What you post on Facebook, however, is not visible to the public unless you explicitly make it so. There's a world of difference between what John Smith writes on his Facebook wall and is visible to only people whom John Smith has explicitly deemed to be friends of John Smith, vs. a public Youtube comment that was once authored by user LordofPants, but thanks to G+ real name policy is now known to the public world as John Smith.
Facebook was designed from the outset to be an online platform for your real-life friends. G+ should have been an online platform for your online friends, but then it mandated that all of your online friends must now need to know your real-life name.
On Google+ you have always been able to choose whether to share publicly or only to specific circles.
And the Youtube integration was also the immediate end of the real-name policy (which was really more an "no unusual name policy, because people got blocked for having an unusual real name, whereas plausible pseudonyms were left alone).
But you're right; it was a stupid policy, and they should have known that right from the start.
"a public Youtube comment that was once authored by user LordofPants, but thanks to G+ real name policy is now known to the public world as John Smith"
Are you saying the real-name policy was retroactive? I wasn't aware of that. If that was the case, wow.
Facebook was designed from the outset to be an online platform for your real-life friends. G+ should have been an online platform for your online friends, but then it mandated that all of your online friends must now need to know your real-life name.