Call it nostalgia goggles if you want, but I remember the Internet being a much less malicious place when anonymity was the default, before the half-and-half measure we have now. The same hateful stuff was being said of course, but I remember feeling a lot less like the people on the opposite ends of an argument wanted to actually, really hurt each other. People using real names might not be openly calling each other slurs any more (for the most part), but the actual sentiment they spew is even nastier.

It used to be joked that "the internet is serious business", but then some lizard man in California convinces two billion people to tie their real names to a catalogued list of every thought they've ever put online, and now the Internet actually is serious business for all those people. They've cultivated an online identity they can't shed once they've outgrown it in the same way an anonymous/pseudonymous user could. The optimist would say it's good that you can't just say horrible stuff and move on, but the I think the realist knows that A) Everyone says dumb shit at some point, and B) People are more likely to double-down on that dumb shit if they know they can't escape it and actually mature.

No one wants to be the guy being perceived as defending the assholes misusing their anonymity, but the cost of losing any more ground to IRL identities will be too much in my opinion.