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I’ve been suspended from Google+

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Re: I’ve been suspended from Google+

#41

Post by protomyth »

clobber wrote: post #33
dstein wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I didn't intend to write an essay proving something's that's fairly obvious. I think Google's intentions look harmless on the surface, but there may be some sinister consequences if they continue down this road. And at the very least, they have a bad PR problem on their hands because I can't be the only one left with a bad taste in my mouth about this corporation. Google's strategy is to entice you to give up al…

I bet Google probably doesn't care all that much. Users are product sold to advertisers.

Thinking about it, wouldn't a user who doesn't want to give his/her real name be less valuable to an advertiser?

Re: I’ve been suspended from Google+

#42

Post by skore »

saurik wrote: post #14
forkandwait wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Besides other pragmatic business reasons, partly because in the Christian West we implicitly believe that every body has a transcendent soul, which is the "true" person, with a "true" name, and everything else is a lie. All our stuff about self-expression, being true to oneself, god sees inside when you die and are judged, Freud, etc, etc. However, the idea of a transcendent subject may be utter bullshit -- who knows…

That philosophy, however, completely goes against the entire concept of Google+ "circles": to let you present yourself differently to one circle than you do to another.

Not really. As you say - you can behave differently to different people. That doesn't change your person - it only changes what facet of your person is obvious to others. So the "true self" concept actually is very agreeable with the "facets of me" concept.

It's also similar to the difference between "private" and "public" life - My coworkers have no particular interest or value in knowing how I bring out my trash, but the way that I do does not violate the consistency with the way that I behave at work.

Re: I’ve been suspended from Google+

#43

Post by white_devil »

clobber wrote: post #33
dstein wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I didn't intend to write an essay proving something's that's fairly obvious. I think Google's intentions look harmless on the surface, but there may be some sinister consequences if they continue down this road. And at the very least, they have a bad PR problem on their hands because I can't be the only one left with a bad taste in my mouth about this corporation. Google's strategy is to entice you to give up al…

I bet Google probably doesn't care all that much. Users are product sold to advertisers.

He's aware of that. His response was mainly aimed at the Google-apologist above.

Re: I’ve been suspended from Google+

#45

Post by michaelpinto »

If you think of a social site as a party, the rules you set create the environment. And to be fair to Google what makes Facebook good to a degree is that people are anchored to a real identity — this prevents flame wars and all sorts of other noise. Honestly part of the spam problem on Twitter is the ability to setup a fake profile via robot and start spamming everyone within seconds -- fake IDs also are part of what made MySpace feel like a collection of misfits (not that that in itself is a bad thing, but it doesn't lend itself to marketing to a broader audience).

So yes I'd expect Google to want you to be real -- on the other hand that may give room for Twitter or someone new to do something more interesting. Just don't expect said site to be mainstream if you're using 4chan rules for your party!

Re: I’ve been suspended from Google+

#46

Post by clobber »

dedward wrote: post #26
saurik wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, and what if I want to find someone I met ten years ago, and I have no idea what their real name is because no one ever uses it? A ton of my friends in high school and college went by nicknames the entire time anyone ever interacted with them. I had a good friend in college whom /everyone/ called "C.C." (as in, "see see"): her name was "Corrine", but I don't really know how to spell it and I'm one of the few peopl…

The simple answer is: The internet, and society, does not owe you the right to identify and find anyone you've ever met. People are entitled to their anonymity and privacy. Just because someone went to school with me, or was buddies with me in school doesn't mean they get to know what I'm up to now or where I am, or even how to get ahold of me.....

"People are entitled to their anonymity and privacy."

I wish more people would respect this- Google, Mark Zuckerberg, users.

It's ironic how back in the early days of the internet, there was a sense of anonymity where people were afraid to share info online but now anyone willingly posts their most personal details for all to see because those "dumb fucks"[1] trust Mark Zuckerberg.

Now, we've opened ourselves up to this: http://blogs.forbes.com/kashmirhill/2011/06/20/now-your-emba... and it could come back to bite us all in the ass.

1. http://gizmodo.com/5538489/19+year+old-facebook-ceo-didnt-ta...

Re: I’ve been suspended from Google+

#47

Post by darklajid »

So - recently we had a thread where someone was mocked because he wrote about future steps he (might?) want to take.

