We live in a world where two men, unknown to Joss Stone, decided they were going to kill her, made preparations and were stopped by pure chance.

There is no great benefit from forcing the use of real names, but there is potential for catastrophic results. https://twitter.com/neil_neilzone/status/1335891842563497984

See you might find obnoxious people Tweeting behind fake IDs to be irritating; but have you considered all the people who don't tweet at you? The people who are just watching? There is probably a lot more of them.

Forcing them to use their real ID doesn't protect you from what they might do. They don't ever need to expose themselves to you in order to make your life a misery, to plot against you, to watch and wait.

Fortunately, that doesn't happen a lot but it does happen. Swatting is a thing. That lunatic from Countdown who drove across the country to batter a supermarket worker over a book review is a thing.

And what is also a thing; a thing that doesn't get quite as much attention is domestic violence. Many people suffer, and those who escape may have good reason to seek support online, but not under their real ID for what should be obvious reasons.

It's not just DV, either. It's LGBTQ people who come from culturally or religious intolerant backgrounds. It's whistleblowers. It's the tens of thousands, if not millions, who have damn good reason to want to remain anonymous on this shit tip of a communications system.

To take that away doesn't stop people being utter melts. FB has a real name policy and is one of the worst propagators of shit on the Internet. LinkedIn has a real name and real photo policy, and is rife with sexual harassment and other awful behaviour.

People are people, and some of them are gonna be proper dickheads about it whether you know who they are or not. A Real ID isn't a deterrent to someone who thinks their behaviour is righteous or justified.

It's a deterrent to the voices of those we should be listening to - the people who suffer, unnoticed by wider society, because to speak up poses danger. Anonymity is vital for them and to take it away again... well, that's just cruel.