Mr. Ronan Costello:

We have had a policy of allowing pseudonymity on the platform since the platform's inception. One of the reasons that has not changed is that the policy was developed and has evolved in consultation with human rights groups. For example, groups like Civil Rights Defenders, Access Now and Front Line Defenders are based in Dublin and all of them represent human rights activists across the globe. One of the reasons we allow the pseudonymous accounts, and one of the reasons I mention the human rights groups, is that that particular feature of the platform is vital in environments, contexts and countries where it is dangerous for that kind of activity to be carried under one’s real name because one can be identified and may be apprehended, and so on. We see this context and we see this use case arising more and more as the political situation in countries across the world deteriorates and regresses into a form of a illiberalism.

Pseudonymity on Twitter is one way for folks who oppose that developing illiberalism to push back on it and to do so not altogether with safety but perhaps in safer conditions than they would be able to otherwise.