There's a few cases -- few of which exist right now -- that would benefit: an instance for public figures, for instance, where the poster's identity is essential for countering misinformation.

Though most would benefit from a _known identity_ policy (one that accounts for aliases) rather than a _real name_.

In the United States any name you choose to use is a legal name and thus your real name, so long as you don’t use it to commit fraud.

Also, I know people who have birth certificates, drivers licenses and passports all with different names and aren’t called any of them IRL.

Besides, the administrative databases that store such information would become major hacking targets.

Don’t store PII and you won’t have to defend it against hackers.

I've seen some small UK village council forums and in that kind of small, trusted community setting, I could see that being a decent policy.

That said, the forums I've seen are public to people outside the village (otherwise I wouldn't have seen them!) and I think that's a far worse idea.

@mattl I think LinkedIn in is a likely candidate to join the Fediverse, and they have a real name policy.

linkedin.com/help/linkedin/ans…

I think Threads has a real name policy:

transparency.meta.com/policies…

Flipboard asks for your real name for login but you can use a pseudonym.

@nomdeb

Everyone knows me as idea...
I've used the name for long enough so that it's got me all over it and as I'm known, I keep the moniker in place.
Noone remembers my real name anyway.

AND, Idea is the voice I've developed over years; it has a life of it's own.

You start from a disingenuous premise. It is a lie that "real names" exist. Not calling it a "legal name" is shifty and two-faced, and grants false legitimacy to the surveillance state. How are they to ensure our legal name is real, if not to monitor us at all times to make sure we're always using it? Your enforcement would aid nobody except those who want to manipulate people through spying on them, who can easily do so if we're stopped from using the name (and identity) we want.

It's also disrespectful and hateful to use "a real names policy," because many people were forced to take a certain legal name by their terrible government and/or their terrible parents. If you yourself force people to use these "dead names" then you're somewhere between a bully and a supremist.

Other than that, knock yourself out if you want to use legal names! I think everyone should have one profile they use for public stuff, though I STILL think using the legal name is inadvisable, even if it's easy to connect to your profile.

Mastodon already has a verification tool for your website. It would be cool if a mastodon instance could be set up to require the usage of an ID service as an option that the instance admin could choose and users could choose.

Who knows. It would be a fun project. 😀