The author specifically writes:
"The nature of commenting on the web needs to feel organic and fluid, just like it does in real life. And even anonymous if necessary, though that’s not at the core of my argument."
The point of the article is that people present different images of themselves to different friends. Binding all a person's online discourse to a single identity forces them to go for the 'lowest common denominator' image.
Regarding your Dunbar's number remark:
The author probably meant 'friends' in the sense of facebook friends, which really includes 'acquaintances'.
Besides which, its not a physical rule that you can't have 700 friends. Dunbar's number, as applied to humans, is a fairly crude heuristic extrapolation; its not a hard limit to friendship capacity.
Sure, it's all gradients, but at 700 "friends" we are getting into an average of "half a day per friend-year" territory. Those don't sound as meaningful relationships to me.
The author specifically writes: "The nature of commenting on the web needs to feel organic and fluid, just like it does in real life. And even anonymous if necessary, though that’s not at the core of my argument."
The point of the article is that people present different images of themselves to different friends. Binding all a person's online discourse to a single identity forces them to go for the 'lowest common denominator' image.
Regarding your Dunbar's number remark: The author probably meant 'friends' in the sense of facebook friends, which really includes 'acquaintances'.
Besides which, its not a physical rule that you can't have 700 friends. Dunbar's number, as applied to humans, is a fairly crude heuristic extrapolation; its not a hard limit to friendship capacity.