Jwz: Google's pseudonym support "obvious bullshit" • Hacker News Board

Re: Jwz: Google's pseudonym support "obvious bullshit"

#151

Post by dredmorbius » Thu, Oct 20, 2011, 5:47 PM UTC

forza wrote: post #123

ChuckMcM wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"Don't be evil" is a flawed motto to begin with and should have been something like "be good" if they were serious about it. People thinks all kinds of things, like war, are "not evil".

Read the story behind the motto.

It started as a one-engineer campaign, almost a joke. He'd write the motto on whiteboards in meeting rooms. It spread from there.

I think the heart was in the right place. It seems to have moved.

Re: Jwz: Google's pseudonym support "obvious bullshit"

#152

Post by dredmorbius » Thu, Oct 20, 2011, 5:59 PM UTC

esrauch wrote: post #43

nirvana wrote: post #8

I'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.…

> They want to correlate my online activities with my offline identity. It seems to me that the only legitimate use of circles is with respect to people you are sharing with that you know in real life. If you want to talk to total strangers, then you want to be pseudonymous but you also have almost no reason to not post publicly. That's fine; there is twitter, tumblr, even HN fit that model. All pseudonymous posts, a…

Since it takes only one counterexample: I participate (pseudonymously) in G+.

I follow a number of people who associate by their (so far as I can ascertain) birth / given / legal names, and a number with evident pseudonyms (having gone so far as to seek out same). Several of these have noted that the apparent pseudonyms are in fact birth / given / legal names, go figure.

I use circles to categorize both inbound and outbound posts by content and context (NB: this doesn't work very well, and recent improvements in search help).

There are people I do know IRL who are on G+. None AFAIK actually know the link between my pseudonym and my legal identity, though of course, some may have done the math.

I frankly don't trust Google (or by extension its successors and/or business/government "partners") with my personally identifiable data, to this degree.

I've had the batshit crazy conspiracy shibboleth thing thrown at me before. Sometimes it's a valid criticism. Surprisingly often, it's not.

As for the "use another service" shibboleth: network effects and social/commerce expectations currently all but require use of Facebook in some contexts, and similar effects would almost certainly arise for any closed, proprietary successor. So long as social networks are closed, there really isn't a viable alternative. It's the equivalent of trying to exist without a phone or postal service in the 1980s or 1990s. Yes, it's possible, but only in a highly marginal way, and you'll find you're excluded from many interactions and services.

The real solution, the one I've been considering for some time, is an open social networking framework that breaks the silos. If social networking is truly the cat's meow, and sufficiently valuable that people demand it, and systems such as Diaspora can gain traction, I see the third-tier networks and open solutions (Diaspora, etc.) developing an open model. Think very strong analogs to how the GNU project and Linux emerged to the point that no proprietary Unix vendor can credibly be called a market leader, though several do survive (Sun as an Oracle subsidiary, AIX within IBM, Mac OS X as a consumer product, etc.).

Re: Jwz: Google's pseudonym support "obvious bullshit"

#153

Post by pessimizer » Thu, Oct 20, 2011, 6:01 PM UTC

esrauch wrote: post #62

0x12 wrote: post #49

Earlier 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…

Depends on your definition of close friends, and your definition of acquaintances. If acquaintances include the boyfriend of someone you somewhat knew in high school, then my use of a pseudonym that I had never used before worked for acquaintances while using facebook. What it didn't work for was people who simply had my name but didn't know any of my friends and/or were not specifically invited by me in facebook or real life to become my friend.

If you were looking for a guy who had my real name on facebook, you were out of luck. If you noticed one of your friends having a conversation with me, and asked who I was and knew me/recognized who I was due to the content of the conversation/recognized me as likely someone you might want to know based on your sampling of my adjacent nodes and my public content, you would have been able to find me.

>"There is enormous value to me in having people's names online be discoverable and searchable by the name that I actually know them by."

Not everybody wants to be discoverable in the same way. I may not want you to be able to find me just because you know my name. Maybe I want to avoid old one night stands/people I did drugs with/people I was in prison with/the obsessed schizophrenic who lives in my building and rely on my current network of friends and serendipity to populate my friend list.

I think the most important question is whether you are tolerant or intolerant towards that - noting that even if you do require real names, you won't be able to find mine anyway, because I won't be there. That question addressed to google or facebook is: "Are you still interested in me as a customer if you can't track me after I've left your system?"

If the answer if "No," you may not be evil, but you're certainly creepy.

Re: Jwz: Google's pseudonym support "obvious bullshit"

#154

Post by pessimizer » Thu, Oct 20, 2011, 6:26 PM UTC

TomOfTTB wrote: post #16

blahedo wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's what I consider pseudonymity But that's not what pretty much everyone pushing pseudonymity in this fight considers pseudonymity, so your distinction is not very helpful.

