Nymwars - Wikipedia

Nymwars is a name given to series of conflicts over policies that mandate that all users of certain internet communications platforms identify themselves using their legal names. The term is mostly associated with Google's name policies on Google+ and YouTube. Nymwars is a blend word composed from (pseudo)nym and wars. The name appears to have gained prominence as the hashtag "#nymwars" on Twitter.

Conflicts regarding Google+ began in July 2011 when the social networking site began enforcing its real-name-only policy by suspending the accounts of users it felt were not following the policy.[ 1] Pseudonyms, nicknames, and non-standard real names (for example, mononyms or names that include scripts from multiple languages) were suspended. The issue was settled in July 2014 when Google announced that it was ending its real-name-only policy.[ 2]

A predecessor to the Google+ conflict was Blizzard's RealID which, starting in July 2010, exposes the name on the player's credit card, and is mandatory to use some game features (cross-game chat) and was nearly made mandatory to post on discussion forums.[ 3] [ 4] [ 5]

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