I simply cannot understand how Google can be so short sighted about this. The simple questions: what about an in-the-closet gay teen? or what about a domestic violence survivor? should make their whole stack of cards fall down.
They should have thought these things themselves. In fact, they should have been so obvious that this conversation would be unimaginable.
"He also says they are working on ways to handle pseudonyms, but that will be a while before the team can turn on those features"
I don't understand. Wouldn't the implementation of this "feature" just boil down to not deleting or disabling people's accounts when they sign up with a pseudonym?
I just don't see why this would take so much effort to do. I really don't see why implementing this particular feature would take all of the effort and energy that they seem to be indicating.
The anonymity goes both ways: people might avoid bullying, but they can also avoid accountability for bullying. Also, spam is probably a big deal already. And, since there are already hundreds of "Darth Vader" accounts, it doesn't seem like their automatic defenses are very effective.
people might avoid bullying, but they can also avoid accountability for bullying
This argument is nonsensical unless there is an actual, consequential penalty for violating the "real names" policy. (Which would, of course, be even more of a monumental disaster.)
Suppose you are a troll or a sockpuppet or a spammer and you want to screw around on a Google website. Well, the fact that you're not allowed to call yourself "LadyAda" or "Lady Gaga" or, for that matter, "mechanical_fish" is no problem. You can just call yourself "John Smith". Or "Steven P. Jobs" or "George W. Bush", for that matter. It's not hard to fake a real name. And there's no meaningful penalty for doing so, even if you get caught. Most likely Google will just delete your account. No big loss for a troll. New accounts are just a click away.
Now, if you are LadyAda or Lady Gaga or mechanical_fish, Google's policy is a problem, because you've spent a certain amount of time building up your pseudonym. It has a history and you're identified with it and you've bought the domain names and given the press interviews and written years worth of blogs and opened some businesses and built up a ten-million-strong international fan club who comes to all your concerts. Gaga doesn't want to sign up as "John Smith" or anything else, because it will literally cost her money not to sign up with her chosen name, "Lady Gaga".
This argument is nonsensical unless there is an actual, consequential penalty for violating the "real names" policy.
It need not be administered by Google. If Ivan Identity is being publicly belligerent, then social opprobrium is the likely result. Use of his real identity gives him an incentive to uphold his own reputation. This does not guarantee that he will respond to such an incentive, but does make it easier for people to respond to his misbehavior when he acts badly.
I'm entirely familiar with the value of a pseudonym, having used this one for well over a decade now. But if you want to leverage it as a brand, then do so on commercial terms, is my feeling.
You nailed it. While promises are made, accounts get suspended (we read about the Firefox founder here, I don't quite dare to mention myself in that company..).
IF there'll be changes to the policy (and i hope that's the case), why would you alienate people today by suspending them for offenses (..) that might be okay tomorrow?
Google wants data. That's the main benefit that they get out of having a social network, is getting access to a new data source with a different type of data than what they currently have. They want your real name so they can aggregate this data with other data sources, including external ones (think CRM).
When they say they want to handle pseudonyms, they don't mean letting you put a pseudonym into your name field. They still want your real name. What they mean is, the system will require your real name but let you display one (or more!) pseudonyms. In fact, advanced pseudonym management is probably on their roadmap. By letting you display different aliases to different users or circles, Google will be able to associate your various online identities.
Google is more sophisticated than that. They've been tracking your identity in searches for years. They know what you search for, what you read and what you buy. That's all the identity they need for their ad business. Name? Meh.
Strange that Facebook didn't think of that, either, no? But I think Google should allow it anyway, because it would be a strategic advantage over Facebook. The more "privacy" related benefits Google+ has over Facebook, the better.
Yes, she (edit: fixed gender) phrased it badly. The sentiment I think he was trying to convey is valid, though -- "People feel like they can create a hostile environment because they are anonymous".
People seem to think that anonymity is a license to act like an asshole. That's not conducive to producing a fairly pleasant, troll-free environment.
If you look at a couple of posts there, you'll notice that name calling exists nevertheless. I challenge you to read the discussion here [1] and check the name calling and ad hominem attacks from (maybe) people with their real names.
Next problem: Asking for legal looking names doesn't solve the problem of anonymity. If I am able to change my name to Bob Smith without hitting a filter (at least for a while) I still can be an asshole without any connection to my 'real name'. The _only_ thing the policy right now _can_ do is prohibiting people from using an obvious pseudonym. I cannot be darklajid, but I can be Bob Smith. Both are not my real names, the former is my handle ~everywhere~ online. One is me, one is crap.
No way around that unless you're going to verify papers/ids, and now feel free to throw "Papiere bitte" references at me.
So the whole 'we need real names' and 'we hope that this improves our community' is crap. But the most idiotic thing is to make exceptions. Forget about the standard samples like 'Lady Gaga' and '50 Cent': We already hat a couple of threads here about people that used their pseudonym, were suspended and (by bullying, rounding up the media, having contacts inside of Google) got an exception.
What? Why? They are allowed to be different, because...? Bottom line: The current rule is
- useless
- arbitrary (I'd like to put this up as 'discriminating', but yeah.. G+ is not a right, yadda yadda)
You seem to be making a common mistake. The policy doesn't have to be bullet proof to work -- it just has to establish cultural norms. If the vast majority of people act like they're real people, then it has accomplished it's goals.
You're making an assumption without any proof: Pseudonyms lead to bad behavior.
In my world that's not connected to the names used and is merely a function of the 'quality' of the people in your community. Also - you don't solve issues between people with rules about their 'alias', you have to invent/support/hand out some decent tools to block idiots from your online life.
If these social network policies just end up forcing people to use less 'internetty' (all lower case no spaces with leet accents) pseudonyms online, like authors and movie stars, it will definitely devolve to where papers are required for everyone getting an account.
I certainly now manage a semi-new pseudonym (based on an old irl joke between me and a few friends) that looks like a boring, unnotable real name. I'm not sure how it will keep me from being an asshole on the internet.
I think what is implied is that they feel they can say whatever they want without thinking about the consequences.
This topic has recently become the subject of much discussion here in Norway, as recent events have brought more attention to the anonymous racist comments (and harassment) that are quite often found on public forums (such newspaper websites, etc.) There are some who claim that expecting people to sign their real names to their comments would raise the level of discourse, as people would have to take some responsibility for their speech.
The key to it all is this quote: “Real names” policies aren’t empowering; they’re an authoritarian assertion of power over vulnerable people.
People who, like me, are privileged white Americans can easily afford to use our real names, although I don't. What Google will get if they keep this policy is only people who don't care. Blacks, Latinos, rape, abuse, and stalking victims, people who have something controversial to say, gays, people in repressive countries won't join. It'll be a nice Stepford village.
It's also easier in relatively liberal and fluid-employment industries like tech (where you can freelance, work for bosses who don't care what you post online, start a company, etc.). If you work a typical Big Company job, for a relatively conservative/straightlaced company, you might not want your current or future bosses Googling for what you say off the clock, even if it's not actually about your job.
That's the default answer. While true, technically, it ignores that there are no viable alternatives right now.
Facebook is worse in every way regarding privacy (although they don't actually enforce their real name policy as far as I can tell/from the experiences in my peer group).
Other networks don't exist (see below). Twitter is a different beast. Don't start with LinkedIn or something or recommend niche products.
A social network, in my world, is a place where you can reach out to a lot of (like-minded/known/interesting) people. The point for me is that you need to have the critical mass so that the network works and is interesting in the first place (I won't find my friends on identi.ca..). But this should allow a lurking mode. A careful approach, picking friends by contacting them out of band ("I'm Foobar on G+") should be a fine use case.
I think the major reason to complain about G+ now is, apart from issues with the name verification process itself, that the offended community is just disappointed. It could be a good alternative to FB for quite some people, especially for those that didn't join FB in the first place. And Google failed to deliver.
Is it their decision? Sure. Is it a right to be a G+ user? Certainly not. Are there people that are unhappy about this situation and interested to voice that opinion: Yep.
We're both using a social community right now, of like minded people. I'm using my real name, you're not. That's HN's decision and I respect it. In this case I don't particularly care to know your real name. It doesn't add to or detract from my interactions with you.
On a site like Google+ or Facebook it's more complicated. I interact with people I know in real life, and with people I don't. I feel that if "darklajid" commented on one of my posts there it might negatively influenced a real life friends' decision to also participate. People who do not interact with strangers on the internet find it easier to do so when the person they are interacting with is using their real name. I think this is the right decision for the target use-case of Google+ and Facebook.
On Google+ you have the right to post to specific people or specific groups of people. People can, and I would wager actively are, using this feature right now to protect their privacy. They only thing they cannot protect is their true identity (they cannot hide their existence entire).
For some that's still too much and I respect that. However these networks should not cater to every niche need, and indeed there are plenty of communities out there willing to fill the void.
I'm a fan of comic books but they don't sell them in grocery stores like they used to. I have to drive a bit out of my way to pick them up (or wait on them in the mail). I've chosen this niche hobby and accept that I have some slight inconvenience because of it. That's life.
Limiting those with non-mainstream needs or desires (like pseudonymous interaction) to niche sites, effectively amounts to total segregation. Those people may want to interact with their real-life and online-only friends using the same system (e.g. Facebook or Google+), and some of them want to use their nicknames or handles to do so. If your friends would be put off by "darklajid" or "nitrogen" commenting on your posts, then you can prevent the posts for your real-name friends from being visible to your pseudonymous friends (if you have any).
I'll take my argument further: Google+ and Facebook grown beyond mere commercial offerings to become essential services like e-mail or the telephone system. Forcing certain classes of users onto a different network prevents them from interacting with the main body of the network. I consider this an inherently bad thing. Imagine if certain people were told they could only use niche telephone networks that were incapable of dialing the network that everybody else uses.
Let me start with this: This post is (one of) the best contra pseudonyms posts that I've read. Thank you.
The biggest point for me is your point about people with pseudonyms scaring away people that you actually care more for, close friends/family. I never thought of this point, but I do agree that my mum would be more hesitant to post if l33tGuy and WhooItsMe have a conversation with me.
Your point is, therefor, in my opinion great, but I still don't think that pseudonyms should be banned:
- You didn't comment on the inconsistency (LadyAda? Lady Gaga? Ok. darklajid? No) issue.
- You are masking the issue that there's no way to verify names anyway (so far. I hope it'll stay that way). So you're cheating yourself if you hope that this strategy leads to everyone using his real name
- I could take your argument further, to dangerous levels, by saying that a lot of people in my offline social network would probably be uncomfortable participating in discussions that are in English. Or with people that have obviously 'foreign' names, the more different the scarier (Asian countries come to mind, Israeli names could be good as well). My mum wouldn't comment if WhooItsMe comments on my picture, but she also wouldn't comment if Yuval would write something..
You cannot protect people from the world around them. You can try to find ways to cater for everyone, but in my world the solution to your scenario is:
- Allow people to choose their name
- Give people a great deal of (simple/intuitive) control about visibility and privacy. I'll help my mum set it up..
One last note: I'm 'darklajid' here, but I voluntarily give away my real name, as email address in my profile. That's the _right_ way around for me: I chose my name, lurked, participated - and _then_ decided to give away that information here.
I've just started running into the "unneccessary to cater to special interests" argument aganst pseudoanonymity on g+, and I haven't seen any data that indicates that there are more people who generally use their real names on the internet than ones that generally don't. I'd love a link to anything like that from anyone.
But in any context on the internet other than the social networks in question or when people are intentionally marketing themselves, if I see someone using their first and last name I assume that they are either very elderly, or very new to the internet. When I'm commenting on tech blogs, I'll sometimes use my firstname.lastname resume-heading email address - but I'm a tech guy, so it's obvious why. I could also see eventually using a real name on hn, but only for the same reason.
An email address is the id most people got first when they got on the internet, and is the model for pseudoanonymity. When I email my grandmother, I am pseudoanonymous and she is pseudoanonymous; it feels like the default state of the internet.
Not at all, there is no all-or-none proposition. One can participate on Google+ while simultaneously participating in other social communities. We're both doing it right now even!
It's completely analogous to real life. You interact with different groups in real life differently (your coworkers vs. your dungeons and dragons friends). Some of the people you interact with in real life know your real name and some do not. You're free to make the decisions of how you handle your identity.
So you're only allowed to interact with one particular group on Google+? If I invite my coworkers to interact with me, I'm not allowed to interact with my DND friends, or vice versa? Why? And what control should I exert over my coworkers and DND friends in order to make this boundary clear? How do I do that?
I think it goes a little overboard to say that racial minorities aren't safe using their real names online. As for people who have something controversial to say, I generally avoid saying it in public under my real name anyway. Such is the human condition.
I didn't quite get the need for anonymity until I was at SXSW and watched danah's opening talk (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kl0VANhnvxk) and talked to her a bit more about it afterward.
I realized how incredibly privileged and rare my situation is that I can live my life fairly openly online with little fear of repercussion.
- As a heterosexual no one questions my sexual orientation online, or will harass me for it. Photos of me with a significant other won't cause an issue with anyone.
- I don't have, nor have I ever had an abusive relationship in which I must distance myself from someone.
- I'm fortunate enough to live in a country that (generally) allows me to do whatever online and I don't need to fear for my life. I am also a native born citizen here and don't have any immigration issues to deal with.
- I don't fear for my job because of what I say online (my work situation is very understanding and isn't nosy). Of course, not everyone works in technology.
- I have no children to protect
- I also feel that I understand the internet rather well and generally have a feeling for the direct repercussions of something that I do.
These (and many other things) aren't true for everyone. I felt silly for not realizing it beforehand, partially because danah had hung out at my house at hackathons and such even, and I just didn't get it until her presentation.
There is a place for anonymous and public social networks. There are dozens of online forums and websites for gay teenagers, for example. People at risk just treat the internet the same way they treat the analog. Talk to people you can trust, in places that are private (and anonymous).
A lot of these policies really strike me as White Supremacism 2.0. To quote Wikipedia:
"White supremacy, as with racial supremacism in general, is rooted in ethnocentrism and a desire for hegemony."
In other words, white supremacism isn't about white people per se. Rather, it's about promoting one culture as the dominant one while trying to suppress all other cultures. That's exactly what these policies are doing.
From a real name policy to "White Supremacy" is quite a leap.
I think back on planet earth, what's more likely is that the people who created these systems are insisting on real names to solve one sort of problem without thinking about the other problems it may cause, rather than "a desire for hegemony" or "promoting one culture as the dominant one".
Your parent's point of view is the current extension of political correctness taken to it's extreme. That is to say, the world is steadily being encroached by the idea that not expressly considering a minority in a decision is the same as actively campaigning against them.
Well, Mark Zuckerberg has claimed that people that don't use their real name are Bad People(tm). (1000 thanks to whoever can conjure up a link to that quote) Personally, that seems like he's attacking anyone that opposes his idea of trying to force people into using real names.
The same can't be said of other systems (Google+, Quora, etc) to my knowledge.
Or - and this is taking the opposite polemical position to yours - that designing systems without empathy is reprehensible. I lean more to the latter but that doesn't mean what you claim is entirely false either.