This is what I did, just now:

- Renamed my profile. It had my real name before, but I gave it voluntarily. Forcing people to use it is below my moral standards. I won't shed a single tear if they throw me out, I can find enough animated gif images elsewhere.

- Thunderbird is downloading my mail archive as I write this. I set up GApps on my private domain in the past and I'm in the process of migrating to my own domain right now (already changing credentials online).

- I blacklisted google.com/www.google.com on my laptop (hosts file). I didn't use it as a primary search engine for a while now (Hey DDG! You are awesome!), but every now and then I fell into the habit of typing google.com/google.de (usually cursing about the idiots that think that redirecting based on source ip is a nice idea. No, I cannot read hebrew. Yes, I really wanted to go to google.com and my browser is very specific about the type of content/language I want: en).

So except for being stuck in the Android world I'm in the process of leaving the harbor. Maybe someone with more sense (Hi, Mozilla?) can solve the social network issue in a better way..

Re: I’ve been suspended from Google+

#48

Post by stephth »

dedward wrote: post #26
saurik wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, and what if I want to find someone I met ten years ago, and I have no idea what their real name is because no one ever uses it? A ton of my friends in high school and college went by nicknames the entire time anyone ever interacted with them. I had a good friend in college whom /everyone/ called "C.C." (as in, "see see"): her name was "Corrine", but I don't really know how to spell it and I'm one of the few peopl…

The simple answer is: The internet, and society, does not owe you the right to identify and find anyone you've ever met. People are entitled to their anonymity and privacy. Just because someone went to school with me, or was buddies with me in school doesn't mean they get to know what I'm up to now or where I am, or even how to get ahold of me.....

Yes!

I have nothing to add to this, but I believe this is an important right, too important to up-vote this comment in silence.

Re: I’ve been suspended from Google+

#49

Post by joelhaus »

dstein wrote: post #40
joelhaus wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google's censorship cooperation with China was fairly > despicable. And they only started changing after they were > publicly humiliated by PBS Interesting, do you know where to find both of these stories (or just the PBS story)?

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/cyberspace/jan-june06/google_... http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business/jan-june10/google_01...

The first link is really a great retrospective (thank god for PBS) and it gives a much more nuanced look at the situation than the overly simple statement you made. The final outcome showed, at least for me, that Google is willing to learn and grow from it's experiences[1]. Thank you for sharing it.

All-in-all, your essay reads like a conspiracy theory that takes leaps of reason and logic so large that it would probably be better received and more relevant for some other parts of the internet. Anyone on HN understands Google's business model and the trade-offs involved.

On the other hand, there is nothing wrong with trying to drum up support for better policies from the services you use. However, this over-the-top rhetoric does not help your cause, and may even hurt it. Google certainly has room to improve (I might even be with you on some substantive points that were not mentioned), but IMHO, they have done a much better job than many of their competitors at freeing up users data[2] and being transparent[3].

[1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8456950.stm

[2] http://www.dataliberation.org/

[3] http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/

Re: I’ve been suspended from Google+

#50

Post by darklajid »

nextparadigms wrote: post #37
joe_the_user wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's it. Google's policies are more aggressively invasive than Facebook. They were a company I had some sympathy for. No longer.

Facebook will delete you if you have fake names, too. Mark said at e-g8 too when asked why isn't he allowing people to be anonymous on their network, and he said he knows anonymity can be a useful thing, too, but he's trying to make a social network where people use real names. I fail to see how Google+ is any different. Use your own name and you'll be fine.

I fail to understand this way to reason about the issue.

G+ is young. It has yet to prove its worth. Do I like it? Maybe. Little chaotic, far too much crap content so far (my G+ is worse than my FB stream and I tried to 'follow' only tech guys that I admire otherwise or find interesting to read about). I don't care about these 'see this graph about the explosive growth of G+' graphics: It's completely useless in my world so far. The UI doesn't scale. The content is miserable. 'Social' features are missing (tell me about events, birthdays).

Using it as a _blogging_ software is the most ridiculous thing I've ever read/seen.

Now your argument comes along and says 'You know what? This thing you all dislike about this new product here? The product it tries hard to compete with, one way or another, has the very same issue'.

Uhm. What? Right.. So - it's the same crap regarding 'real names'. Missed chance. Leads (with other things) to (and it hurts me to write that..) lower scores than FB in my world..

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