Psuedo-anonymity like usernames breeds assholes (See: Basically every comment section/reddit/forum.) but actual anonymity breeds super assholes (See: Basically every chan.)

I personally don’t see the value. If I’d want to talk about stuff, I don’t want my username associated with, maybe

• the internet is not the right place to have this discussion or
• I wouldn’t want it associated to my account by any means, so would most likely create a burner account.

I also wonder if it wouldn’t make moderation harder?

With better meta moderation tools, like slashdot used to have, it would be good

But anonymous posting works already, you did it using a brand new account to post this post.

This presents one of two possibilities:

A) The anonymous mode is still tied to an account, and so instances could choose to just not show accounts as anonymous, or users could just dig through modlog.

B) The anonymous mode isn’t tied to an account, making effective moderation nigh impossible, and spam very easy.

Neither of these are good.

Actually, I don’t usually even notice usernames/names around here, with rare exceptions (frequent commentators whose names are so frequently displayed that I can’t help but remember other posts). Lemmy is more content-oriented than person-oriented (and that should always be desirable). I’m not sure about you all: to me, it doesn’t even matter who posted something, it only matters what is posted.

Therefore, it shouldn’t matter if their nickname is “Anonymous2666”, “following_the_hurried_rabbit”, “Alice (they/them)” or KYC’d/Facebook’d real profiles such as “Alice Doe Merrymary Hogwarts, Wendy’s Local Franchise Manager and Independent Romance/Fiction Writer from 27 Lots-Of-Honking-Flying-Cars Ave, Midtown Austin, TX”: it’s their content what matters the most.