Let's call it temporary lapse of judgement... I guess I've confused the issue with my hate for bigotry. I just woke up and find the thing completely obvious - thanks to, in big part, your comment, and thanks to regaining the ability to generate examples in my head that I must have lost yesterday :(.
I guess part of my confusion stemmed from the fact that multiple identities on Facebook are hard and risky, so they become a pretty bad idea. Facebook seriously sucks for multiple identities, real-name-policy or not. You really need different accounts. Otherwise you need to get obsessive-compulsive about every privacy setting out there - who do you share with, who can view it, who can tag/mention you, etc. And then you lose anyway because one of your friends copy-pasted your post to a wider circle, or uploaded a photo with you and someone from the "wrong" side of your social graph recognizes it, etc. It's pretty much OPSEC 101 - the different lives you're having shouldn't mix at all because someone, somewhen, will screw up.
Also, you'd be surprised how broken the post range limits still are, if you know what to do (Facebook has significantly improved that over the last year or two, but there are still bugs).
> It is nice to believe that we are past these problems. I'm often thankful that I have the privilege to live in California, which has been very accepting of diversity. Unfortunately, we haven't solved all of these problems, and they are not going to be solved in the near future.
Yeah, this is what bit me.
> Sometimes an optimist or apparatchick insists that forcing everybody into the public so nothing is hidden and privacy no longer exists will somehow eradicate bigotry and discrimination. Well, bigots are often proud of their beliefs, and most people don't consider the consequences anyway; these problems are not solved by magical thinking.
I sometimes consider if what apparatchicks propose isn't in fact our best option. I usually refer to it as "privacy or progress, pick one", when pointing out the social and scientific benefits of the data we forgo when insisting on fighting every form of mass monitoring. Note, I'm only entertaining this thought - I'm not convinced yet either way, but the way the privacy discussion is today, the issue is terribly one-sided.
You mentioned bigots being proud of being bigots. This seriously worries me. I think the society could handle going (back?) to zero-privacy mode, but the more I think of it and see people being proud of their ignorance, the more I fear it would end in civil wars over really stupid things.