Was there a vote I was unaware of? (Sorry, the unflinching confidence in your statement made the snarkyness irresistible to me) I realize there's a spectrum to every debate and it's sometimes hard to know where the fringe is. But I have to assume most people realize Google has the right to know who they are providing a service to. Again, I see the distinction here between Google knowing your name (which I think they…

Are you sure that the publisher paid Samuel Clemens, or are you just assuming that? Things like that are often directed through lawyers in order to maintain the pseudonym. Writers often take pseudonyms seriously, one reason being because what you write could have consequences in your real life.

Re: Jwz: Google's pseudonym support "obvious bullshit"

#155

Post by eliasmacpherson » Thu, Oct 20, 2011, 6:28 PM UTC

davidhollander wrote: post #79

chugger wrote: post #63

Earlier 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…

I disagree, google automatically created and logged me into a youtube account just because I was logged into gmail. It cannot be deleted, and it told me:

"While you're logged in, YouTube will keep track of your viewing history, and use videos you’ve watched, videos you’ve liked, and your subscriptions to recommend other videos for you to enjoy. With 48 hours of video uploaded every minute, we’re sure to find you at least a couple more videos worth watching!"

Coercion isn't limited to the targets decisions, it can also be applied to their acts. Coercion isn't limited to physical coercion. I consider the persistent pestering for a phone number in gmail to be coercive. I consider repeatedly asking G+ users for government ID to be coercive.

Re: Jwz: Google's pseudonym support "obvious bullshit"

#156

Post by eliasmacpherson » Thu, Oct 20, 2011, 6:47 PM UTC

mladenkovacevic wrote: post #32

nirvana wrote: post #8

I'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 think removing yourself from Google is a mistake. It will give anyone with malevolent intentions the opportunity to remake your account with the same name, pictures and possibly misrepresent you. A better way to boycott them is to maintain a static account. Simply take ownership of your identity but not give them any personal data about yourself or your friends. There's nothing they hate more than a user who doesn'…

Excellent point. People have probably faked every possible form of identification in history. The other problem is that as soon as you do acquire an account, if you ever use it, giving it up - if the id is revoked and recycled, you've just left yourself wide open.

Re: Jwz: Google's pseudonym support "obvious bullshit"

#157

Post by rhizome » Thu, Oct 20, 2011, 7:13 PM UTC

tedunangst wrote: post #70

rhizome wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think they're hiding these "deeper insights," do they think we're too stupid to understand?

Hiding one's deeper insights into a market's dynamics is frequently a competitive advantage.

If these Google insights into the undesirability of anonymity are so hidden, can they even be said to exist? As the poster asserts?

Re: Jwz: Google's pseudonym support "obvious bullshit"

#158

Post by mdwrigh2 » Thu, Oct 20, 2011, 7:14 PM UTC

idspispopd wrote: post #112

nirvana wrote: post #8

I'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.…

For a long time I thought that google's services were "free", a nice exchange for being advertised to in response to searches. However now they're scrambling to win the emerging market of following consumers around the web and they're pulling all the strings they have to get a competitive advantage. It's now so ridiculous that we recommend web clients not to use Google Analytics - as it's providing google the ability…

> To me, it's unsurprisingly that google dropped their "don't be evil" motto a few years back.

Wait, when did this happen? They appear to still have it, at least on their investor's code of conduct page[1].

[1]: http://investor.google.com/corporate/code-of-conduct.html

Re: Jwz: Google's pseudonym support "obvious bullshit"

#159

Post by nathanb » Thu, Oct 20, 2011, 7:15 PM UTC

methodin wrote: post #133

ChuckMcM wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What exactly do you expect them to do? They are not a charity or a non-profit. They either have to stay competitive or die. I hardly call that evil .

You want to win in a way that doesn't diminish you as a person. Corporations are not just beholden to their shareholders, they are beholden to their sense of values and to the values of their leaders and employees. Google, of all companies, are powerful enough and have clever enough employees to find a way to not only stay competitive but to beat the competition in a way that is demonstrably non-evil. That they don't seem to be doing this is in fact quite a shame.

Re: Jwz: Google's pseudonym support "obvious bullshit"

#160

Post by FK506 » Thu, Oct 20, 2011, 7:28 PM UTC

davidhollander wrote: post #79

chugger wrote: post #63

Earlier 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…

The most important question is not what are they doing but how you expect them to use this In the future. Good or bad intent is beside the point. Google wants to grow in a serious way and they not against some unethical actions to reach those goals. If groth continues they are going to have a near monopoly is many areas. It is best to have a fall back plan. I really don't want to have them as my omeaning ome or acess with the world. The above comment to early Microsoft was apt. The people that trust google would also have trusted MS before they threw all there loyal coustomers under the bus to lock out Netscape. I am sure they had no idea how much the tight integration with IE would hurt security and stability but they did control the market for some time.

The benefits of completly relying on google are minimal the potential costs are nontrivial.