The nymwars are the struggle to maintain online safe havens for pseudonymous free speech, for people who don't feel safe linking their opinions with their real names (for fear of religious persecution / sexual predation / current or future job prospects / whatever else) in the face of attempts by Facebook, Google, and others to force everyone to cross-link all their personal information. Soon after its launch in 2011, Google+ took a strong stand that only people willing to post under their real names would be welcome on the site, and (as one very minor consequence) I stopped posting there. Now, finally, Google+ has relented and will allow arbitrary user-chosen identities. They could have been more apologetic about it, but it's enough for me to return there.

I don't intend to change my Livejournal posting habits much, as I've been using my Google+ account for a somewhat different purpose: posting brief links to web sites that catch my attention and that I think might be of interest to my (mostly technical/academic) circles of contacts there. Here's a roundup of a dozen or so links I've posted so far (skipping the ones where I linked back to my LJ postings).