It's not as simple as anyone paints it, and what's more, it's an area where short-term economic incentives are often drastically misaligned with both goals of personal autonomy and, more arguably, long-term success of a community and product.
But unrestrained personal autonomy gets you 4chan. The real problem is trying to flatten the richness of human experience to fit through TweetBook+ (or whatever comes next). No easy answers and the problem ain't going away.
Hegemony is very distinct from the white supremacist movement. While white supremacists probably promote hegemonic practices, this does not mean that some engineer who didn't take the time to think about people in circumstances very different from his/her own is a white supremacist. Sadly, dominant members of a hegemonic culture (read: pretty much every culture) participate subconsciously to reinforce the hegemony simply by not being aware of it.
I understand that you don't like the Real Name requirement, but pulling out the Big Gun Labels like this is akin to calling Larry Page the New Hitler. It's not accurate, and all you're going to do is make people angry.
So is your argument that the system does not promote cultural hegemony, or that it is not intended to promote cultural hegemony? Because the latter, while it may be true, is largely irrelevant. I think it's entirely possible that you can get forces that promote hegemony as an unintended consequence of seemingly innocuous design decisions, or else as an emergent phenomenon of complex systems.
I'm not trying to call Larry Page the new Hitler, rather I'm just pointing out that there is an existing word for what Danah Boyd and others are describing.
ender7 (an ironic name) did not refute the idea that the system promotes hegemony. His issue appears to be with your conflation of hegemony and white supremacy.
Your argument is a classic logical fallacy- "white supremacists want hegemony. We have a hegemony. Ergo, the system is run by white supremacists"
Oddly enough, a lot of who used to be "white suprematists" are these days are more of the non-hegemonic cultural-separatist types, heavily influenced by postmodernism and postcolonial theory in the "right of Peoples to self-determination" sort of sense (at least those associated with the 'New Right' theorists). You end up with strange spectacles like French nationalists getting along well with right-wing Turkish nationalists, Japanese nationalists, or Israeli nationalists--- they all agree that they'd like to observe each other peacefully from a distance, in each group's pure, mono-ethnic country, each with their Glorious Histories and whatnot, maybe with the occasional bit of tourism, but definitely no immigration.
White supremacy did not invent hegemony. It's a fallacy. There are people who say that places like Africa or North America was peaceful before the europeans. Unfortunately they were both very active places where people would kill their neighbours. It's a part of humanity, one we need to fight against.
I can't tell you how heartening it is to read your post, because it means that people can realize the error of something like this and change their beliefs.
People who keep claiming that "we live in public" and that everything is out there anyway are extremely naive.
And are usually adult, white, heterosexual males in technology (like me). It wasn't until I got married that I realized how naive some of the beliefs that I had held my whole life.
So is there evidence that children are at a higher risk of being kidnapped (or some other bad thing) if their info is public? There was some tabloid scaremongering to this effect in the early days of the Internet, but there are now enough kids online that there should be enough data to confirm or refute this myth.
Having a strong online presence means putting up pictures of what's important to you. That means that pictures of your kids are out there and traceable to you.
Personally, I don't think that it increases any danger to kids, I use my real name and post pictures of my adorable kids all the time, but I respect those who feel differently.
> Having a strong online presence means putting up pictures of what's important to you. That means that pictures of your kids are out there and traceable to you.
It does? I have a blog, a well-used Facebook profile, an active twitter account, and I comment on Reddit and HN all the time—but the last picture of me that exists on the public internet is from 2005. All the photos I actually want to share with my family are in a shared folder in my Dropbox account.
I guess I have a strong mental separation of my public and private lives; I would never talk about my family on my blog, nor would I talk about my job on Facebook.
Interesting. I don't even try to differentiate my work and family stuff. A good story is a good story, so I share family stories at work and work stories with my Facebook friends. Flickr photos are for everyone (I even had an ad agency contact me and buy the rights to use one of my kids' pictures in an ad campaign).
Part of what the original article was talking about is that having a "real names only" policy makes it harder to keep that strong separation of public and private lives.
My wife hates Facebook - people keep on tagging her and our kids in photos, thus reversing our efforts at keeping our photos private. She only logs in so she can remove the tags.
When I go to tech events like SXSWi, there might be 100 photos of me generated in a single night and posted online by others. It all depends what it means for you in being hyper-active on the web and in the tech scene.
If I had a kid that I was bringing along with me occasionally, there could easily be photos of them on there too. A real danger? Probably not. But what if I had an ex with a restraining order against them, and they didn't know where I, or my kids were living? That could be a potential issue if they were name searchable, geotagged, etc.
I guess the real point is that I can't imagine all of the situations, because they probably don't apply to me right now. You can find my address, phone number, email, employment history, favorite coffee shop, online easily. Yet, I'm ok with that. Not everyone would be, and that's understandable.
Also you're not female. Have a feminine name in a male-dominated environment adds to suspicion (is that a guy masquerading as girl?) and (mostly harmless and unintended) gender-bias comments or, what I feel is even worse, special attention.
The larger reason I don't post publicly with my real name is that, quite frankly, what I have to say in public needs to be in context. If you google my name and it comes up with a bunch of comments, and you don't take the time to read the context then it's very, very easy to come to a false conclusion of a person's beliefs.
Disclaimer: I use my real name in g+ but I don't post publicly and disable my posts to be shared. I'm no dissident but I value my searchable-privacy and so do my friends. I post more in g+ than I ever did in Facebook because of the circles feature.
Last quick note: I've had seemingly innocuous content that was searchable on my name used against me, a long time ago. I've since taken great care to remain anonymous and have found that my use of public forums is far more free and enjoyable and I have no issues at all speaking with others whose names I do not know (HN as a case).
My feelings on this matter were set when I was a young child. I read about the Nazi era in germany, and why homosexuals were much less likely to survive than jews.
The answer was, ironically, due to how liberal Germany was about homosexuality in the 1920s. Many gay people came out of the closet, there were magazines and national organizations to support various groups of gay and lesbian people and their interests.
When the nazis came to power, they went to the offices of these magazines and groups and got the lists of all the members, and then they went and systematically executed every one of them.
Now, we don't live in a nazi regime, of course. But there are many, much less severe, things that can be done to people, from employment discrimination to harassment.
The old saying, "On the internet, nobody knows you're a dog" describes a feature, not a bug. It lets dogs participate with people, without fear of being harassed by cats, or whatever. It also keeps the topic on the topic at hand, not on the question of whether dogs should be allowed on the internet.
Privacy is good for the community. It is good for everybody. Even if you don't have a fascist government that wants to spy on you.
Danah Boyd's persistently looping problem is that she's never designed, built, implemented, maintained, marketed, sold, held accountable for nor financed anything, never mind experienced the personal sacrifices and risk associated with the engagement of entrepreneurial activities yet she seems to always be first in line to demand change from the work of others while invoking her rights to benefit from the fruit of their labor.
She's today's critic and tomorrow's cheerleader wrapped in the guise of unaccountable academia, whose success rises and falls with the whims of those who manipulate her data for their own purposes, to include herself.
Truth be told, social networks have existed since the beginning of time, mostly in the meatspace, but also many in print or via other methods of communication. Some of those networks required their membership to provide bona fides while others went to the other extreme and forbade any form of real identification. A person could then choose which network to associated with, or not, depending on their personal preferences and the same could be argued for the network facilitators.
There will always be a contrarian reaction to any established rules, so while some social networks will only allow you to participate using your true credentials, others will be present to allow just the opposite, just like Hacker News.
This argument is used around here to explain away anyone that doesn't agree with your favorite startups's angle...
Its so much more complicated than that.
The clearcut assumption that those who express this particular ideal are immature and inexperienced is ridiculous.
It's not very complicated. A service debuts and within a matter of weeks acquires a user base exceeding 20 million people. Not without complication or frustration on behalf of those who still prefer the use of bardic names, but a success nonetheless. Yet one person still reserves their right to stand over the shoulder of the actual developers and issue directives that they feel would complement their experience, regardless of what 20+ million people think. And when her directives are ignored, she claims abuse.
Having to use your own name while negotiating the tricky waters of social relationships is not abuse, it's the first-world problem of a petulant, spoiled child.
There are many things that one does not have to use, but are big parts of our culture. I think that social networking is becoming such a thing. As such, I think the "you don't have to use it" argument rings false. It means either using it in a way that you are not comfortable with, or not using it and being left out.
I think if the internet has done anything for our society, it's taught us that we don't all have to live in a huge monoculture where everyone watches the same three TV networks.
And if it works for television, it works for social networks? I find that unconvincing. There probably will be niche social networks, but I suspect most people will belong to at least one of the big ones.
The idea that widely used private accommodations aren't abusive in some degree when they're exclusionary was put out of the US with Loving VS Virginia.
You get a lot of jobs and other opportunities through social networks. Additionally, it is widely shown (and known) that non white named people are discriminated against widely when hiring.
Precluding someone from using a name they go by that's not their given name is literally hurting the careers and lives of many people. If Fardool Zarkari wants to go by Frank Zach, that's something that he should be able to do.
The idea that white men of usual middle class or higher background know that they're right when mandating real identities is an exercise in hubris, inadvertent exclusion, accessory to domestic abuse, and accessory to discrimination.
I get this makes your job harder with respect to making people not be tools. Doesn't mean you shouldn't still accommodate it.
> If Fardool Zarkari wants to go by Frank Zach, that's something that he should be able to do.
It's not difficult to change your legal name. My ancestor had a foreign-sounding surname which got Anglicized upon arrival to America. If that's all it took to make his descendants (including me) "privileged", getting your name changed seems like a no brainer!
1> Many families hate you if you do this. My father in law to this day still gets crap for shortening their Polish name to a easy subversion of it. Many people in certain neighborhoods accuse you of acting white to change your name, etc. It's common in Asian households to have an American set of names and an Asian set of names. Legally, sometimes it's one, sometimes it is the other, other times, it's a mix.
2> It's incredibly parent based (i.e. the people who gave you the sometimes crippling name) while you're under 18. By that time, you've been on social networks for years as the "bad" name. You then have to convince everyone to not call you by the old name. As a person who has been plagued by a nickname to my first name that my parents like, that I do not nor have ever used, I can attest changing what people call you is really hard. About 10% of people still call me the nickname, which forwards the nickname to contexts they see me in.
3> I'd like to quote you the state of Washinton's feelings on the common law precedent for name changes:
>Common Law Name Change: Common law name change results by simply using the new name consistently and exclusively for all purposes. This is legal because a person has a common law right to use any name he or she chooses. No legal proceedings or attorneys fees are involved in this type of name change. The common law method has disadvantages because many governmental institutions may require documentation proving that a valid name change has been made. Since you have not gone to court and acquired a court order for your name change, you will need some other document to satisfy this requirement.
I find the complications of #2 above yet the rights implied by #3 mean if a person signs an affidavit that their name is X the social networking site should get the hell over itself and let them be named X on the site, whether they have completed the name change yet or not.
1> The same people will hate you for using a "white" name on Google+. Either you use your "nonwhite" name despite the disadvantage, in the hope that enough people using "nonwhite" names will normalize them and remove said disadvantage. Or you use a "white" name because you don't feel like fighting that battle (which yes, will make you a "collaborator" in some people's eyes). You can't really do both.
(Although we're really talking about "English" sounding names here, since Polish people are hardly "nonwhite".)
2> Parents have a lot of control over our lives - sad but true. For example someone with crazy cult-following parents is more likely to end up in a crazy cult. Or for a more mundane example, someone with rich parents is less likely to be saddled with student loans. (The European approach to this inequality is to make education free, but try do that in the USA!)
I don't think you're forced to use a nickname that isn't your legal name though.
3> Sure, a signed affidavit should be just as valid as a court order - I can't imagine a social networking site would actually bother to check either. The numbers are just too big.
Social networks, especially powerful social networks are a powerful source of jobs. I'm not so concerned about the right to go about as Gte910h, but the right of a person with a non-European name to use a European sounding pseudonym if they want for purposes of getting a job.
Non-European names are shown to face continual discrimination (unconsciously or no).
Yes, you can change your name by a mere notification to everyone that you have, but it pisses off your family, and is pretty hard to do if you're under 18, which is when people join social networks.
Since we are on the topic of names, Bringhurst notes:
"An increasing number of persons and institutions, from e.e. cummings to WordPerfect, now come to the typographer in search of special treatment. In earlier days, it was kings and deities whose agents demanded that their names be written in a larger size or set in a specially ornate typeface; now it is business firms and mass-market products demanding an extra helping of capitals, or a proprietary face, and poets pleading, by contrast, to be left entirely in the vernacular lower case. But type is visible speech, in which gods and men, saints and sinners, poets and business executives are treated fundamentally alike. Typographers, in keeping with the virtue of their trade, honor the stewardship of texts and implicitly oppose private ownership of words."
First, most the comments say this is a white american (where american means United States, sigh) policy, but as a tiny brown low-middle-class Mexican I have no problem going with my real name.
Second, Is Facebook's 'No custom HTML/CSS on profiles' policy is an abuse of power? How is that having a rule on a social network is an abuse of power? You don't like FB's boring profiles? use MySpace. You don't like using your real name? Go hangout on Twitter or 4Chan for that matter.
I can see why some people don;t like using their real names, but calling it an abuse of power is such a ridiculous overstatement.
Yes, because the policy works for you, it should therefore work for everyone.
Also, according to you, a policy which prevents compromising a system is exactly the same as forcing people to divulge information that could cause them harm.
The point is, it's a social network. Owned by Google. Who cares if you don't like their TOS? Vote with your feet, don't make ridiculous claims like they're abusing power and oppressing minorities.
That is an unsatisfying way to look at it. I think a better way to look at it is "it's public knowledge, therefore the public has the freedom to complain about it and hope that Google will listen."
And that's fine. That's essentially the point I was making.
No one forces you to sign up for Google+. If you complain about the lack of anonymity and refuse to sign up, maybe Google will budge. It will cost them to block pseudonyms and I'm sure they'll weigh those costs.
What's ridiculous is acting like this is somehow a breach of human rights.
forcing people? who the actual f-- is forcing anyone to use g+?
you would have far better luck arguing that you are forced to use your real name on facebook (as it seems "everyone is on facebook", and thus "you must be also" is a valid sentiment), but even there it's a biiig stretch..
and i don't ever remember the controversy of real names on facebook..
And the comments, while using 'real names' mostly, show that this policy cannot protect against ignorance and miscommunication. I read it, about half the comments, and had to facepalm when several people (Hey, are you really 'Scott Wakeman' or 'Brian Dayhoff'? Because.. That would suck) went down that sorry 'Google's service, Google's rules' route. One even using a lawn as an analogy. I'd applaud to that, but given the ignorance of the statements within I doubt that the irony was intended.
Yes, Google can ban everyone from their service as they please. No, that is not a valid argument in this discussion.
I left my 'I'm taking my ball home and don't play with you anymore' or alternatively 'We don't like you, you cannot join our game' attitude in preschool. Please. Stop that. Assume that people have a brain and use it. Use yours _more_.
