I just maintain an anonymous one and never comment. Lets me follow whatever topics I care about and no worries about anything coming back to bite me. I make sure to try and include people I disagree with as well to a certain extent as its a good way to see other points of view and also to reinforce why I disagree with them in the first place. Lets me know I am not in an echo chamber and at least 51% of my opinions are probably my own... maybe.

What's gonna happen when having social media accounts in good standing is required to open a bank account, or take a loan or get an insurance?

You're getting downvoted here, but at border crossings often you'll be asked for social media access. I don't think it's that far off the mark.

Exactly. I'm surprised by the downvotes because, while it is not mandatory (yet?), I have definitely seen financial institution forms with an optional field for social media accounts.

People will downvote you for any number of reasons - some good, mostly bad. Ignore it, don't comment on it - "Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading." Inquisitive and thoughtful HN readers will read your comment anyway, think about it, and comment on it.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I maintain a professional account, that occasionally posts job related materials as well as shout-outs to the local sportsball franchises. Oh and puppy pictures.

While not that widespread yet it is there in some context. For instance regularly miss out on news and updates from.various organizations I was once very active in because they have almost completely migrated to Facebook. A lot of extracurricular activities as well as schools require some sort of social media be it Google, or Facebook to stay plugged into events and check one students progress.

I feel like this is obvious with a major caveat.

You and I agree. Don’t use social media and this won’t be a problem. I think the disadvantages outweigh.

But… what about when Hackernews or Reddit or Discord whatever formerly anonymous some-degree-of-social-network is made not so anonymous? I have a Reddit account that I’ve surely said things if someone was motivated they could make life hard for me - true things - but who cares about that anymore?

It’s not the same thing, but we might not be sure in what ways they are similar.

It depends what your risk appetite is. I see it as layers.

So an organization with skill and motivation, like government agencies vs some specific person with a limited skillset and motivation Who are you trying to "hide" from?

Simply having a different username for each website helps with that. Personally for Facebook / Linkedin I never list my current employer. Enough of a layer to make it harder to track my employer for the casual lookup, but not impossible given enough time/money/competency.

I really like this graphic about what level of security you want vs who you are trying to protect from: https://anonymousplanet.org/media/image3.jpeg