What is this new online push against anonymity?

[Christian Atheist]

It seems every website now wants you to "connect using Facebook!" And depending on the site, some are much more pushy than others, YouTube is now almost forcing it, you have to really look around to decline the option, and then you have to continue declining it every session.

"Hey everybody, connect with your Facebook, t's easy! Just look how easy it is!" Yeah but what about the part where you're connecting everything under your real name? Why not put your street address and cell number up while you're at it? What if I post something whilst drunk, or change my mind about something a couple years later? I don't want to use my real name everywhere, that's the whole point! Honesty through anonymity.

What's the deal? Who's behind this push? Do you care about having all sites you go to under your one Facebook ID? What do you think?

[Nathan]

I have a fake Facebook for this reason.
The reason for this pushing is "to make things more personal", of course, that's what they tell you.
However, it's all about control. Now ask yourself, who are the biggest, most powerful controlfreaks in the world? There's your answer.

Don't you think the new YouTube 'recommendations' at the right side are scary? Sometimes it's the same subject as a video I watched weeks ago. It's no longer a recommendation, it's spying on my watch-behaviour.

@Chip completely agreed.

[Chip]

What's the deal? It's just simple greed. The most valuable resource on the planet right now is information - advertisers will gladly pay approximately all the money to get their hands on personal info, so any company that can accumulate said info stands to make a fortune. Hence Google, Facebook, and other Internet powerhouses making such a strong push to get you to register anything and everything with them. It is quite literally a gold rush for your life details.

Who's behind the push? The advertisers. Again: they are the ones paying insane amounts of money for personal data. The reason they want it is because the more "targeted" and custom-tailored they can make their ads, the higher your probability of buying from them (or so they think). But in order to make their ads more targeted they have to know their audience. Since none of us are willing to sit down and be personally interrogated by an ad agency every day, the next best thing is to buy up all of our personal info from the aforementioned Big Data companies like Google and Facebook.

Do you care...? Yes, I care a lot. I make a very deliberate push to keep my personal info safe. As to whether or not the general population cares I don't really know.... but I doubt it. These companies were able to get this big and invasive because their methods work: on the whole people don't care about giving away every shred of privacy as long as they get free stuff in return.