Ah - but what I tried to say with my first line was:
The following is not directed at you, the poster of the comment on HN/the link, but instead a reaction reading the post on G+.
In other words: Nothing against you, sorry if it seemed that way/if I've been unclear. The .. rant was entirely related to the content on G+ and my problems with certain statements there.
Unless they start requiring ID be presented every time the Internet is used, while big brother is watching over your shoulder, the whole argument is moot.
There is no way to enforce people using their real name online and such policies will only hurt the reputations of companies that try to enforce them.
If I really wanted to bully someone online, I could sign up for an account using a fake name and a proxy/VPN. Nobody would be able to stop me. Requiring people to use their real name, as if by magic, is not going to stop anything.
I'm kind of surprised that I haven't seen people stating the obvious: on a practical level Google+ has (and will always have) anonymous accounts.
You can create G+ account under any random, but plausible looking name. You can be 15 year French old girl and call yourself "George Bush" (there are already 3 of those on G+). It's not like Google requires valid proof of identity to sign up.
Do people, including Danah Boyd, do not realize that? Given that in practice G+ has anonymous accounts, what is the fuss about?
I understand that Google officially won't acknowledge that but the "no anonymity" is just posturing. They have no practical way and probably no intention of making sure that people provide the real names.
So the issue here seems to be not about anonymity but about being obvious about being anonymous and the many justifications given in favor of anonymity do not carry over.
You're describing Facebook. Google+ has a link for reporting people who are using fake names. Someone who wasn't using Google+ much could probably slip through the cracks, but someone using it a lot with a fake name? Good luck.
Edit: as tomkarlo points out, facebook has an option to report fake profiles, too. Also I found this quote from Facebook's former Director of Marketing, Randi Zuckerburg, troubling: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2847491
I have someone in my circles with over 200 people connected. Using a name that would not pass the Google+ name challenge. Yet not one would ever challenge that account because that pseudonym is the right name that that account should be using.
Wow, over 200 people and not a single hater. Consider yourself lucky. Or just wait a few months and see if that someone is still there, with the same name.
>Google+ has a link for reporting people who are using fake names.
That's deep! That's what i call the real power of social. You can always trust that your neighbor is watching you...
How could a sane supposedly normal person come up with an idea of such a link? How could a group of such people to implement and release it to the public? Did they suppress their vomiting reflex? Or may be they just don't have it at all, like drones.
How could a sane supposedly normal person come up with an idea of such a link?
It's all part of the magical thinking. If you know someone's True Name, you have the power to require them to be polite. But if it turns out that you don't have their real True Name, your spells will fizzle!
Geez, the more you think about the "civility" rationale the harder your head hurts. Let's go back to the simpler explanation: Google wants to require everyone to use a canonical identifier to make it easier to perform the giant JOIN across your entire life. Now the rationale of the "report your neighbor" link becomes clear: People who don't use their True Names are committing the mortal sin of... (shudder)... denormalization. Off with their heads!
That's a completely separate issue from anonymity.
Let me ask you this: should frivolous whims of minority dictate product decisions at Google? Or your own startup, should you have one?
The serious pro-anonymity arguments revolve around people who have to keep their identity secret or something bad will happen to them (they will be stalked, harassed etc.).
That is very different from saying "I want to be called spud because that's what I want and that's my Live Journal handle". A different standard applies to evaluating this vs. evaluating "anonymity to remain safe" arguments.
Insistance on using real names is Google's product decision. It's also an important product decision which will have a profound effect on how G+ will play out long term. Maintaining the culture of a large community is pretty much the biggest problem in that space and insisting on using real names (and not, say, adolescent or whimsical nicknames) is an important part of steering the culture towards civility.
Why do you feel that random people on the internet should dictate product decision to Google team?
Would you feel the same if you were running an on-line community, doing your best to shape it in a way you feel is good, and then random people on the internet demanded that you change your product in a way that they think is good but you don't?
> That's a completely separate issue from anonymity.
I take issue with your premise. Anonymity is a scale including "real names" -> pseudonymity -> anonymity.
There are folks who want anonymity and folks who want "real names". Problem here is the "real names" supporters want to ban pseudonyms as well. I take real issue with that.
Pseudonyms aren't a recent thing. Stage names, noms de plume and masked balls have been around for millennia. The drive to purge that from our online public spaces is a real threat to society as a whole.
If you aren't happy giving out your real name, you shouldn't be using social networking.
Anyone with a social graph of any size has already betrayed their identity, whether they know it or not. When people are sharing large volumes of data about themselves and their connections to others, they are a correlation attack waiting to happen. Pseudonymity on the internet is largely a fool's paradise - either you are fully anonymous, or you are using an identity which is separated from your own by a brittle and invisible membrane.
You may be filtering out low-level annoyances, but you're also establishing a false sense of security. If anon chooses to dox you, they'll do it and there's not a damned thing you can do to stop them. Pseudonymity offers some degree of protection for people with little to hide, but if for whatever reason you sincerely believe yourself to be a target, you should act as if your pseudonym has already been compromised.
So you say my ex is going to correlate the social graphs of well-known friends of mine to find me online?
What's the difference for you between a forum for anonymous alcoholics and a G+ circle with 'Joe' and 'Bob'?
Don't conflate the wish to withhold your name with the 'I need to be anonymous or the government is going to kill me' with all the other reasons, please.
>So you say my ex is going to correlate the social graphs of well-known friends of mine to find me online?
That's exactly what abusive ex partners due.
I am currently working with a social networking component of an iPhone app and "Guy who used to beat his wife" and "Not being found by that guy if you're the ex-wife" is a scenario we're actively making sure is protected against.
You are aware many pictures have geolocation data in them no?
Whoa. I think we're on the same side (reading your other posts here. Please do the same..).
I was merely pointing out (tongue in cheek) that one (the parent of my post) doesn't need to play the 'you're not anonymous anyway and cannot hide' card.
There are plenty of good reasons (one is just .. preference) to choose a pseudonym. I wanted to put a little perspective on the thread. Holding up for people that rely on this feature for their well-being is on a different level. You seem to come from that direction. I cannot comment on cases like that, because I'm ultimately lucky to have no such experiences and live a relaxed life.
> If you aren't happy giving out your real name, you shouldn't be using social networking.
The many dissidents who live in oppressive regimes and use these tools to coordinate resistance and provide support for like-minded allies will care not even a little bit about your guidance. The privilege implied by the bias in your remark is exactly the trouble with these real name policies in the first place.
Christians in China, gay kids in the Bible belt, women in Saudi Arabia, they're all entitled to take measured risks to find fellowship in their struggle. It's not for you or Google or Facebook to tell them what they should or should not do with their identity on social tools. Assuming the social platform operators provide reasonable disclosure about the risks, it's up to these folks to assume those risks and try for anonymity if they want it.
Given the fact that the number of social tools is only increasing, isn't there feasibly a social network for everyone?
If anonymity is important, use Twitter or another product.
I actually appreciate Google making people use their real names, it's a step forward to actually having the ability to make people responsible for their actions online. Google isn't forcing you to use your real name everywhere until the end of time, simply on their Google Plus Network.
> I actually appreciate Google making people use their real names, it's a step forward to actually having the ability to make people responsible for their actions online.
I'm going to be honest: your comfort and enjoyment of the internet is orders of magnitude less valuable to me than the knowledge that good, decent folks who are endangered by harmful zealots can have a safe place to communicate with their compatriots. If the companies responsible for these platforms don't recognize the importance of this opportunity, they're squandering their unique position to make some good money while making the world a better place. And that's a shame.
See, in an ideal world there would be an internet with lots of web sites, some that make people like smokinjoe happy by requiring real names and others that make you happy, by providing a forum for people to speak out anonymously.
If anything, your viewpoint--that every single website on the internet has to be run the way you would run it--is the more oppressive one.
> If anything, your viewpoint--that every single website on the internet has to be run the way you would run it--is the more oppressive one.
That's an awfully cute straw man, but not really what's being discussed here. My calling for some basic human decency is no more "oppressive" than my remarking that hey, people who kick puppies or don't say thank you to waiters are pricks.
> by providing a forum for people to speak out anonymously.
That doesn't address the issue.
The value of large companies with large social graphs is one of networking. Having a soapbox to talk shout into silence doesn't do anything to improve the cause of someone who can't be safe with their own identity online.
Cramming people who are unable, for their own safety and well-being, into a ghetto cut off from the larger world is hardly a kind thing to do. For one, it deprives them of the ability to open communications with allies whose circumstances allow for help or resources to begin flowing.
At a certain scale, the privilege of network effects comes with social responsibility. People have the right, and often the need, to define their identity along specific parameters. Refusing to acknowledge that does not respect users – and it's entirely valid to condemn that.
That's an awfully cute straw man, but not really what's being discussed here. My calling for some basic human decency is no more "oppressive" than my remarking that hey, people who kick puppies or don't say thank you to waiters are pricks.
Lots of people actually, voluntarily, want to participate in social networks based on people's real names. You don't want to let them do that.
Cramming people who are unable, for their own safety and well-being, into a ghetto cut off from the larger world is hardly a kind thing to do. For one, it deprives them of the ability to open communications with allies whose circumstances allow for help or resources to begin flowing.
No, it doesn't, because there are lots of places online for people to "open communications with allies whose circumstances allow for help". In fact, most of the web is accepting of pseudonymous or anonymous socialization. (You're on one of many such sites right now.)
Facebook (and now Google+) are an exception, and Facebook, at the very least, is popular. That doesn't make it a public utility--it's still a private service that people are free to use or ignore. No one's obligated to use Facebook and no one on Facebook is obligated to truthfully divulge any more information than they want.
> Lots of people actually, voluntarily, want to participate in social networks based on people's real names. You don't want to let them do that.
I certainly don't want a bunch of privileged western jagoffs to enjoy a marginally better online experience at the expense of anyone else not similarly privileged. Ya got me there. I'm just not impressed by the tradeoff.
I'm reminded of a favorite book:
"Must be a yearning deep in human heart to stop other people from doing as they please. Rules, laws — always for other fellow. A murky part of us, something we had before we came down out of trees, and failed to shuck when we stood up. Because not one of those people said: Please pass this so that I won't be able to do something I know I should stop. Nyet, tovarishchee, was always something they hated to see neighbors doing. Stop them for their own good."
I think when we optimize around what the group wants at the expense of the individual, we're on our way to misery. Let each person do what is best for their own needs, so long as it doesn't come at the cost of any other individual. That's a good rule for any human community, including one built on the internet.
And that includes companies. If these guys want a completely homogenous platform where everyone is perfectly marketable to advertisers, that's ultimately their decision and their right. But it's a damn waste of a lot of power.
When you build an online community around the idea of absolute individual freedom, you get 4chan. And, quite in opposition to your viewpoint, this kind of environment brings out all the racism, sexism, homophobia, mob rule, and other assholery you can imagine. Still, people participate in that kind of free for all, and they're free to do so.
Outside of 4chan, people are figuring out that online communities, just like communities in real life, work better when there's a social contract. You can get downvoted into oblivion, flagged to death, or hellbanned from Hacker News, but you accept these infringements on your freedom of expression because it keeps the trolls out. Social networks (which, if you've forgotten, are designed to enable communication between people who already know each other, largely in real life) enforce a social norm (or in some cases an actual policy) of using real names. This makes people you know in real life (presumably by their real names) easier to find, and makes your behavior accountable to your real-life reputation.
Now, maybe some of these social contracts are wiser than others. But unlike the social contract that governs a physical community[1], online communities are trivial to join, trivial to leave, and not that difficult to form in comparison. This is a freedom of association that's unprecedented in world history, and really gives us the best of both worlds.
Finally, if you're all that angry about "privileged western jagoffs" forming their own exclusionary communities, you'd be better served railing against e.g. the Freemasons, rather than Google+.
[1] It's worth pointing out that most countries have very strict laws mandating that people are known to the government, their employers, etc. not only by a "real name" that requires legal action to change, but by some sort of identification number. Anonymously earning income, using banks, and getting health care are much bigger problems, and there's much more potential benefit in solving those problems than in bickering about whatever website people are using to share pictures of cats.
"Anonymously earning income, using banks, and getting health care are much bigger problems"
Because of fraud of course, not because legal names are somehow holy. Did you know for example that passports are a recent invention? Did you know that even names where at some point invented? They are now though widely used and conventional.
Honestly however, throughout all your replies here, I have not to be very honest heard of one reason why the choice of people should be limited by such a gigantic organisation which in many ways defines the internet and for a number of people is the interent.
The excuse that your mother might be apprehensive about commenting because djjd has commented is frankly ridiculous. Firstly, you can simply educate her that this is how the internet works. Anyway, I do not think your mother would comment if that person was using a real name either because that person would probably be a friend or a number or friends or coworkers and frankly, I would rather my mother did not so engage in commenting in such spheres. My mother is some distant figure they get to meet when they come home and she makes them a very nice dinner.
Your second point was basically you like it and therefore I do not care that other people do not like it. You are saying google has the choice to make such policy and you disagreeing with it does not matter at all because if you do not like it you can go somewhere else. That is what those in power say to those that challenge them. Not saying you are in power at all, but when someone criticises something, you can not simply say well you do not like it, then leave. If I am challenging the government because of a policy, my government can not simply say, well leave. Nor indeed is it an excuse that the rich may leave if we tax them.
We are talking about millions of people. Google+ is hardly a niche. When we talk about Facebook, we are talking about billions of people. You see, that is how social networks work. Though you can have a network for those that use nicknames and those that do not, what if these people want to share the same network?
Finally, Facebook has been very vocal about its antagonism against anonymity. Google is very high profile too so they enforcing a real name policy is not a small deal. Soon, they will want us to use real names everywhere. These are not small fish. They are giants, really, in some ways, the governments of the internet. So it is not about G+ or Facebook. I think, it is about a principle. The principle to be anonymous. The principle to not be judged by colour, ethnicity, gender, nationality, orientation, disability, etc. Names convey a lot of information. Indeed they convey all of these informations.
The internet is a level playing field where people are judged based on content, unlike, in many instances, in the real life. The internet is so awesome because in many ways it is not like real life. It is, in many ways, completely different from real life. That is what has made it such a powerful engine of our society and if you wish the power structures in the real world to be transported to this world, then you must be mad.
Not saying you are in power at all, but when someone criticises something, you can not simply say well you do not like it, then leave.
We're talking about what websites people visit in their spare time here, not the government or Comcast. It's the equivalent of saying, "If you don't like Chicken McNuggets, don't go to McDonalds and order them."
So it is not about G+ or Facebook. I think, it is about a principle. The principle to be anonymous. The principle to not be judged by colour, ethnicity, gender, nationality, orientation, disability, etc. Names convey a lot of information. Indeed they convey all of these informations.
The internet is a level playing field where people are judged based on content, unlike, in many instances, in the real life. The internet is so awesome because in many ways it is not like real life. It is, in many ways, completely different from real life. That is what has made it such a powerful engine of our society and if you wish the power structures in the real world to be transported to this world, then you must be mad.
