reconsidering that, since recently I've been harangued whenever I've mentioned my business/app in comments - having my business called scammy and so forth. Then I go and see who is doing the haranguing and often it's a profile that does not have a real name, and has a zillion karma for some reason even though you go through their comments and a lot of it is a bunch of negativity being spread and that makes me a bit miserable.

I'm curious about this question, because my app relates to games, and on one hand I really like the idea of real names (esp given my personal experience e.g. above), while on the other hand I see a huge % of comments here preferring anonymity, and generally get the feeling that 'real names' is perceived as too serious for gaming - that the expected thing would be pseudonyms/handles/avatars. One direction we've gone in is that if you want to monetize/earn money on our app, then you need a real name (verified with ID). But any suggestions/ideas very welcome.

I mostly use shortened versions of my real name. For instance, here it's my first name and the first two letters of my last name. Other places it's my first name and the first 1 letter of my last name. I prefer a short username (jealous of rms and esr and others who "claimed" their initials successfully), so I try to use these two short variations the most. But sometimes they're both already taken or they're too short for the service I'm signing up to, so I might add a few more letters from my last name, or use the first 1 letter from my first name and my entire last name. I'm sure people could figure out who I am, with varying degrees of effort depending on how much I've shared on the site and how long I had to make my username, but at the same time I try to avoid using my name in full without any shortening, to at least make it harder for the laziest bad actors. There are a few niche places (such as boardgamegeek) where I don't mind my full name being out there, because the community is largely pretty focused on a single subject and fairly non-problematic (compared to many other places, including hn).

For the evolution of how I arrived at this: I started BBSing as a teenager in the 90s, and there pretty much everyone used handles instead of real names. So for a while I used a particular handle, until I decided I was embarrassed of the name, so I chose another. Eventually in the late 90s as email (and the internet in general) became a lot more common I was embarrassed a bit when I'd give my @juno(or wherever).com email address out to people, so I set up an email with my real name. Then I figured since I was already providing an email with my real name when signing up for places, I might as well use my real name for account names. But, like I said before, I prefer a short username, but someone was already using my first,middle,last initials that way, so I started using "joem" as many places as I could, which was easy at first, but became much harder as time went on and I had to expand to my current system noted above.

M̸y̷ ̴t̵r̸ü̴e̵ ̸n̷ä̴y̸m̶Z̸ ̴w̸ö̶ü̸l̷d̵ ̶b̶e̴ ̵j̶ü̵s̶t̴ ̸m̴ö̵j̷i̸b̵ä̶k̸e̸d̷ ̸z̶ä̴l̴g̶ö̴-̷t̵e̶x̶t̶ ̷(̸i̵n̴ ̵1̵2̶D̵ ̷c̴l̷I̴M̸Ä̴X̷ ̷y̶n̷f̴y̵n̵y̷-̸K̸)̷ ̶f̶ö̵r̸ ̸y̸ö̴ü̵,̷ ̸ä̴n̴d̴ ̷t̵h̷ü̴s̴ ̵B̴L̸I̵T̵ ̴y̷ö̷ü̸r̵ ̸b̷r̶ä̴y̸n̵Z̵ ̴w̵i̴t̵h̵ ̴n̷ä̴m̵-̵s̷h̵ü̶b̷b̵y̵ ̷s̴n̵ö̵w̸-̴c̵r̵ä̸s̵h̴e̷Z̸.̶

What these companies worry about is not free information. Their concerns are usually around company IPs, copyrights, reputation/branding...etc.

Do those risks exist? Sure. But it's silly to blindly forbid your employee's outside-business activities like this. However, in this job market, employers probably can easily find candidates that don't have problem with this silly restriction so they don't have incentives to allocate resources to deal with the headache.

A personal website may sound too "professional" to a legal person. I bet OP could post the same information on facebook/twitter without getting into any trouble.

I remember reading this post by Tim Ferriss and it is a pretty interesting take:

https://tim.blog/2020/02/02/reasons-to-not-become-famous/

I think it explores a lot of issues adjacent to your question.