Comment Re:typical (Score 5, Insightful) 471
You sir, are sorely mistaken. I don't know what the proper name is for this rhetorical device so let's call it the defeatist's fallacy. You're certainly not the only one to spout it, but if you think about the implications you ought to be able to see where it goes awry and why it's such a devious thing to say.
It goes a little like this: Because an arbitrary someone already knows your name, the only sensible thing you can do is shout your name from the rooftops, tag it everywhere, and be sure that every single little thing you do has your only real name attached to it. Yes, this is hyperbole, but think about why it's such a silly thing to say. What you say is silly in a similar fashion.
People do have multiple identities even with a more or less identical name attached to it. Some of us have multiple identities with differing names attached to it. It does not follow that everyone must automatically pack all their identities together for combined inspection, even though facebook thinks that's really neat for making them money.
If you share your entire life on facebook, then yes, adding a nickname isn't going to help much. But if you don't, well, then having seperate accounts with different names attached might help. That you'll also have to block "like" buttons everywhere and never ever use facebook's "identity services" (mostly a data gathering vehicle) for other sites (or only for a well-defined set only used in the context of that nickname's identity), perhaps even need differing proxy services for different accounts, is besides the point. Even the fact that you can often datamine multiple identities together with high probability is besides the point. That it amounts to a false sense of security in some sense, well, since internet privacy enforcement is mostly law based so far, we can turn it into legally actionable security should we need to.
I do keep separate this account, for example. If you'd like, try and find a "real" name to go with it, report back here. Even text similarity analysis with the entire web will not help you much. If you go back far enough you might find enough leads for some good-old humint legwork, but purely electronically you'll have a challenge yet.
While datamining is getting ever cheaper and is already much more feasible than most people, even techies, are aware, does not mean that it is free, and with some effort you can make it expensive enough to not be worthwhile. Though really but a last refuge, you can try for being a thorougly uninteresting needle in a needlestack.
Your argument goes that because the choice is of no use for people who dump too much information into facebook (directly or indirectly) in the first place, it's okay to remove the choice for every user of facebook. And that, my dear zazzel, just doesn't fly.