That's not an argument against G+ or Facebook not allowing pseudonyms, it's an argument against people using G+ or Facebook in the first place.
If you're looking for some type of utopian metaverse where everyone takes on androgynous identities and interact with strangers, there's plenty of that to be found. Social networking sites were specifically created to provide something different, and they got popular because a lot of people want that.
It turns out most people use the internet as a tool to interact with the real world. If the internet was just some sort of metaverse, it wouldn't be a powerful engine of society at all--it's useful specifically because it's connected to the real world. Google and Wikipedia help people find information about the real world. Amazon helps people select and purchase physical goods to be shipped to them in the real world. Your bank's website helps you pay your bills, including the mortgage or rent for whatever physical chunk of the real world your flesh and bones sleep in at night. Countless websites exist to help people meet up and physically pleasure each other's (potentially) gendered, colored, disabled bodies in whatever orientation they want in real life. Likewise, Facebook and Google+ help people keep in touch with other people in the real world.
People who want pseudonymous conversations with strangers still have no shortage of choices. (You might notice that we're having one right now, or we would be if not for our choice of usernames.)
Before I'm finished, I have another point to make. All that Facebook and Google+ did was set up a web application that millions of people voluntarily used, and millions of people voluntarily chose not to use, for free. There's no force or natural monopoly here, just a diversion, a leisure activity if you will. I honestly cannot understand the sense of entitlement here. It's not like people don't have choices, it's that for the people who use Facebook, Facebook is what they want, and for the people who use Google+, Google+ is what they want.
If you (or indeed anyone) feels strongly enough that some type of anonymous social network would be a great idea, and that the current plethora of news sites and web forums are missing something, why don't you back up your words and set it up yourself? If that's what people want, then it'll be a success. Hey, it might be a lot to ask, but it's no more than the people who built Facebook and Google+ have done. If your principles are so important that you're personally insulted that Facebook and Google+ don't follow them, they're strong enough that you should consider doing something about the situation yourself.
The real freedom of choice is that some people can choose to use websites that enforce the real name rule, and some people can choose to use websites that don't enforce the real name rule. If you don't want to allow any website anywhere to enforce the real name rule, you're taking that freedom away from people who want that environment.
Let us stick with the site in question, G+. You can block persons very, very easily. It's just 2(?) clicks away. Someone posts in your (extended) circles using a pseudonym and you don't like it? You can _easily_ make sure you'll never be disturbed in that perfect world of 'valid' names.
I see no freedom issues here?
The _real_ issue is, that you want your personal believe, which in this case might align with what Google arbitrary enforces or not, forced upon everyone. To save you those 2 clicks. And maybe (I'm not trying to make this a personal attack, but this is more or less the only reason I can actually imagine as being 'pro real names' among users) you just don't want to end up in the dilemma that your mum is listed as KnittingGoddess and your girlfriend as PinkUnicorn, because that would mean that you'd either have to block them or - cope with other people's choice of a name.
Again, your argument is really, really backwards. I was suspended on G+ because of a name that didn't conform to the rule (intentionally, I set it to "short-version-of-firstname .", as a protest. It was my real name before) Now - did you see me somewhere? To help you out: I'd be "Ben .". Have you seen me in your circles? In your incoming stream? No? So... Why do you bother?
YOU are in charge of your personal network. Here, like in any other social network. Over at FB you'd just not befriend me. Here you'd just not put me in a circle. If I'd do that though you'd notice that a creepy person with no real name is in your incoming stream and you'd block me easily. Done.
You _have_ your environment. You still fail to understand the difference between rules about one's own profile ("I'd like to be darklajid") and some weird filtering that is going to happen anyway, names or not ("I'd like to see nothing but realnames").
Listen - you can choose what you see on the network. I want to choose what represents me. You have to use the controls I talked about (i.e. blocking users) _anyway_, because you'll encounter people that you don't care about/that annoy you. I cannot imagine a reason for not being able to use these same mechanisms to build yourself the illusion of a world without pseudonyms. What stops you? Where's the danger for your use case?
Well, suppose I want to find my friend Henry Jones on Google+, but I can't because his pseudonym is Jameson Soulblighter, and since I know him from real life rather than online, I had no idea. Now I'll never get back in touch with him.
Now, it's possible that Henry Jones doesn't want to be found, but you can set your profile to be non-searchable.
Well, suppose I want to find my friend Jameson Soulblighter on Google+, but I can't because his real name is Henry Jones, and since I know him from online rather than real life, I had no idea. Now I'll never get back in touch with him.
I know enough people online that I'd consider friends and yet I don't know their full legal name.
It's probably fair to say that if you are close friends with certain people and yet don't know their real names, you're already keeping in touch with them somewhere on the internet anyway, and how completely different people use completely different websites is frankly not your business.
> how completely different people use completely different websites is frankly not your business.
Likewise? This is not helpful.
Some people want their pseudonym as 'main' handle, optionally adding their real name _if they please_. That would solve the usecase further above. Other people want to use their real name and _keep other people out unless they comply_. I really don't get it how you can try to put it different while keeping a straight face.
optionally adding their real name _if they please_. That would solve the usecase further above.
Um, one of the primary use cases of a social network is to search for people you know in real life by their real names. Making that entire thing "optional" hinders that. If your primary use case is to use a pseudonym, the entire rest of the web is more or less set up for you that way already.
For you (and maybe a lot of people, granted) the primary use case seems to be "Hey, let's search for that guy I know". For me it's not. I _still_ like to use these networks.
Along the whole thread you failed to provide a single decent argument why other people need to use their real name except for "_I_ want to find them like that". Great. But this attitude is not what I'd consider social in the first place.
If I'm darklajid on G+ or not, you don't see it. If your own friends in real life _want_ to connect with you in a social network, they better make sure that you can find them or write 'Puffy1982' on a napkin in that bar you meet and tell you to look them up using that pseudonym.
Do you only meet people that give you their full name? You go out, and everyone in a pub introduces himself as 'Hi, my name is John Smith' so that you're able to find them on Facebook? Or is it rather like 'Hey, I'm Ben. Nice to meet you'. And - y'know what? I'm Benjamin according to my passport and you still don't have my last name. No way to find me with only that bits of information.
So your use case falls apart for casual encounters, unless you already exchange explicit details. "Hey, can you add me on Facebook? You find me as ..." works with pseudonyms just that well. Don't say real names are easier to remember, write or pronounce or I have a huge pile of counter examples.
Countering the last open point: If you want to (for example) find your old class mates from primary school by their real name, there are sites for that. They specialize on this particular need of yours. That is not a primary function of a social network in my personal opinion.
Bottom line: Your use case is not universal, you can do whatever you like. Consider returning the favor to others.
For you (and maybe a lot of people, granted) the primary use case seems to be "Hey, let's search for that guy I know". For me it's not. I _still_ like to use these networks.
Well, those sites are obviously designed around that use case.
So your use case falls apart for casual encounters, unless you already exchange explicit details. "Hey, can you add me on Facebook? You find me as ..." works with pseudonyms just that well.
Personally, if I meet someone only once or twice and don't know their full name yet, I'm not going to add them as a friend on Facebook.
That said, you can use contact information, partial names, your friends' friends lists, and recognizing someone's face in their profile picture as ways of narrowing someone down. If I meet you in real life, you're not going to introduce yourself as darkajid, you're going to introduce yourself as Ben. If you're listed on a social network as Benjamin Foo and you're already a couple degrees away from me, I can search for "Ben" and the search algorithm will most likely pop up "Benjamin Foo" with a recognizable photo of you.
Outside of social networking sites, it's the predominant social norm to use a handle. Without pressuring or requiring people to use their real names, people by and large wouldn't use their real names and the sites wouldn't be usable.
Countering the last open point: If you want to (for example) find your old class mates from primary school by their real name, there are sites for that.
And they're slowly dying because no one wants to sign up for a single purpose site just to do that. They've been replaced by Facebook.
- No, I don't agree that those sites are designed around your use case. You argue that way because you use it that way and it works. I use it differently and - it works. It's a social network, not a stalker heaven.
- I don't even have a profile picture on Facebook. Your use case breaks again, although I do use my real name there, for now. Or should there be a rule for mandatory 'real images'? Maybe with some criteria about the exposed part of the face, the expression? Like on a passport in a variety of countries..? Oh, oh.. I know: I'm again breaking the usage here. Because the use of a profile picture (and a public one at that) is inherently important for social networks.
- If people, as you say, use pseudonyms everywhere outside of social networks, why can't you find them based on those? You still failed to list _one_ sensible use case that is broken when people use whatever name they want for their account. Except for 'Hey, I remember this dude from college'. If someone wants to connect with you on Facebook they'll make sure that it's possible or give you the right handle. It's no 'right' on your side to find them by information you deem sufficient. And it certainly doesn't break the sites: They are about social circles, not phone books. The latter needs full names so that you can look up my number (if I want to be listed). The former is about a collection of people that connect and exchange over the internet. Those probably already call themselves 'Timmy', 'Bobby', 'Tom' whenever they hang out even if the names are 'Timothy', 'Bob' and 'Thomas' - and they don't need their last name. I cannot even comprehend (ignoring any agreement here..) your view of this issue.
- If those sites have been replaced by Facebook, please - feel joy and glory because Facebook wants the same as you want and I couldn't care less about that site. Why exactly do you care about G+ doing the very same thing? You have your real name network on Facebook. Why don't you enjoy the place over there and let the more open minded among us try to talk some sense into Google?
We're arguing about the design choice of requiring real names. How does that design choice not support my use case over yours?
Profile pictures are obviously sufficient as a social norm. Some people don't follow it and that's fine; though it makes them harder to find, they can also turn on the explicit "you can't find me" feature).
If I know you in real life, I know you by your real name, not your reddit handle.
G+ is obviously intended to he a better Facebook.
I'm not really sure how to make my points more clear. If you'd like, I will sportingly let you have the last word.
We're actually arguing if that design decision (that certainly took place and yes, supports your use case. That's the reason why you defend it here, let's not forget that)
- Makes sense
- Is necessary
Both points have arguments pro and contra, but the real kicker for me is that no one, including you as one of the strongest proponent here on HN, has brought up a reason for this. It boils down to this:
- You cannot find people that you learned about years ago
Well.. Bad luck. They certainly are free to add their real name or whatever they gave you to their profile. If they don't - you don't need to find them.
- Pseudonyms lead to arguments, name calling and bad behavior
This site, as lots of other people said already, is a nice example to the contrary. I said it elsewhere and I still believe it: The quality of the comments is a function of the quality of the visitors/users. Not bound to the names they use.
If you know me in real life, you'd certainly _not_ know my real name for a long time and it's a chore to spell it to others. But IF we'd be real life friends (in contrast to FB 'friends' - I decline most offers there and don't see how they came up with that name..) I'd certainly make sure that you can contact me in every way that helps you. If I'm 'Some Dude' on Facebook, I'd tell you about it. If not - well - why is it more important that you can locate me than my desire to pick a name?
G+ is intented to be a better Facebook? We agree on this one. But 'better' is unfortunately the keyword here. For me, better is
- no name convention/rule (no surprise here)
- everything hidden by default
- no spam platform (aka: Let me opt out of _all_ games please. Before they even are developed)
Google doesn't make people use their real names, they cannot.
Google just forces people to have to try a tinsy bit harder to use fake names,
The more google tightens up its grip, the greater will be your false sense of security and the more devastating will be the consequences when someone takes advantage of you.
> Sure it is. On the kit that Company X owns, it gets to set whatever policies it likes.
Not when Company X is bound by the edict "Don't be evil," as is the parent of the product in question, here.
You have a fundamental right to represent your identity in whatever way is necessary to protect yourself from harm or harassment. Any company that makes money from codifying your identity but doesn't recognize that right is run by assholes.
That's exactly when I mean. Where is this "fundamental right" in UK, EU, US or any law? These are not public utilities! Please don't confuse your personal preferences with "the Constitution".
It's a fundamental right to go by whatever name you want in Common Law actually. You have to do it fairly consistently for entities to HAVE to recognize it though, and it does a good fuckup of your credit reports when you change, and is pretty hard to do pre-18 (and you have to tell lots of entities when you have a felony record).
Companies can't just do whatever they want. They are bound by laws and ethics. If these policies are found to discriminate against rape survivors (for example) they could very well be ruled illegal.
Don't confuse a legal grey area with something being legal.
Well, let me modify that to say "if something that could have made someone millions of dollars for not doing much could happen it would have already happened", something I fervently believe.
Good lawyers have surprised me before, but that's so clearly false, as one glance at Facebook will show, that I have to think it would get laughed out of any courtroom.
The cost of that freedom is everyone who uses/would like to use your service, is free to complain loudly and campaign for change.
If you're confident your business model can survive that sort of criticism, then you are free to do as you please. But without a monopoly and/or high cost of entry, eventually someone else is going to come along with different, more acceptable policies, and you lose.
Facebook is currently playing the customer lock-in/high cost of change by preventing you from exporting your data conveniently.
The argument to be made is not that Google has no right to set a "real names only" policy, but rather that Google OUGHT not set such a policy because it is harmful in the ways others have been describing.
They're public accomodations like hotels. As per the Civil Rights Act:
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited places of “public accommodation” from discrimination based on customers' race, sex, color, religion, or national origin.
If forcing use of "Legal Names" is a policy that unfairly targets a group protected by that, look for a lawsuit eventually.
Every hotel I've ever checked into wanted to see my passport or credit card. So apparently a public accomodation does have the right to know your real name.
You most certainly can get a credit card under a pseudonym. If you're not doing it for fraudulent purposes, it's done all the time (very popular in Asian families). In some states you must file a DBA to do it, but you can.
It is a legally recognized right to use an assumed name in most jurisdictions in the US. In many of them, you don't even have to use it all the time, although some require that for it to be valid, and it becomes a name change then.
Google+ and Facebook are two websites. There's the entire rest of the internet for pseudonymous discussion and "fellowship", and no one's trying to take that away.
If you're trying to escape a abusive ex-partner, you need to be on the social networks to make sure other people aren't posting pictures of you giving away your location.
I think those proposing a "Real Name" policy seem to be confused that having such a policy confers trust. Similarly, being anonymous does not automatically mean trolls everywhere. The fact is that even for sites with no RealName(tm) policy today, most of them have a ratio where normal conversation greatly outweighs trolls. So for the most part, the current model works.
I think we need to disassociate name => trust as a start and really start exploring how to cultivate a culture of expression without trying to force the whole name thing as a solution.
As a small example, given the recent storm around Airbnb and "EJ", can anyone (including Randi Zuckerberg) really advocate that EJ absolutely had to be using a real name in order to gain credibility?
I think it's more to the point that the existence of Facebook and Google+ didn't stop EJ from telling her story. You have the whole rest of the internet to be pseudonymous.
On the one hand, using your real identity online opens you up to abuse, danger, and invasion of privacy. On the other hand, anonymity brings out the scumbag side of way too many people.
I'd like to see "semi-real" identities. What I mean by that is that they could be mostly anonymous, but it would take some work to create them, and it should get harder to create them the more you have created.
