> Facebook is LESS of a "monolith," because it is made up of hundreds of millions of users, than any small town anywhere.
You inadvertently bring up a strong counter argument.
Suppose, in your small town, you are outed (rightly or wrongly) as <insert marginalized subgroup here>, and ostracized. Normally, after much introspection and reflection, you or your family could decide to move away, if the social effects were severe enough and unfixable.
With a real name policy and a permanent archive of the psychodrama, you cannot start over elsewhere without all of it following along with you, ripe for the next group of maladjusted simpletons to harrass you with. Not everyone can move to tolerant cultures, not all marginalized groups can find reliably-safe new places.
I think this also speaks volumes about the "dangers" of using large general-purpose social networks.
Think about it for a second: if I'm ostracized (using my name or a pseudonym, it doesn't matter) from a `Club 3.14: Raspberry Pi Hackers` message board; I can find other message boards with a surplus of R-Pi hackers.
If I say something stupid on Facebook... where am I supposed to go in order to replace Facebook?
The issue with Google+ is (<-- replace with your favorite defunct social network) that it's a graveyard.
(I say that facetiously; I actually use G+ and quite like the service. That being said, I can't deny that it is missing 95% or so of my Facebook friends.)
So the issue here isn't so much the ability to have pseudonyms, IMHO.
The issue is that Facebook is quickly becoming a "monolith", and that fact _combined_ with an inability to escape your ostracism via "moving" your online presence to a new identity is where the problem lies.
I feel the real problem is that Facebook is all-encompassing. They want to be _the_ platform for online community.
Therein lies the problem, if you're only allowed _one true identity_ on their platform, your baggage follows you to every sub-community _on that platform._
You inadvertently bring up a strong counter argument.
Suppose, in your small town, you are outed (rightly or wrongly) as <insert marginalized subgroup here>, and ostracized. Normally, after much introspection and reflection, you or your family could decide to move away, if the social effects were severe enough and unfixable.
With a real name policy and a permanent archive of the psychodrama, you cannot start over elsewhere without all of it following along with you, ripe for the next group of maladjusted simpletons to harrass you with. Not everyone can move to tolerant cultures, not all marginalized groups can find reliably-safe new places.