postmaster
> . . . pressure non-users into signing up.
These days you'll see similar examples by visiting any forum. Want to see some code, or a link someone posted? Sorry! You have to login or register.
> This is vastly different . . .
OK, OK. I'm sorry. This is most certainly, however, similar to any other website out there that uses real identity; don't let me get everything muddied by trying to compare real identity web to the anonymous web.
> Facebook is a . . .
Lol? I don't even. There's so many die-hard Facebook haters out there. Go build open source applications that do what Facebook is offering and does it better and before you know it the company should be gone. I'm solely basing this on the amount of comments I see for people coming out against Facebook, rather than ever for it (or even just playing devil's advocate). It seems to always be a circle jerk.
For Facebook you only need an account to see content that the user / page has deemed not public. This has nothing to do with Facebook and everything to do with the owner of the account / page that publishes the content you're wanting to see.
https://www.facebook.com/YCombinator/
Do you need to be logged in to view PUBLIC posts or comments on that page? No, you don't. Now if you were trying to visit Mark Zuckerberg's personal profile obviously, yes, a very large amount of content is NOT going to be visible to you.
This is no different than every other site out there. Sure, you can read the news and comments posted on this (https://news.ycombinator.com/) webiste, but you most certainly CANNOT post comments without having an account.