The idea is that you can have an online presence separate from your real identity, which you can use for forums, games, social networks that go beyond your actual friends, and such. However, because you can't just trivially abandon a semi-real identity for a new one there would be some incentive to treat it with care similar to that you would use with your real identity. You wouldn't want to be an ass online and get your semi-real identity widely banned.
You're basically describing Hacker News, Reddit, even Slashdot - any system with a concept of karma and established identity over time. It is hardly a new idea, and certainly not the rocket science that everyone is pretending it is.
In any of them it's extremely easy to create fake accounts and troll, while keeping your main account safe. I don't see how they've solved the problem at all.
Not to mention that a social network like G+, where people have personal profiles and posts, attacks can be much more personal.
When I think through all the different conversations I've had online that I almost certainly would have chosen not to have were they directly traceable to my real name it becomes brain dead obvious to me that a "Real Name" policy is going to strangle the life out of G+ as a medium for interesting conversations. Sure I'll be on there ... but what you will see will be strictly my professional persona - the lowest common denominator of what I can afford to expose publicly across all aspects of my life without offending anyone I know.
It's weird to me that Google can't see that the answer to the problems they are trying to solve can be solved equally well with pseudonymous identities as they can with real identities. Hacker News and Reddit both implement systems that encourage respectful conversation through karma type systems which allow anyone to speak but everyone to easily see and understand the context of that speaker. That's all you need.
our site littlebiggy.org lets people talk about people so the potential for abuse made us insist on real names. people are used to this for facebook so it wasnt a problem until important posts about corruption were missed. so we've made pseudonyms a manual exception. if you need the protection of a pseudonym you request it from a littleBiggy editor. a hassle but the best balance we've found so far.
Pseudonymity is important, but cheap disposable identities lead to lots of community-destroying mischief.
What's the best practice for enabling pseudonyms but curtailing throwaway spam/harassment/sockpuppet account-creation?
For my next project I'm considering offering two registration options:
(1) Use Facebook, which is close enough to 'real names' for most purposes – while still having some room, as Boyd notes, for many users of persistent pseudonyms.
(2) Buy a pseudonym with a nonrefundable Bitcoin payment. If you're serious about pseudonymity, why not go all the way? This is a variant on the 'Metafilter $5 one-time fee' model, but as Matt Haughey has noted that still occasionally suffers from chargebacks by dedicated vandals. Bitcoin solves that.
That's an interesting idea, but I'm not familiar with its mechanics/limits. Who would be a representative provider?
Now, for this goal, cumbersome and/or irreversible is somewhat the point, to prevent throwaway accounts. But an occasional SMS-chargeback would be OK, as long as the source phone number can be blacklisted against reuse in the future, forcing mischief-makers to burn one phone number each registration.
The problem with the Bitcoin approach is not so much the money, but the time and knowledge needed to set up a wallet, buy BTCs and then perform the payment. And as long as it costs money it would still hopefully stop trolls.
The only provider I know is Fortumo[1], but I'm sure there are others. It seems pretty easy to integrate with a website[2] and as far as I know there is no way for the client to issue a chargeback.
"The problem with screen names or handles deserves some amplification. Concealing your identity behind a handle is a juvenile and silly behavior characteristic of crackers, warez d00dz, and other lower life forms. Hackers don't do this; they're proud of what they do and want it associated with their real names. So if you have a handle, drop it. In the hacker culture it will only mark you as a loser."
It's interesting to me that almost everyone here is using a pseudonym yet discussion in Hacker News tends to be civil, constructive and informative.
The issue clearly isn't anonymity. Hacker News does several things to weed out the trolls. First, user names are unique (which causes many to pick out a pseudonym even if they don't want to), allowing comments to be tracked by identity. Second, HN uses a reputation score to downgrade habitually unconstructive commenters. As a result, people who would be rude on slashdot are more restrained here because the culture doesn't reward name-calling or opposition without reason.
Facebook achieves the same end by allowing its users to limit what they see and from whom and not really caring much what they call themselves unless they offend for another reason. Google has the same mechanism but has chosen to concentrate on the least important aspect of social networking - the names people use - forgetting the most important aspects: fostering a culture of civility and allowing users to control what they see.
Not allowing pseudonyms on G+ is obviously a tremendous and awful mistake, and I think most (not all, obviously), of the people here on HN agree with that statement because of the obvious cases that boyd mentions. However, I think that huge mistake is different than "an authoritarian assertion of power over vulnerable people". The latter requires intent, and neither I nor danah boyd can know if this is Google's intent. Indeed, I suspect that Google's intent isn't even known to most of the people working on G+, or even the "upper ups". The marketing people probably want better data for AdSense, and the Engineers are probably viewing the problem from the perspective of simplifying the site's infrastructure, etc. etc... I sincerely doubt that anyone is attempting for some sort of authoritarian power grab.
What they are doing, however, is making a really big mistake.
I don't agree that it is a mistake, and I like that feature very much.
There are some people on Facebook which I know pretty well personally and they are using fake names. That annoys me a lot.
Did you talk to these people? You know them pretty well - and that thing is nagging you. I guess you asked for their reasons to do it?
I guess (uh oh.. I'm obviously clueless about your friends. Talking about likeliness here) most of these are not really in danger, they just choose a name that is wrapped in special chars, written upside down, use 'Will I. Am' or similar constructs, leave out the last name because they are afraid that they are too easy to Google from potential employers or something like that.
Still - I wonder if you tried to find out their reasons for this (maybe some of them have better ones than the samples I listed)?
And - if this is really, really annoying, why don't you defriend/block/remove that person from your FB list? They can continue to use the site as they want, you can continue to use the site without the bad taste in your mouth everytime those names show up.
The bottom line is: You don't like their names, you seem to have it in your hands if you talk them out of it or remove them from your sight. Hoping that a policy for all solves this is just a way of hoping that someone else solves your problems, in my opinion.
Lastly: Facebook requires real names. Yes, they are less active with the enforcement. On the other hand, you see quite a lot of examples that show that these rules are violated. What's the solution?
To me this article sounds more like evidence of an unhealthy sense of entitlement social media users are developing than a good argument against Google's policy. Not that there's anything wrong with the points the author makes about anonymity. I doubt anyone who's spent much time dealing with social media, including the Google+ team, would question the fact that anonymity provides a valuable service to society in many ways. However, that's completely irrelevant when it comes to the decision of what a particular social network (or any other kind of network, for that matter) should adopt as its identification policy. That's an issue that's about the type of community the team working on that particular product wants to have. Unless people were somehow forced to sign up for a specific service, the argument has no legs to stand on.
All it takes to see the problem with the author's logic is simple principles of supply and demand. If there is actually a significant demand for anonymity online that's not being met by the current services, another one will come along to fill that gap. In that case, the needs of those people are met, and they have no reason to be mad at Google. Otherwise, there wasn't significant demand in the first place, which justifies Google's decision not to accommodate it.
So, really what we see here is nothing more than someone whining because they are discovering that they have to use Google's service on Google's terms, rather than their own, which runs contrary to their sense of entitlement. In fact, they are the ones acting like there's a universal context; it's just that their universal context is one where they can be anonymous wherever they want without worrying about the consequences.
I don't care so much about going by gte910h, I care that there aren't exceptions.
People put your information on social networks without your consent. If you're a battered ex-wife for instance, you have to participate to make sure your location isn't being giving way unawares (pictures with you in them with Exif data, "harmless" photo album tagging, etc).
Additionally, anonymity is important to many people in disliked groups (homosexuals, political dissidents), but the common law right (and it very much is a Right to change your name) to go by whatever name you want is very hard to exercise while under the purvey of your family. Many people are very much under the purvey of their family while in college.
So while you're of the age to be of formative years in the social networks, where you make contacts that help the start of your career, you literally have to piss off the family which is ostensibly offering some support and formally change your name from a non-European name to a European name if you want the best success when searching for a job (where it's shown non-european sounding names who are otherwise identical get fewer callbacks).
Furthermore, Google+ requires that new sign-ups provide a real phone number, and they phone you up to check you are for real. That's massively intrusive, far worse than anything Facebook ever did.
Peter Steiner’s iconic “on the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog” cartoon may have been drawn in jest--but his point was deadly serious, as recent events in the Middle East and North Africa have shown
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Attribution can be very important, but pseudonyms and anonymity are also an established part of many cultures -- for good reason.
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When it comes to Google services, we support three types of use: unidentified, pseudonymous and identified. And each mode has its own particular user benefits.
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While some of our products will be better suited to just one or two of those modes, depending on what they’re designed to do, we believe all three modes have a home at Google.
Privacy is great, no doubt about it, but a company has a right to offer services under their own terms. They constructed their business model with a profit goal in mind, and they determined what it would take to reach that profit. Now, I'm not saying it's particularly fair to those who want to participate but feel they cannot due to the limitations placed on their privacy, but that's life. Sometimes it's unfair. If it makes you feel better to complain about it on the Internet then go right ahead. In the meantime there are many other who simply didn't sign up for the service.
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[ 0.17 ms ] story [ 184 ms ] threadThey should have thought these things themselves. In fact, they should have been so obvious that this conversation would be unimaginable.
I don't get it.
"He also says they are working on ways to handle pseudonyms, but that will be a while before the team can turn on those features"
I don't understand. Wouldn't the implementation of this "feature" just boil down to not deleting or disabling people's accounts when they sign up with a pseudonym?
I just don't see why this would take so much effort to do. I really don't see why implementing this particular feature would take all of the effort and energy that they seem to be indicating.
This argument is nonsensical unless there is an actual, consequential penalty for violating the "real names" policy. (Which would, of course, be even more of a monumental disaster.)
Suppose you are a troll or a sockpuppet or a spammer and you want to screw around on a Google website. Well, the fact that you're not allowed to call yourself "LadyAda" or "Lady Gaga" or, for that matter, "mechanical_fish" is no problem. You can just call yourself "John Smith". Or "Steven P. Jobs" or "George W. Bush", for that matter. It's not hard to fake a real name. And there's no meaningful penalty for doing so, even if you get caught. Most likely Google will just delete your account. No big loss for a troll. New accounts are just a click away.
Now, if you are LadyAda or Lady Gaga or mechanical_fish, Google's policy is a problem, because you've spent a certain amount of time building up your pseudonym. It has a history and you're identified with it and you've bought the domain names and given the press interviews and written years worth of blogs and opened some businesses and built up a ten-million-strong international fan club who comes to all your concerts. Gaga doesn't want to sign up as "John Smith" or anything else, because it will literally cost her money not to sign up with her chosen name, "Lady Gaga".
It need not be administered by Google. If Ivan Identity is being publicly belligerent, then social opprobrium is the likely result. Use of his real identity gives him an incentive to uphold his own reputation. This does not guarantee that he will respond to such an incentive, but does make it easier for people to respond to his misbehavior when he acts badly.
I'm entirely familiar with the value of a pseudonym, having used this one for well over a decade now. But if you want to leverage it as a brand, then do so on commercial terms, is my feeling.
IF there'll be changes to the policy (and i hope that's the case), why would you alienate people today by suspending them for offenses (..) that might be okay tomorrow?
Google wants data. That's the main benefit that they get out of having a social network, is getting access to a new data source with a different type of data than what they currently have. They want your real name so they can aggregate this data with other data sources, including external ones (think CRM).
When they say they want to handle pseudonyms, they don't mean letting you put a pseudonym into your name field. They still want your real name. What they mean is, the system will require your real name but let you display one (or more!) pseudonyms. In fact, advanced pseudonym management is probably on their roadmap. By letting you display different aliases to different users or circles, Google will be able to associate your various online identities.
...People hide behind anonymity and they feel like they can say whatever they want
Well, how dare people say what they want.
People seem to think that anonymity is a license to act like an asshole. That's not conducive to producing a fairly pleasant, troll-free environment.
She.
To be honest, I generally prefer to be an asshole openly.
Next problem: Asking for legal looking names doesn't solve the problem of anonymity. If I am able to change my name to Bob Smith without hitting a filter (at least for a while) I still can be an asshole without any connection to my 'real name'. The _only_ thing the policy right now _can_ do is prohibiting people from using an obvious pseudonym. I cannot be darklajid, but I can be Bob Smith. Both are not my real names, the former is my handle ~everywhere~ online. One is me, one is crap.
No way around that unless you're going to verify papers/ids, and now feel free to throw "Papiere bitte" references at me.
So the whole 'we need real names' and 'we hope that this improves our community' is crap. But the most idiotic thing is to make exceptions. Forget about the standard samples like 'Lady Gaga' and '50 Cent': We already hat a couple of threads here about people that used their pseudonym, were suspended and (by bullying, rounding up the media, having contacts inside of Google) got an exception.
What? Why? They are allowed to be different, because...? Bottom line: The current rule is
- useless
- arbitrary (I'd like to put this up as 'discriminating', but yeah.. G+ is not a right, yadda yadda)
Ben, suspended on G+ ;)
1: https://plus.google.com/113116318008017777871/posts/VJoZMS8z...
You're making an assumption without any proof: Pseudonyms lead to bad behavior.
In my world that's not connected to the names used and is merely a function of the 'quality' of the people in your community. Also - you don't solve issues between people with rules about their 'alias', you have to invent/support/hand out some decent tools to block idiots from your online life.
I certainly now manage a semi-new pseudonym (based on an old irl joke between me and a few friends) that looks like a boring, unnotable real name. I'm not sure how it will keep me from being an asshole on the internet.
This topic has recently become the subject of much discussion here in Norway, as recent events have brought more attention to the anonymous racist comments (and harassment) that are quite often found on public forums (such newspaper websites, etc.) There are some who claim that expecting people to sign their real names to their comments would raise the level of discourse, as people would have to take some responsibility for their speech.
People who, like me, are privileged white Americans can easily afford to use our real names, although I don't. What Google will get if they keep this policy is only people who don't care. Blacks, Latinos, rape, abuse, and stalking victims, people who have something controversial to say, gays, people in repressive countries won't join. It'll be a nice Stepford village.
Facebook is worse in every way regarding privacy (although they don't actually enforce their real name policy as far as I can tell/from the experiences in my peer group).
Other networks don't exist (see below). Twitter is a different beast. Don't start with LinkedIn or something or recommend niche products.
A social network, in my world, is a place where you can reach out to a lot of (like-minded/known/interesting) people. The point for me is that you need to have the critical mass so that the network works and is interesting in the first place (I won't find my friends on identi.ca..). But this should allow a lurking mode. A careful approach, picking friends by contacting them out of band ("I'm Foobar on G+") should be a fine use case.
I think the major reason to complain about G+ now is, apart from issues with the name verification process itself, that the offended community is just disappointed. It could be a good alternative to FB for quite some people, especially for those that didn't join FB in the first place. And Google failed to deliver.
Is it their decision? Sure. Is it a right to be a G+ user? Certainly not. Are there people that are unhappy about this situation and interested to voice that opinion: Yep.
No, I don't use my analog name there. :-)
Email me if you want invites.
