Despite our fights, my mom started feeling better about the Internet when I was offered my first internship. The CEO of a small Internet game company discovered my fan fiction when I was 15. When he asked me what I did in real life, I told him I was “a sophomore.” Assuming I was in college, he invited me to help him out. In my twenties, I shifted focus from game networks toward other media networks like blogs. I have some pseudonyms, and one of those names is widely published on the topic of sexuality and culture. I’ve written books and spoken at major universities about stigmatized, underground identities. My goal has never been to merely explore boundaries, but to help people find acceptance and tolerance. I might never have been so creative and outspoken without the pseudonyms that got me started.

Yet over time, it became impossible to ignore how things were changing.

* * *

Frustration tore through my peer group as people started getting fired for sins like publishing Facebook photographs that showed them drinking a beer in college. Major forums soon tried forcing people to use their real names, on pain of removal from the platform. Commentators began suggesting real-name usage would make the Internet a clean and civil place. (These theories are contradicted by evidence.) Unsurprisingly, some people who have advocated for real-name usage are affiliated with data-gathering social platforms.

While speaking of the elastic self, Wang has pointed out that “companies and institutions often misinterpret the meaning of people’s social lives, codifying it in a way that forces people into static relationships that don’t reflect the fluid nature of actual relationships.” Some companies are highly motivated to misinterpret. If we, the users, start buying into a platform’s vision of how we should present ourselves, then we will believe that we need that platform more. Plus, our data is more valuable when it can be attached to actual demographic information.

Can pseudonyms and anonymity be used to hurt others? Obviously, yes. As a woman on the Internet, I’ve encountered my share of nastiness. This is a complex problem. Abusers will exploit whatever tensions they can find, in any social context. Abuse of power happens wherever there is power—and anonymity can be powerful. But I believe that almost everyone deserves safe space to figure out who they are and what they want to say. When people abuse that space, there should be consequences for those people. There are many ways of regulating discussion that do not involve silencing gigantic swathes of humanity.

Of course, our ability to control this space is not merely important from a navel-gazey or political perspective. It’s important for reasons of personal, physical safety too. My strongest case study is from 2010, when Google’s extinct service Buzz was unveiled. Several Internet friends texted and tweeted at me that day: “Don’t activate Buzz!” They didn’t email, because Buzz was set to turn itself on as soon as people opened their Gmail accounts. Once activated, Buzz would automatically and publicly display the top people emailed by that account. Some Gmail users were seriously harmed, including people with stalkers and therapists trying to protect their patients’ confidentiality. Buzz suffered in the ensuing scandals.