Does anyone else find it silly that Jamie Zawinski uses his real name on Facebook?
Jwz: Google's pseudonym support "obvious bullshit"
81–90 of 175 posts
Re: Jwz: Google's pseudonym support "obvious bullshit"
#82I'm sick of these posts. What I got out of the article was "I think I know how Google should design its product, and thus I deem decisions not in agreement to be total bullshit." Personally, I prefer to respect the work they've put into the product and to accept that they may have insights deeper than mine. It's evident from Google's announcement that they see more complex issues around pseudonyms, and I will form an…
What I got out of the article is "Google isn't offering a product I want." Yeah, there's an element of "this is the product I do want" involved in that. I think Google's criticized because people who are dissatisfied with Facebook hoped Google would challenge Facebooks flaws, not duplicate them.
Google may well have put all sorts of deep thought into it--but if they're just going to duplicate unliked features of a product that users merely tollerate without offering any real incremental value, why should they deserve to succeed?
Re: Jwz: Google's pseudonym support "obvious bullshit"
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google is a false prophet hiding behind the veil of their "don't be evil" mantra. Google is the real evil corporation but these geeks are too blind to see it. Now they know what these guys at Google are up to.
That describes pretty much every other for-profit corporation that we all do business with on a daily basis as consumers. I don't think they're any more or any less evil than other large company. But this is just about keeping them honest on an issue that is a very big deal with most of their customers. Also I think most of these geeks are pretty smart and aware of what's going on around them.
Maybe not everything has to be a purely "for-profit" endeavor. There are alternatives and there are plenty of people willing to support change.
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/10/to_reform_capitalism_ceos_sh...
Re: Jwz: Google's pseudonym support "obvious bullshit"
#84I've been using Google pretty regularly for the past 11 years, and have had a gmail account since soon after it was announced. However with the release of Plus and the revelation of their policies on "real names", I've come to realize that I no longer trust google. Gmail accounts can be effectively anonymous. Yet plus accounts cannot be? Google does not need anyone's real name in order to track and advertise to them.…
I'm right with you on this one. I personally think the old 'don't be evil' motto is looking very tatty these days. That was always going to happen, I guess, but sometimes I find it very hard to find a difference between activities of companies Google used to speak out against, and modern Google. Google used to be the thing when it was a bare bones, super fast and accurate search engine. Nowadays trying to find an org…
You may (or may not) be surprised but when I was there a lot of energy was spent by the rank and file on not being evil.
The challenge is of course in 'winning' and decades of research on this shows that people who really want to win will be a bit evil if they can get away with it and win at the same time.
So what Google has is a competitive culture (for a long time you couldn't get a raise without getting a promotion) which is peer balanced. They have a huge toolbox of technologies that can generate cash when tweaked. And they have certain groups who's success criteria is 'can you make more cash this quarter than last quarter.'
Unless actively worked against, like mold in a bathroom, evil sort of emerges out of that environment. Kind of scary to watch actually.
Re: Jwz: Google's pseudonym support "obvious bullshit"
#85Everyone is also missing the bigger point that Google's idea of a valid real name is incredibly north american and anglo centric. There are plenty of cases of people using their real names, be in European, or African or what ever and google still kicking them off. Google's policies do not work, and are verging on racist. I know some people who would be better off using a fake anglo name than their real name to keep u…
A golden oldie from Patrick: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-b...
that just made my evening. thanks for sharing!
Re: Jwz: Google's pseudonym support "obvious bullshit"
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can be pseudonymous to google but known to your friends, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. After all, google is just the transportation medium why should it have any knowledge on whose data it transports, as long as it reaches the intended destination it's all good.
> You can be pseudonymous to google but known to your friends, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. That's all good in theory but it's basically impossible in practice. You have to specifically get someones username in meatspace to be able to start following them on twitter; that probably works for your close friends but not at all for acquaintances. There are a couple of dozen people on Google+ and Faceb…
you have to memorize the mapping from username to actual name for your entire social graph
Well, what can I say - in the cases where I know both wallet name and online identity for somebody, not only can I remember both, but if anything the pseudonym is easier. I mean, I can type Skud right off, but I have to go check how many Rs are in Kirrily (Kirilly? Kiriley?).