On a site like Google+ or Facebook it's more complicated. I interact with people I know in real life, and with people I don't. I feel that if "darklajid" commented on one of my posts there it might negatively influenced a real life friends' decision to also participate. People who do not interact with strangers on the internet find it easier to do so when the person they are interacting with is using their real name. I think this is the right decision for the target use-case of Google+ and Facebook.
On Google+ you have the right to post to specific people or specific groups of people. People can, and I would wager actively are, using this feature right now to protect their privacy. They only thing they cannot protect is their true identity (they cannot hide their existence entire).
For some that's still too much and I respect that. However these networks should not cater to every niche need, and indeed there are plenty of communities out there willing to fill the void.
I'm a fan of comic books but they don't sell them in grocery stores like they used to. I have to drive a bit out of my way to pick them up (or wait on them in the mail). I've chosen this niche hobby and accept that I have some slight inconvenience because of it. That's life.
I'll take my argument further: Google+ and Facebook grown beyond mere commercial offerings to become essential services like e-mail or the telephone system. Forcing certain classes of users onto a different network prevents them from interacting with the main body of the network. I consider this an inherently bad thing. Imagine if certain people were told they could only use niche telephone networks that were incapable of dialing the network that everybody else uses.
The biggest point for me is your point about people with pseudonyms scaring away people that you actually care more for, close friends/family. I never thought of this point, but I do agree that my mum would be more hesitant to post if l33tGuy and WhooItsMe have a conversation with me.
Your point is, therefor, in my opinion great, but I still don't think that pseudonyms should be banned:
- You didn't comment on the inconsistency (LadyAda? Lady Gaga? Ok. darklajid? No) issue.
- You are masking the issue that there's no way to verify names anyway (so far. I hope it'll stay that way). So you're cheating yourself if you hope that this strategy leads to everyone using his real name
- I could take your argument further, to dangerous levels, by saying that a lot of people in my offline social network would probably be uncomfortable participating in discussions that are in English. Or with people that have obviously 'foreign' names, the more different the scarier (Asian countries come to mind, Israeli names could be good as well). My mum wouldn't comment if WhooItsMe comments on my picture, but she also wouldn't comment if Yuval would write something..
You cannot protect people from the world around them. You can try to find ways to cater for everyone, but in my world the solution to your scenario is:
- Allow people to choose their name
- Give people a great deal of (simple/intuitive) control about visibility and privacy. I'll help my mum set it up..
One last note: I'm 'darklajid' here, but I voluntarily give away my real name, as email address in my profile. That's the _right_ way around for me: I chose my name, lurked, participated - and _then_ decided to give away that information here.
But in any context on the internet other than the social networks in question or when people are intentionally marketing themselves, if I see someone using their first and last name I assume that they are either very elderly, or very new to the internet. When I'm commenting on tech blogs, I'll sometimes use my firstname.lastname resume-heading email address - but I'm a tech guy, so it's obvious why. I could also see eventually using a real name on hn, but only for the same reason.
An email address is the id most people got first when they got on the internet, and is the model for pseudoanonymity. When I email my grandmother, I am pseudoanonymous and she is pseudoanonymous; it feels like the default state of the internet.
It's completely analogous to real life. You interact with different groups in real life differently (your coworkers vs. your dungeons and dragons friends). Some of the people you interact with in real life know your real name and some do not. You're free to make the decisions of how you handle your identity.
I realized how incredibly privileged and rare my situation is that I can live my life fairly openly online with little fear of repercussion.
- As a heterosexual no one questions my sexual orientation online, or will harass me for it. Photos of me with a significant other won't cause an issue with anyone.
- I don't have, nor have I ever had an abusive relationship in which I must distance myself from someone.
- I'm fortunate enough to live in a country that (generally) allows me to do whatever online and I don't need to fear for my life. I am also a native born citizen here and don't have any immigration issues to deal with.
- I don't fear for my job because of what I say online (my work situation is very understanding and isn't nosy). Of course, not everyone works in technology.
- I have no children to protect
- I also feel that I understand the internet rather well and generally have a feeling for the direct repercussions of something that I do.
These (and many other things) aren't true for everyone. I felt silly for not realizing it beforehand, partially because danah had hung out at my house at hackathons and such even, and I just didn't get it until her presentation.
"White supremacy, as with racial supremacism in general, is rooted in ethnocentrism and a desire for hegemony."
In other words, white supremacism isn't about white people per se. Rather, it's about promoting one culture as the dominant one while trying to suppress all other cultures. That's exactly what these policies are doing.
I think back on planet earth, what's more likely is that the people who created these systems are insisting on real names to solve one sort of problem without thinking about the other problems it may cause, rather than "a desire for hegemony" or "promoting one culture as the dominant one".
The same can't be said of other systems (Google+, Quora, etc) to my knowledge.
http://michaelzimmer.org/2010/05/14/facebooks-zuckerberg-hav...
Zuckerberg thinks that anyone that has two identities for themselves has a 'lack of integrity.'
It's not as simple as anyone paints it, and what's more, it's an area where short-term economic incentives are often drastically misaligned with both goals of personal autonomy and, more arguably, long-term success of a community and product.
But unrestrained personal autonomy gets you 4chan. The real problem is trying to flatten the richness of human experience to fit through TweetBook+ (or whatever comes next). No easy answers and the problem ain't going away.
When you say "consistent", what's your position on multiple pseudonyms (or "restarts")?
I understand that you don't like the Real Name requirement, but pulling out the Big Gun Labels like this is akin to calling Larry Page the New Hitler. It's not accurate, and all you're going to do is make people angry.
I'm not trying to call Larry Page the new Hitler, rather I'm just pointing out that there is an existing word for what Danah Boyd and others are describing.
Your argument is a classic logical fallacy- "white supremacists want hegemony. We have a hegemony. Ergo, the system is run by white supremacists"
People who keep claiming that "we live in public" and that everything is out there anyway are extremely naive.
Personally, I don't think that it increases any danger to kids, I use my real name and post pictures of my adorable kids all the time, but I respect those who feel differently.
It does? I have a blog, a well-used Facebook profile, an active twitter account, and I comment on Reddit and HN all the time—but the last picture of me that exists on the public internet is from 2005. All the photos I actually want to share with my family are in a shared folder in my Dropbox account.
I guess I have a strong mental separation of my public and private lives; I would never talk about my family on my blog, nor would I talk about my job on Facebook.
Part of what the original article was talking about is that having a "real names only" policy makes it harder to keep that strong separation of public and private lives.
Google+ lets you approve all tags.
If I had a kid that I was bringing along with me occasionally, there could easily be photos of them on there too. A real danger? Probably not. But what if I had an ex with a restraining order against them, and they didn't know where I, or my kids were living? That could be a potential issue if they were name searchable, geotagged, etc.
I guess the real point is that I can't imagine all of the situations, because they probably don't apply to me right now. You can find my address, phone number, email, employment history, favorite coffee shop, online easily. Yet, I'm ok with that. Not everyone would be, and that's understandable.
The larger reason I don't post publicly with my real name is that, quite frankly, what I have to say in public needs to be in context. If you google my name and it comes up with a bunch of comments, and you don't take the time to read the context then it's very, very easy to come to a false conclusion of a person's beliefs.
Disclaimer: I use my real name in g+ but I don't post publicly and disable my posts to be shared. I'm no dissident but I value my searchable-privacy and so do my friends. I post more in g+ than I ever did in Facebook because of the circles feature.
Last quick note: I've had seemingly innocuous content that was searchable on my name used against me, a long time ago. I've since taken great care to remain anonymous and have found that my use of public forums is far more free and enjoyable and I have no issues at all speaking with others whose names I do not know (HN as a case).
My feelings on this matter were set when I was a young child. I read about the Nazi era in germany, and why homosexuals were much less likely to survive than jews.
The answer was, ironically, due to how liberal Germany was about homosexuality in the 1920s. Many gay people came out of the closet, there were magazines and national organizations to support various groups of gay and lesbian people and their interests.
When the nazis came to power, they went to the offices of these magazines and groups and got the lists of all the members, and then they went and systematically executed every one of them.
Now, we don't live in a nazi regime, of course. But there are many, much less severe, things that can be done to people, from employment discrimination to harassment.
The old saying, "On the internet, nobody knows you're a dog" describes a feature, not a bug. It lets dogs participate with people, without fear of being harassed by cats, or whatever. It also keeps the topic on the topic at hand, not on the question of whether dogs should be allowed on the internet.
Privacy is good for the community. It is good for everybody. Even if you don't have a fascist government that wants to spy on you.
They only have as much power over you as you think they do.
She's today's critic and tomorrow's cheerleader wrapped in the guise of unaccountable academia, whose success rises and falls with the whims of those who manipulate her data for their own purposes, to include herself.
Truth be told, social networks have existed since the beginning of time, mostly in the meatspace, but also many in print or via other methods of communication. Some of those networks required their membership to provide bona fides while others went to the other extreme and forbade any form of real identification. A person could then choose which network to associated with, or not, depending on their personal preferences and the same could be argued for the network facilitators.
There will always be a contrarian reaction to any established rules, so while some social networks will only allow you to participate using your true credentials, others will be present to allow just the opposite, just like Hacker News.
The clearcut assumption that those who express this particular ideal are immature and inexperienced is ridiculous.
Having to use your own name while negotiating the tricky waters of social relationships is not abuse, it's the first-world problem of a petulant, spoiled child.
You get a lot of jobs and other opportunities through social networks. Additionally, it is widely shown (and known) that non white named people are discriminated against widely when hiring.
Precluding someone from using a name they go by that's not their given name is literally hurting the careers and lives of many people. If Fardool Zarkari wants to go by Frank Zach, that's something that he should be able to do.
The idea that white men of usual middle class or higher background know that they're right when mandating real identities is an exercise in hubris, inadvertent exclusion, accessory to domestic abuse, and accessory to discrimination.
I get this makes your job harder with respect to making people not be tools. Doesn't mean you shouldn't still accommodate it.
It's not difficult to change your legal name. My ancestor had a foreign-sounding surname which got Anglicized upon arrival to America. If that's all it took to make his descendants (including me) "privileged", getting your name changed seems like a no brainer!
2> It's incredibly parent based (i.e. the people who gave you the sometimes crippling name) while you're under 18. By that time, you've been on social networks for years as the "bad" name. You then have to convince everyone to not call you by the old name. As a person who has been plagued by a nickname to my first name that my parents like, that I do not nor have ever used, I can attest changing what people call you is really hard. About 10% of people still call me the nickname, which forwards the nickname to contexts they see me in.
3> I'd like to quote you the state of Washinton's feelings on the common law precedent for name changes:
>Common Law Name Change: Common law name change results by simply using the new name consistently and exclusively for all purposes. This is legal because a person has a common law right to use any name he or she chooses. No legal proceedings or attorneys fees are involved in this type of name change. The common law method has disadvantages because many governmental institutions may require documentation proving that a valid name change has been made. Since you have not gone to court and acquired a court order for your name change, you will need some other document to satisfy this requirement.
I find the complications of #2 above yet the rights implied by #3 mean if a person signs an affidavit that their name is X the social networking site should get the hell over itself and let them be named X on the site, whether they have completed the name change yet or not.
(Although we're really talking about "English" sounding names here, since Polish people are hardly "nonwhite".)
2> Parents have a lot of control over our lives - sad but true. For example someone with crazy cult-following parents is more likely to end up in a crazy cult. Or for a more mundane example, someone with rich parents is less likely to be saddled with student loans. (The European approach to this inequality is to make education free, but try do that in the USA!)
I don't think you're forced to use a nickname that isn't your legal name though.
3> Sure, a signed affidavit should be just as valid as a court order - I can't imagine a social networking site would actually bother to check either. The numbers are just too big.
Non-European names are shown to face continual discrimination (unconsciously or no).
Yes, you can change your name by a mere notification to everyone that you have, but it pisses off your family, and is pretty hard to do if you're under 18, which is when people join social networks.
"An increasing number of persons and institutions, from e.e. cummings to WordPerfect, now come to the typographer in search of special treatment. In earlier days, it was kings and deities whose agents demanded that their names be written in a larger size or set in a specially ornate typeface; now it is business firms and mass-market products demanding an extra helping of capitals, or a proprietary face, and poets pleading, by contrast, to be left entirely in the vernacular lower case. But type is visible speech, in which gods and men, saints and sinners, poets and business executives are treated fundamentally alike. Typographers, in keeping with the virtue of their trade, honor the stewardship of texts and implicitly oppose private ownership of words."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Bringhurst
Second, Is Facebook's 'No custom HTML/CSS on profiles' policy is an abuse of power? How is that having a rule on a social network is an abuse of power? You don't like FB's boring profiles? use MySpace. You don't like using your real name? Go hangout on Twitter or 4Chan for that matter.
I can see why some people don;t like using their real names, but calling it an abuse of power is such a ridiculous overstatement.
Also, according to you, a policy which prevents compromising a system is exactly the same as forcing people to divulge information that could cause them harm.
The point is, it's a social network. Owned by Google. Who cares if you don't like their TOS? Vote with your feet, don't make ridiculous claims like they're abusing power and oppressing minorities.
That is an unsatisfying way to look at it. I think a better way to look at it is "it's public knowledge, therefore the public has the freedom to complain about it and hope that Google will listen."
No one forces you to sign up for Google+. If you complain about the lack of anonymity and refuse to sign up, maybe Google will budge. It will cost them to block pseudonyms and I'm sure they'll weigh those costs.
What's ridiculous is acting like this is somehow a breach of human rights.
you would have far better luck arguing that you are forced to use your real name on facebook (as it seems "everyone is on facebook", and thus "you must be also" is a valid sentiment), but even there it's a biiig stretch..
and i don't ever remember the controversy of real names on facebook..
https://plus.google.com/115565811010545226083/posts/bPqUZYGj...
And the comments, while using 'real names' mostly, show that this policy cannot protect against ignorance and miscommunication. I read it, about half the comments, and had to facepalm when several people (Hey, are you really 'Scott Wakeman' or 'Brian Dayhoff'? Because.. That would suck) went down that sorry 'Google's service, Google's rules' route. One even using a lawn as an analogy. I'd applaud to that, but given the ignorance of the statements within I doubt that the irony was intended.
Yes, Google can ban everyone from their service as they please. No, that is not a valid argument in this discussion.
I left my 'I'm taking my ball home and don't play with you anymore' or alternatively 'We don't like you, you cannot join our game' attitude in preschool. Please. Stop that. Assume that people have a brain and use it. Use yours _more_.
My real name is available on my HN profile, heh. I am neither of those two persons.
The following is not directed at you, the poster of the comment on HN/the link, but instead a reaction reading the post on G+.
In other words: Nothing against you, sorry if it seemed that way/if I've been unclear. The .. rant was entirely related to the content on G+ and my problems with certain statements there.
There is no way to enforce people using their real name online and such policies will only hurt the reputations of companies that try to enforce them.
If I really wanted to bully someone online, I could sign up for an account using a fake name and a proxy/VPN. Nobody would be able to stop me. Requiring people to use their real name, as if by magic, is not going to stop anything.
You can create G+ account under any random, but plausible looking name. You can be 15 year French old girl and call yourself "George Bush" (there are already 3 of those on G+). It's not like Google requires valid proof of identity to sign up.
