It was definitely a mistake. The internet was not meant to be taken seriously. Measures like real name policies are designed to make people take it seriously but that is to the detriment of the users who do.
Just look at Facebook. Users with real names sharing all kinds of inane schizo nonsense, extremism, building echo chambers without realizing it, becoming completely divorced from reality as perceived by the majority of people around them in meatspace, because they section themselves off in cyberspace.
> The internet was not meant to be taken seriously.
Coming from all the pro-Internet and open web talk of the 2010s still rattling around in my brain, this felt like dunking my head in an ice bath. Painful but necessary.
Just look at Facebook. Users with real names sharing all kinds of inane schizo nonsense, extremism, building echo chambers without realizing it, becoming completely divorced from reality as perceived by the majority of people around them in meatspace, because they section themselves off in cyberspace.