I want to bring up that a positive aspect of not having 1 is that it’s a good way to figure out who to block. On discord for a technical subject that is unfortunately somewhat in the mainstream we have non-anonymous reacts and every time I see someone having a very strong yet uninformed opinion on a technical subject I block them. It makes me viewing experience a lot better.
Yes, people will be able to collect more information on you this way but I think here the trade off is not so bad. We make a similar trade off when we comment. There is also an element of choice, since you can also choose to lurk and not allow your stuff to be scraped.
I find their reaction understandable. In my experience, even one bad post can cause dramatic shifts in user demographics, so if you don’t take a heavy-handed approach it can really end up having lasting negative effects on the server.