Also in my experience, if you slip and call someone by their nick in real life, they aren't offended. Unless you are writing them a job reference, it doesn't seem to be much of a problem.
And let's don't forget than in some cases an online persona's personality really is quite different from the meatspace one. In cases where this happens, a different name is almost a necessity. Who knows what the Macalope is like in real life? It doesn't matter, it has a name and a persona it the space that it operates in.
Re: Jwz: Google's pseudonym support "obvious bullshit"
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm right with you on this one. I personally think the old 'don't be evil' motto is looking very tatty these days. That was always going to happen, I guess, but sometimes I find it very hard to find a difference between activities of companies Google used to speak out against, and modern Google. Google used to be the thing when it was a bare bones, super fast and accurate search engine. Nowadays trying to find an org…
You may (or may not) be surprised but when I was there a lot of energy was spent by the rank and file on not being evil. The challenge is of course in 'winning' and decades of research on this shows that people who really want to win will be a bit evil if they can get away with it and win at the same time. So what Google has is a competitive culture (for a long time you couldn't get a raise without getting a promotio…
I'm not surprised at all. Back in 2006 when I was doing competitive strategy at MS and studying Google's culture, I came away very impressed with how much people throughout the organization cared about not being evil. But the dynamics you describe were already in play.
Also Google+ is being led by Vic Gundotra, who spent most of his career at Microsoft. Do relative newcomers to Google have the same passion about not being evil, and the same norms about what is/isn't evil?
Re: Jwz: Google's pseudonym support "obvious bullshit"
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google is a false prophet hiding behind the veil of their "don't be evil" mantra. Google is the real evil corporation but these geeks are too blind to see it. Now they know what these guys at Google are up to.
> Google is the real evil corporation but these geeks are too blind to see it. Okay, since there is a singular, "real" evil corporation, are the other non-real evil corporations in the imaginary-evil or fake-evil domain? edit: A bit cryptic, my point is that "evil" has been overloaded to meaninglessness. It decreases one's intelligence to use it in an assertion. In war and throughout history, party A asserts party B…
whatever you think will make you happy.
Re: Jwz: Google's pseudonym support "obvious bullshit"
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm right with you on this one. I personally think the old 'don't be evil' motto is looking very tatty these days. That was always going to happen, I guess, but sometimes I find it very hard to find a difference between activities of companies Google used to speak out against, and modern Google. Google used to be the thing when it was a bare bones, super fast and accurate search engine. Nowadays trying to find an org…
You may (or may not) be surprised but when I was there a lot of energy was spent by the rank and file on not being evil. The challenge is of course in 'winning' and decades of research on this shows that people who really want to win will be a bit evil if they can get away with it and win at the same time. So what Google has is a competitive culture (for a long time you couldn't get a raise without getting a promotio…
And people who really want to "win" will be as evil as they need to be in order to "win" (however they define winning, hence the quotes).
Re: Jwz: Google's pseudonym support "obvious bullshit"
#90I've been using Google pretty regularly for the past 11 years, and have had a gmail account since soon after it was announced. However with the release of Plus and the revelation of their policies on "real names", I've come to realize that I no longer trust google. Gmail accounts can be effectively anonymous. Yet plus accounts cannot be? Google does not need anyone's real name in order to track and advertise to them.…
You think Google might be using government-supplied information to figure out real identities on Google+? You seem like a pretty reasonable guy. I'm surprised you'd write something like this.
Do you remember in 2009 when the White House issued an RFQ for companies to bid on the contract of taking Social Network feeds and analyzing them looking for "terrorists"?
The national security state that has built up over the past decade is not unaware of social networks, and sees them as an excellent opportunity to look for "terrorists".
I'm sure they really are looking for terrorists, but a key purpose of that process is correlating online and offline identities. It isn't very implausible that they would provide google with this information, because it would allow google to help provide them with the information they're seeking.
There isn't really much of a legal privacy protection anymore for anything plausibly having to do with "national security", and social networks seem to qualify.
I don't really know, I'm just deducing this from the fact that google says it will take a couple months to implement. It could be something completely else, but this is my guess.