Username

A username is a permanent unique identifier in the New Real, used for online services and as an ID and driver's license.

While usernames can be changed, the Council of the Descendants only grants new names under special circumstances. Many poorly-though-out usernames are considered equivalent to that tattoo you got when you turned 18.

The only known instance of a historical figure being better known by their username is SpartacusBauariae.

True Names
In many cultures, knowing someone's true name was believed to allow someone to control a person. For example, among the Salish of northwestern North America, A person would have a true name only known to their family, and a nickname that everyone else used such as Sdemoxelten (Pronounced "Swattie-ma-tee-tum", meaning "Crazy White Man"). While this was rooted in the superstition that spirits might get jealous of a person with a nice name, it does have a counterpart in 21st Century globalized civilization.

In modern society, a person would be named Nelson Smith. This is not a nickname, it is their true name despite being publicly used by everyone they know in real life, because regardless of the differences in culture and the completely unrelated mythological backgrounds about true names, a true name is universally the first name a parent gives a child.

And until the 1970s, this true name was all a person of European ancestry had.

First came trucker handles, which became popular among young people in 1970s America who would buy trucker radios as part of what seemed to just be a fad. Then in the 1980s, home computers allowed people to communicate over BBS, where usernames were used to protect a person from stalkers and other undesirable strangers. By the 1990s, these nicknames had become a primary feature of instant messengers. In the 2000s, this expanded to gamer handles, and by the 2010s, a name like Sdemoxelten was far from the weirdest thing people could be known by.

Unfortunately, the devil has been collecting true names since 2003, and his own true name is "Mark Zuckerberg".

Facebook and Twitter: The Dynamic Duo
''"To the Paranoiamobile!" In all seriousness, Mark Zuckerberg isn't literally the devil, but as far as true names are concerned he might as well be. Even ignoring the many controversial things Facebook did in the Old Real with the data its users made publicly available, every person who ever signed up for the Facebook using their real name has found it to be a huge liability due to being recorded in the New Internet Archives, and due to the existence of that can do more with a person's real name than just blackmail them.

And the more information you willingly put into Facebook, the easier it is for someone to figure out who you were in the Old Real...

The Facebook has you.
"You still think Matrix parodies are cool?" Together with Twitter, Google, TikTok and Spotify, Facebook managed to pull the wool over the eyes of internet users. For what exactly? Well, nothing meant to be sinister, but algorithm programmers are a special kind of stupid.

For whatever reason, there was a time period where programmers thought an algorithm hooked up to a database could predetermine a person's opinions. All it really did was make it impossible for a person to discover new things. When was the last time Spotify recommended a song that you had never heard before but liked? Okay, if your answer is better than "I don't remember", when was the last time you listened to a new band on Spotify that wasn't the same genre as other bands you liked?

Yeah, that's right. Most of the internet was hidden behind social media's "curated" content, inaccessible because Google and Bing were the only search engines. Sure, DuckDuckGo would protect your privacy, but it still uses the Google algorithm because it's the best in the industry, and unfortunately both Google and Bing have restricted the content you can find to whatever you are likely to already agree with.

But that's enough commentary on the internet IRL.

The Red Pill
Data mining is heavily regulated on Gaia in the New Real. A corporation can't legally share its customer data with another company. If they are handling a health care database, they are subject to Doctor-Patient confidentiality.

If you go to a coffee shop on Gaia, it's likely that they won't have wi-fi. If you go to a skyscraper on Gaia, its cell tower antennae are (as of 12018 GHE) likely designed to 3G specifications at best. If you buy a cell phone, it more closely resembles and functions like a PDA than a smartphone. If you want to hire a programmer or network engineer to program your social media site, you'll have a fraction of a percent of possible employees compared to the Old Real equivalent.

The point is that social media no longer has the infrastructure needed to be profitable, and by the time it will, all the legal loopholes will have been closed. One that already has is that it is illegal to request someone's real name on the afternet.