That's a good idea and I've thought about it but I think many feel attached to their usernames and account history "15 yeas with.." site X. And sites often balk and say "username or email already has an account here".
It's a bit funny since alias was meant to hide who you were or at least make ire less formal than a person's full name. Then I go and use my name for an alias!
The "don't use your real name on the internet" advice wasn't great. When I set up a Google account as a kid I used a made up handle because all the adults told me to not use my name on the internet.
Decades later and it's still my main account and I often need to either switch accounts to the one with my real name or embarassingly ask people to invite my nickname account to various shared documents, calendars, etc. No way to migrate my YouTube channel either…
Having a disconnected online entity means less-than-pleasant jackasses can't pull something from years or even decades ago, put it out of context, and proceed to troll your life.
Not putting your real life identity on public display for the world to see means you maintain tighter control over how, when, and where your information gets out. Do you really need your real name, face, place of employment, telephone number, email address (with your name in it), and maybe even your home address publicized? More than likely you don't.
Having online identities disconnected from real life means you can use them to safeguard your actually really-fucking-important real life things. Your bank account? Use an email that uses a nickname instead of your real name so any would be hackers have to second guess your email too.
Worst comes to shove and shit hits the fan, you can throw away an online identity and make another one. You can't throw away your real name and face.
There are nothing but benefits by keeping your online and real life identities separate, and if you ask me it's one of the first steps to being truly internet literate.
I assume that Reddit keeps a list of IP addresses and advertising buyers can correlate them with data from other sources to associates accounts with real people.
Presumably, a Reddit leak means even more opportunity to unmask (dox) users who have responded truthfully to threads that say things like "what's the worst thing you ever did". Lots of blackmail opportunities.
It’s worse than this. Reddit, several years ago, introduced outbound click tracking.
All outbound clicks from the site are redirected via out.reddit.com which ties click activity to an individual (username / IP / device fingerprint based). This can only be blocked with aggressive old.reddit script blocking which breaks portions of the site.
The outbound click data is used for profiling and interest based advertising, but the data can be much worse than simply linking comments to identity.
They also tie IP/identity to individuals to serve relevant ads and this is the push to get people installing reddit on phones, where deviceIDs is an easy UUID for ads.
Did that finally go out to all subs, because for a while it was only on certain subs? I don't use Reddit anymore, after they suspended my account for promoting a peaceful protest of the Billionaire's Summer Camp, where the corporate media meets every year to consolidate the industry and plan the years narrative. This, after they allowed me to be harassed, threatened with sexual violence and doxxed. Good times!
To my knowledge, it was broadly rolled out, I don't use anything by old.reddit.com and it's rare, but it doesn't seem limited to a specific sub-reddit. Ads, for reddit is also bought at the reddit.com level, and each sub-reddit is a monetizable segment with unique demographics. There were reps from reddit ad sales that were telling me how excited they were with what they were working on ads/tracking pipeline several years ago, and I've seen more tracking get implemented since.
You can create a new Google account tied to your domain and use that to collaborate with others. You can elect to stop using Gmail and your old nickname, unless I’ve missed something.
That would mean losing everything that cannot be migrated. (Not meaning that it would be gone, but that it would no longer be in the account I use.) I don't want that.
It's a bit funny since alias was meant to hide who you were or at least make ire less formal than a person's full name. Then I go and use my name for an alias!