Do people, including Danah Boyd, do not realize that? Given that in practice G+ has anonymous accounts, what is the fuss about?
I understand that Google officially won't acknowledge that but the "no anonymity" is just posturing. They have no practical way and probably no intention of making sure that people provide the real names.
So the issue here seems to be not about anonymity but about being obvious about being anonymous and the many justifications given in favor of anonymity do not carry over.
Edit: as tomkarlo points out, facebook has an option to report fake profiles, too. Also I found this quote from Facebook's former Director of Marketing, Randi Zuckerburg, troubling: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2847491
You think you can report me if I use the latter? Good luck.
I have someone in my circles with over 200 people connected. Using a name that would not pass the Google+ name challenge. Yet not one would ever challenge that account because that pseudonym is the right name that that account should be using.
That's deep! That's what i call the real power of social. You can always trust that your neighbor is watching you...
How could a sane supposedly normal person come up with an idea of such a link? How could a group of such people to implement and release it to the public? Did they suppress their vomiting reflex? Or may be they just don't have it at all, like drones.
It's all part of the magical thinking. If you know someone's True Name, you have the power to require them to be polite. But if it turns out that you don't have their real True Name, your spells will fizzle!
Geez, the more you think about the "civility" rationale the harder your head hurts. Let's go back to the simpler explanation: Google wants to require everyone to use a canonical identifier to make it easier to perform the giant JOIN across your entire life. Now the rationale of the "report your neighbor" link becomes clear: People who don't use their True Names are committing the mortal sin of... (shudder)... denormalization. Off with their heads!
Let me ask you this: should frivolous whims of minority dictate product decisions at Google? Or your own startup, should you have one?
The serious pro-anonymity arguments revolve around people who have to keep their identity secret or something bad will happen to them (they will be stalked, harassed etc.).
That is very different from saying "I want to be called spud because that's what I want and that's my Live Journal handle". A different standard applies to evaluating this vs. evaluating "anonymity to remain safe" arguments.
Insistance on using real names is Google's product decision. It's also an important product decision which will have a profound effect on how G+ will play out long term. Maintaining the culture of a large community is pretty much the biggest problem in that space and insisting on using real names (and not, say, adolescent or whimsical nicknames) is an important part of steering the culture towards civility.
Why do you feel that random people on the internet should dictate product decision to Google team?
Would you feel the same if you were running an on-line community, doing your best to shape it in a way you feel is good, and then random people on the internet demanded that you change your product in a way that they think is good but you don't?
I take issue with your premise. Anonymity is a scale including "real names" -> pseudonymity -> anonymity.
There are folks who want anonymity and folks who want "real names". Problem here is the "real names" supporters want to ban pseudonyms as well. I take real issue with that.
Pseudonyms aren't a recent thing. Stage names, noms de plume and masked balls have been around for millennia. The drive to purge that from our online public spaces is a real threat to society as a whole.
Anyone with a social graph of any size has already betrayed their identity, whether they know it or not. When people are sharing large volumes of data about themselves and their connections to others, they are a correlation attack waiting to happen. Pseudonymity on the internet is largely a fool's paradise - either you are fully anonymous, or you are using an identity which is separated from your own by a brittle and invisible membrane.
You may be filtering out low-level annoyances, but you're also establishing a false sense of security. If anon chooses to dox you, they'll do it and there's not a damned thing you can do to stop them. Pseudonymity offers some degree of protection for people with little to hide, but if for whatever reason you sincerely believe yourself to be a target, you should act as if your pseudonym has already been compromised.
What's the difference for you between a forum for anonymous alcoholics and a G+ circle with 'Joe' and 'Bob'?
Don't conflate the wish to withhold your name with the 'I need to be anonymous or the government is going to kill me' with all the other reasons, please.
That's exactly what abusive ex partners due.
I am currently working with a social networking component of an iPhone app and "Guy who used to beat his wife" and "Not being found by that guy if you're the ex-wife" is a scenario we're actively making sure is protected against.
You are aware many pictures have geolocation data in them no?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exchangeable_image_file_format#...
You don't see how that could be accidentally dangerous for a person?
I was merely pointing out (tongue in cheek) that one (the parent of my post) doesn't need to play the 'you're not anonymous anyway and cannot hide' card.
There are plenty of good reasons (one is just .. preference) to choose a pseudonym. I wanted to put a little perspective on the thread. Holding up for people that rely on this feature for their well-being is on a different level. You seem to come from that direction. I cannot comment on cases like that, because I'm ultimately lucky to have no such experiences and live a relaxed life.
The many dissidents who live in oppressive regimes and use these tools to coordinate resistance and provide support for like-minded allies will care not even a little bit about your guidance. The privilege implied by the bias in your remark is exactly the trouble with these real name policies in the first place.
Christians in China, gay kids in the Bible belt, women in Saudi Arabia, they're all entitled to take measured risks to find fellowship in their struggle. It's not for you or Google or Facebook to tell them what they should or should not do with their identity on social tools. Assuming the social platform operators provide reasonable disclosure about the risks, it's up to these folks to assume those risks and try for anonymity if they want it.
If anonymity is important, use Twitter or another product.
I actually appreciate Google making people use their real names, it's a step forward to actually having the ability to make people responsible for their actions online. Google isn't forcing you to use your real name everywhere until the end of time, simply on their Google Plus Network.
I'm going to be honest: your comfort and enjoyment of the internet is orders of magnitude less valuable to me than the knowledge that good, decent folks who are endangered by harmful zealots can have a safe place to communicate with their compatriots. If the companies responsible for these platforms don't recognize the importance of this opportunity, they're squandering their unique position to make some good money while making the world a better place. And that's a shame.
If anything, your viewpoint--that every single website on the internet has to be run the way you would run it--is the more oppressive one.
That's an awfully cute straw man, but not really what's being discussed here. My calling for some basic human decency is no more "oppressive" than my remarking that hey, people who kick puppies or don't say thank you to waiters are pricks.
> by providing a forum for people to speak out anonymously.
That doesn't address the issue.
The value of large companies with large social graphs is one of networking. Having a soapbox to talk shout into silence doesn't do anything to improve the cause of someone who can't be safe with their own identity online.
Cramming people who are unable, for their own safety and well-being, into a ghetto cut off from the larger world is hardly a kind thing to do. For one, it deprives them of the ability to open communications with allies whose circumstances allow for help or resources to begin flowing.
At a certain scale, the privilege of network effects comes with social responsibility. People have the right, and often the need, to define their identity along specific parameters. Refusing to acknowledge that does not respect users – and it's entirely valid to condemn that.
Lots of people actually, voluntarily, want to participate in social networks based on people's real names. You don't want to let them do that.
Cramming people who are unable, for their own safety and well-being, into a ghetto cut off from the larger world is hardly a kind thing to do. For one, it deprives them of the ability to open communications with allies whose circumstances allow for help or resources to begin flowing.
No, it doesn't, because there are lots of places online for people to "open communications with allies whose circumstances allow for help". In fact, most of the web is accepting of pseudonymous or anonymous socialization. (You're on one of many such sites right now.)
Facebook (and now Google+) are an exception, and Facebook, at the very least, is popular. That doesn't make it a public utility--it's still a private service that people are free to use or ignore. No one's obligated to use Facebook and no one on Facebook is obligated to truthfully divulge any more information than they want.
I certainly don't want a bunch of privileged western jagoffs to enjoy a marginally better online experience at the expense of anyone else not similarly privileged. Ya got me there. I'm just not impressed by the tradeoff.
I'm reminded of a favorite book:
"Must be a yearning deep in human heart to stop other people from doing as they please. Rules, laws — always for other fellow. A murky part of us, something we had before we came down out of trees, and failed to shuck when we stood up. Because not one of those people said: Please pass this so that I won't be able to do something I know I should stop. Nyet, tovarishchee, was always something they hated to see neighbors doing. Stop them for their own good."
I think when we optimize around what the group wants at the expense of the individual, we're on our way to misery. Let each person do what is best for their own needs, so long as it doesn't come at the cost of any other individual. That's a good rule for any human community, including one built on the internet.
And that includes companies. If these guys want a completely homogenous platform where everyone is perfectly marketable to advertisers, that's ultimately their decision and their right. But it's a damn waste of a lot of power.
Outside of 4chan, people are figuring out that online communities, just like communities in real life, work better when there's a social contract. You can get downvoted into oblivion, flagged to death, or hellbanned from Hacker News, but you accept these infringements on your freedom of expression because it keeps the trolls out. Social networks (which, if you've forgotten, are designed to enable communication between people who already know each other, largely in real life) enforce a social norm (or in some cases an actual policy) of using real names. This makes people you know in real life (presumably by their real names) easier to find, and makes your behavior accountable to your real-life reputation.
Now, maybe some of these social contracts are wiser than others. But unlike the social contract that governs a physical community[1], online communities are trivial to join, trivial to leave, and not that difficult to form in comparison. This is a freedom of association that's unprecedented in world history, and really gives us the best of both worlds.
Finally, if you're all that angry about "privileged western jagoffs" forming their own exclusionary communities, you'd be better served railing against e.g. the Freemasons, rather than Google+.
[1] It's worth pointing out that most countries have very strict laws mandating that people are known to the government, their employers, etc. not only by a "real name" that requires legal action to change, but by some sort of identification number. Anonymously earning income, using banks, and getting health care are much bigger problems, and there's much more potential benefit in solving those problems than in bickering about whatever website people are using to share pictures of cats.
Because of fraud of course, not because legal names are somehow holy. Did you know for example that passports are a recent invention? Did you know that even names where at some point invented? They are now though widely used and conventional.
Honestly however, throughout all your replies here, I have not to be very honest heard of one reason why the choice of people should be limited by such a gigantic organisation which in many ways defines the internet and for a number of people is the interent.
The excuse that your mother might be apprehensive about commenting because djjd has commented is frankly ridiculous. Firstly, you can simply educate her that this is how the internet works. Anyway, I do not think your mother would comment if that person was using a real name either because that person would probably be a friend or a number or friends or coworkers and frankly, I would rather my mother did not so engage in commenting in such spheres. My mother is some distant figure they get to meet when they come home and she makes them a very nice dinner.
Your second point was basically you like it and therefore I do not care that other people do not like it. You are saying google has the choice to make such policy and you disagreeing with it does not matter at all because if you do not like it you can go somewhere else. That is what those in power say to those that challenge them. Not saying you are in power at all, but when someone criticises something, you can not simply say well you do not like it, then leave. If I am challenging the government because of a policy, my government can not simply say, well leave. Nor indeed is it an excuse that the rich may leave if we tax them.
We are talking about millions of people. Google+ is hardly a niche. When we talk about Facebook, we are talking about billions of people. You see, that is how social networks work. Though you can have a network for those that use nicknames and those that do not, what if these people want to share the same network?
Finally, Facebook has been very vocal about its antagonism against anonymity. Google is very high profile too so they enforcing a real name policy is not a small deal. Soon, they will want us to use real names everywhere. These are not small fish. They are giants, really, in some ways, the governments of the internet. So it is not about G+ or Facebook. I think, it is about a principle. The principle to be anonymous. The principle to not be judged by colour, ethnicity, gender, nationality, orientation, disability, etc. Names convey a lot of information. Indeed they convey all of these informations.
The internet is a level playing field where people are judged based on content, unlike, in many instances, in the real life. The internet is so awesome because in many ways it is not like real life. It is, in many ways, completely different from real life. That is what has made it such a powerful engine of our society and if you wish the power structures in the real world to be transported to this world, then you must be mad.
We're talking about what websites people visit in their spare time here, not the government or Comcast. It's the equivalent of saying, "If you don't like Chicken McNuggets, don't go to McDonalds and order them."
So it is not about G+ or Facebook. I think, it is about a principle. The principle to be anonymous. The principle to not be judged by colour, ethnicity, gender, nationality, orientation, disability, etc. Names convey a lot of information. Indeed they convey all of these informations.
The internet is a level playing field where people are judged based on content, unlike, in many instances, in the real life. The internet is so awesome because in many ways it is not like real life. It is, in many ways, completely different from real life. That is what has made it such a powerful engine of our society and if you wish the power structures in the real world to be transported to this world, then you must be mad.
That's not an argument against G+ or Facebook not allowing pseudonyms, it's an argument against people using G+ or Facebook in the first place.
If you're looking for some type of utopian metaverse where everyone takes on androgynous identities and interact with strangers, there's plenty of that to be found. Social networking sites were specifically created to provide something different, and they got popular because a lot of people want that.
It turns out most people use the internet as a tool to interact with the real world. If the internet was just some sort of metaverse, it wouldn't be a powerful engine of society at all--it's useful specifically because it's connected to the real world. Google and Wikipedia help people find information about the real world. Amazon helps people select and purchase physical goods to be shipped to them in the real world. Your bank's website helps you pay your bills, including the mortgage or rent for whatever physical chunk of the real world your flesh and bones sleep in at night. Countless websites exist to help people meet up and physically pleasure each other's (potentially) gendered, colored, disabled bodies in whatever orientation they want in real life. Likewise, Facebook and Google+ help people keep in touch with other people in the real world.
People who want pseudonymous conversations with strangers still have no shortage of choices. (You might notice that we're having one right now, or we would be if not for our choice of usernames.)
Before I'm finished, I have another point to make. All that Facebook and Google+ did was set up a web application that millions of people voluntarily used, and millions of people voluntarily chose not to use, for free. There's no force or natural monopoly here, just a diversion, a leisure activity if you will. I honestly cannot understand the sense of entitlement here. It's not like people don't have choices, it's that for the people who use Facebook, Facebook is what they want, and for the people who use Google+, Google+ is what they want.
If you (or indeed anyone) feels strongly enough that some type of anonymous social network would be a great idea, and that the current plethora of news sites and web forums are missing something, why don't you back up your words and set it up yourself? If that's what people want, then it'll be a success. Hey, it might be a lot to ask, but it's no more than the people who built Facebook and Google+ have done. If your principles are so important that you're personally insulted that Facebook and Google+ don't follow them, they're strong enough that you should consider doing something about the situation yourself.
People that are for this rule want _other_ people to use a profile name according to some weird (and inconsistent, not fully understood) rules.
People that are against this rule just want to define their _own_ profile name as they like.
Erm.. Seriously? Who's the one oppressing (if that even applies here, but you brought it up)?
Let us stick with the site in question, G+. You can block persons very, very easily. It's just 2(?) clicks away. Someone posts in your (extended) circles using a pseudonym and you don't like it? You can _easily_ make sure you'll never be disturbed in that perfect world of 'valid' names.
I see no freedom issues here?
The _real_ issue is, that you want your personal believe, which in this case might align with what Google arbitrary enforces or not, forced upon everyone. To save you those 2 clicks. And maybe (I'm not trying to make this a personal attack, but this is more or less the only reason I can actually imagine as being 'pro real names' among users) you just don't want to end up in the dilemma that your mum is listed as KnittingGoddess and your girlfriend as PinkUnicorn, because that would mean that you'd either have to block them or - cope with other people's choice of a name.
Again, your argument is really, really backwards. I was suspended on G+ because of a name that didn't conform to the rule (intentionally, I set it to "short-version-of-firstname .", as a protest. It was my real name before) Now - did you see me somewhere? To help you out: I'd be "Ben .". Have you seen me in your circles? In your incoming stream? No? So... Why do you bother?
YOU are in charge of your personal network. Here, like in any other social network. Over at FB you'd just not befriend me. Here you'd just not put me in a circle. If I'd do that though you'd notice that a creepy person with no real name is in your incoming stream and you'd block me easily. Done.
You _have_ your environment. You still fail to understand the difference between rules about one's own profile ("I'd like to be darklajid") and some weird filtering that is going to happen anyway, names or not ("I'd like to see nothing but realnames").
Listen - you can choose what you see on the network. I want to choose what represents me. You have to use the controls I talked about (i.e. blocking users) _anyway_, because you'll encounter people that you don't care about/that annoy you. I cannot imagine a reason for not being able to use these same mechanisms to build yourself the illusion of a world without pseudonyms. What stops you? Where's the danger for your use case?
Now, it's possible that Henry Jones doesn't want to be found, but you can set your profile to be non-searchable.
I know enough people online that I'd consider friends and yet I don't know their full legal name.
Likewise? This is not helpful.
Some people want their pseudonym as 'main' handle, optionally adding their real name _if they please_. That would solve the usecase further above. Other people want to use their real name and _keep other people out unless they comply_. I really don't get it how you can try to put it different while keeping a straight face.
Um, one of the primary use cases of a social network is to search for people you know in real life by their real names. Making that entire thing "optional" hinders that. If your primary use case is to use a pseudonym, the entire rest of the web is more or less set up for you that way already.
For you (and maybe a lot of people, granted) the primary use case seems to be "Hey, let's search for that guy I know". For me it's not. I _still_ like to use these networks.
Along the whole thread you failed to provide a single decent argument why other people need to use their real name except for "_I_ want to find them like that". Great. But this attitude is not what I'd consider social in the first place.
If I'm darklajid on G+ or not, you don't see it. If your own friends in real life _want_ to connect with you in a social network, they better make sure that you can find them or write 'Puffy1982' on a napkin in that bar you meet and tell you to look them up using that pseudonym.
Do you only meet people that give you their full name? You go out, and everyone in a pub introduces himself as 'Hi, my name is John Smith' so that you're able to find them on Facebook? Or is it rather like 'Hey, I'm Ben. Nice to meet you'. And - y'know what? I'm Benjamin according to my passport and you still don't have my last name. No way to find me with only that bits of information.
So your use case falls apart for casual encounters, unless you already exchange explicit details. "Hey, can you add me on Facebook? You find me as ..." works with pseudonyms just that well. Don't say real names are easier to remember, write or pronounce or I have a huge pile of counter examples.
Countering the last open point: If you want to (for example) find your old class mates from primary school by their real name, there are sites for that. They specialize on this particular need of yours. That is not a primary function of a social network in my personal opinion.
Bottom line: Your use case is not universal, you can do whatever you like. Consider returning the favor to others.
Well, those sites are obviously designed around that use case.
So your use case falls apart for casual encounters, unless you already exchange explicit details. "Hey, can you add me on Facebook? You find me as ..." works with pseudonyms just that well.
Personally, if I meet someone only once or twice and don't know their full name yet, I'm not going to add them as a friend on Facebook.
That said, you can use contact information, partial names, your friends' friends lists, and recognizing someone's face in their profile picture as ways of narrowing someone down. If I meet you in real life, you're not going to introduce yourself as darkajid, you're going to introduce yourself as Ben. If you're listed on a social network as Benjamin Foo and you're already a couple degrees away from me, I can search for "Ben" and the search algorithm will most likely pop up "Benjamin Foo" with a recognizable photo of you.
Outside of social networking sites, it's the predominant social norm to use a handle. Without pressuring or requiring people to use their real names, people by and large wouldn't use their real names and the sites wouldn't be usable.
Countering the last open point: If you want to (for example) find your old class mates from primary school by their real name, there are sites for that.
And they're slowly dying because no one wants to sign up for a single purpose site just to do that. They've been replaced by Facebook.
- No, I don't agree that those sites are designed around your use case. You argue that way because you use it that way and it works. I use it differently and - it works. It's a social network, not a stalker heaven.
- I don't even have a profile picture on Facebook. Your use case breaks again, although I do use my real name there, for now. Or should there be a rule for mandatory 'real images'? Maybe with some criteria about the exposed part of the face, the expression? Like on a passport in a variety of countries..? Oh, oh.. I know: I'm again breaking the usage here. Because the use of a profile picture (and a public one at that) is inherently important for social networks.
- If people, as you say, use pseudonyms everywhere outside of social networks, why can't you find them based on those? You still failed to list _one_ sensible use case that is broken when people use whatever name they want for their account. Except for 'Hey, I remember this dude from college'. If someone wants to connect with you on Facebook they'll make sure that it's possible or give you the right handle. It's no 'right' on your side to find them by information you deem sufficient. And it certainly doesn't break the sites: They are about social circles, not phone books. The latter needs full names so that you can look up my number (if I want to be listed). The former is about a collection of people that connect and exchange over the internet. Those probably already call themselves 'Timmy', 'Bobby', 'Tom' whenever they hang out even if the names are 'Timothy', 'Bob' and 'Thomas' - and they don't need their last name. I cannot even comprehend (ignoring any agreement here..) your view of this issue.
- If those sites have been replaced by Facebook, please - feel joy and glory because Facebook wants the same as you want and I couldn't care less about that site. Why exactly do you care about G+ doing the very same thing? You have your real name network on Facebook. Why don't you enjoy the place over there and let the more open minded among us try to talk some sense into Google?
Profile pictures are obviously sufficient as a social norm. Some people don't follow it and that's fine; though it makes them harder to find, they can also turn on the explicit "you can't find me" feature).
If I know you in real life, I know you by your real name, not your reddit handle.
G+ is obviously intended to he a better Facebook.
I'm not really sure how to make my points more clear. If you'd like, I will sportingly let you have the last word.
We're actually arguing if that design decision (that certainly took place and yes, supports your use case. That's the reason why you defend it here, let's not forget that)
- Makes sense
- Is necessary
Both points have arguments pro and contra, but the real kicker for me is that no one, including you as one of the strongest proponent here on HN, has brought up a reason for this. It boils down to this:
- You cannot find people that you learned about years ago
Well.. Bad luck. They certainly are free to add their real name or whatever they gave you to their profile. If they don't - you don't need to find them.
- Pseudonyms lead to arguments, name calling and bad behavior
This site, as lots of other people said already, is a nice example to the contrary. I said it elsewhere and I still believe it: The quality of the comments is a function of the quality of the visitors/users. Not bound to the names they use.
If you know me in real life, you'd certainly _not_ know my real name for a long time and it's a chore to spell it to others. But IF we'd be real life friends (in contrast to FB 'friends' - I decline most offers there and don't see how they came up with that name..) I'd certainly make sure that you can contact me in every way that helps you. If I'm 'Some Dude' on Facebook, I'd tell you about it. If not - well - why is it more important that you can locate me than my desire to pick a name?
G+ is intented to be a better Facebook? We agree on this one. But 'better' is unfortunately the keyword here. For me, better is
- no name convention/rule (no surprise here)
- everything hidden by default
- no spam platform (aka: Let me opt out of _all_ games please. Before they even are developed)
Google doesn't make people use their real names, they cannot.
Google just forces people to have to try a tinsy bit harder to use fake names,
The more google tightens up its grip, the greater will be your false sense of security and the more devastating will be the consequences when someone takes advantage of you.
I think the word "social" is confusing people. These are not public utilities like electricity or water.
Not when Company X is bound by the edict "Don't be evil," as is the parent of the product in question, here.
You have a fundamental right to represent your identity in whatever way is necessary to protect yourself from harm or harassment. Any company that makes money from codifying your identity but doesn't recognize that right is run by assholes.
That's exactly when I mean. Where is this "fundamental right" in UK, EU, US or any law? These are not public utilities! Please don't confuse your personal preferences with "the Constitution".
So yeah, fundamental right is accurate.
http://www.washingtonlawhelp.org/documents/1488013400EN.pdf?...
Companies can't just do whatever they want. They are bound by laws and ethics. If these policies are found to discriminate against rape survivors (for example) they could very well be ruled illegal.
Don't confuse a legal grey area with something being legal.
Discrimination would be a "whites only" social network, and regardless of legality, I'm sure they exist.
If you're confident your business model can survive that sort of criticism, then you are free to do as you please. But without a monopoly and/or high cost of entry, eventually someone else is going to come along with different, more acceptable policies, and you lose.
Facebook is currently playing the customer lock-in/high cost of change by preventing you from exporting your data conveniently.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited places of “public accommodation” from discrimination based on customers' race, sex, color, religion, or national origin.
If forcing use of "Legal Names" is a policy that unfairly targets a group protected by that, look for a lawsuit eventually.
It is a legally recognized right to use an assumed name in most jurisdictions in the US. In many of them, you don't even have to use it all the time, although some require that for it to be valid, and it becomes a name change then.
For instance, read http://federal-circuits.vlex.com/vid/kreuter-v-united-states... look at cite 5.
... like abusive former partners, death threats, being involuntarily outed, etc etc etc.
Calling these things "low-level annoyances" betrays a deep self-absorption.
I think we need to disassociate name => trust as a start and really start exploring how to cultivate a culture of expression without trying to force the whole name thing as a solution.
As a small example, given the recent storm around Airbnb and "EJ", can anyone (including Randi Zuckerberg) really advocate that EJ absolutely had to be using a real name in order to gain credibility?
I'd like to see "semi-real" identities. What I mean by that is that they could be mostly anonymous, but it would take some work to create them, and it should get harder to create them the more you have created.
The idea is that you can have an online presence separate from your real identity, which you can use for forums, games, social networks that go beyond your actual friends, and such. However, because you can't just trivially abandon a semi-real identity for a new one there would be some incentive to treat it with care similar to that you would use with your real identity. You wouldn't want to be an ass online and get your semi-real identity widely banned.
Not to mention that a social network like G+, where people have personal profiles and posts, attacks can be much more personal.
It's weird to me that Google can't see that the answer to the problems they are trying to solve can be solved equally well with pseudonymous identities as they can with real identities. Hacker News and Reddit both implement systems that encourage respectful conversation through karma type systems which allow anyone to speak but everyone to easily see and understand the context of that speaker. That's all you need.
What's the best practice for enabling pseudonyms but curtailing throwaway spam/harassment/sockpuppet account-creation?
For my next project I'm considering offering two registration options:
(1) Use Facebook, which is close enough to 'real names' for most purposes – while still having some room, as Boyd notes, for many users of persistent pseudonyms.
(2) Buy a pseudonym with a nonrefundable Bitcoin payment. If you're serious about pseudonymity, why not go all the way? This is a variant on the 'Metafilter $5 one-time fee' model, but as Matt Haughey has noted that still occasionally suffers from chargebacks by dedicated vandals. Bitcoin solves that.
Any thoughts?
Now, for this goal, cumbersome and/or irreversible is somewhat the point, to prevent throwaway accounts. But an occasional SMS-chargeback would be OK, as long as the source phone number can be blacklisted against reuse in the future, forcing mischief-makers to burn one phone number each registration.
The only provider I know is Fortumo[1], but I'm sure there are others. It seems pretty easy to integrate with a website[2] and as far as I know there is no way for the client to issue a chargeback.
[1]: http://fortumo.com/ [2]: http://fortumo.com/api
- Eric Steven Raymond http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#style
The issue clearly isn't anonymity. Hacker News does several things to weed out the trolls. First, user names are unique (which causes many to pick out a pseudonym even if they don't want to), allowing comments to be tracked by identity. Second, HN uses a reputation score to downgrade habitually unconstructive commenters. As a result, people who would be rude on slashdot are more restrained here because the culture doesn't reward name-calling or opposition without reason.
Facebook achieves the same end by allowing its users to limit what they see and from whom and not really caring much what they call themselves unless they offend for another reason. Google has the same mechanism but has chosen to concentrate on the least important aspect of social networking - the names people use - forgetting the most important aspects: fostering a culture of civility and allowing users to control what they see.
What they are doing, however, is making a really big mistake.
I guess (uh oh.. I'm obviously clueless about your friends. Talking about likeliness here) most of these are not really in danger, they just choose a name that is wrapped in special chars, written upside down, use 'Will I. Am' or similar constructs, leave out the last name because they are afraid that they are too easy to Google from potential employers or something like that.
Still - I wonder if you tried to find out their reasons for this (maybe some of them have better ones than the samples I listed)?
And - if this is really, really annoying, why don't you defriend/block/remove that person from your FB list? They can continue to use the site as they want, you can continue to use the site without the bad taste in your mouth everytime those names show up.
The bottom line is: You don't like their names, you seem to have it in your hands if you talk them out of it or remove them from your sight. Hoping that a policy for all solves this is just a way of hoping that someone else solves your problems, in my opinion.
Lastly: Facebook requires real names. Yes, they are less active with the enforcement. On the other hand, you see quite a lot of examples that show that these rules are violated. What's the solution?
All it takes to see the problem with the author's logic is simple principles of supply and demand. If there is actually a significant demand for anonymity online that's not being met by the current services, another one will come along to fill that gap. In that case, the needs of those people are met, and they have no reason to be mad at Google. Otherwise, there wasn't significant demand in the first place, which justifies Google's decision not to accommodate it.
So, really what we see here is nothing more than someone whining because they are discovering that they have to use Google's service on Google's terms, rather than their own, which runs contrary to their sense of entitlement. In fact, they are the ones acting like there's a universal context; it's just that their universal context is one where they can be anonymous wherever they want without worrying about the consequences.
People put your information on social networks without your consent. If you're a battered ex-wife for instance, you have to participate to make sure your location isn't being giving way unawares (pictures with you in them with Exif data, "harmless" photo album tagging, etc).
Additionally, anonymity is important to many people in disliked groups (homosexuals, political dissidents), but the common law right (and it very much is a Right to change your name) to go by whatever name you want is very hard to exercise while under the purvey of your family. Many people are very much under the purvey of their family while in college.
So while you're of the age to be of formative years in the social networks, where you make contacts that help the start of your career, you literally have to piss off the family which is ostensibly offering some support and formally change your name from a non-European name to a European name if you want the best success when searching for a job (where it's shown non-european sounding names who are otherwise identical get fewer callbacks).
Peter Steiner’s iconic “on the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog” cartoon may have been drawn in jest--but his point was deadly serious, as recent events in the Middle East and North Africa have shown ..
.. Attribution can be very important, but pseudonyms and anonymity are also an established part of many cultures -- for good reason. ..
.. When it comes to Google services, we support three types of use: unidentified, pseudonymous and identified. And each mode has its own particular user benefits. ..
.. While some of our products will be better suited to just one or two of those modes, depending on what they’re designed to do, we believe all three modes have a home at Google.