Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Nonplussed

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 250 posts

Re: Nonplussed

#11

Post by scholia »

seiji wrote: post #4
petercooper wrote: post #3

It’s not that I find Google or even Google+ itself bad. But the connections between the account, the Google+ profile, the Google profile, the various websites and contact lists This is totally it for me. I have a few Google accounts (an 'original' one and two Apps For Your Domain ones for e-mail and work) and it seems Google has made Plus accounts for each and I have things spread around them all. I've seen stories w…

How do we reconcile Google Only Hires Geniuses with their executional incompetence across multiple (dozens of?) products? Is it a pride of ego fallacy? They think they are the best and they can do no wrong, so they just keep doing things without thinking results through? Too many logical programmers trying to have input on end users/UI/UX decisions where visuals and emotions are more important? Too many 24 year old b…

I agree with the sentiments, but most Google products worked better when they were done by logical programmers. They've all got much less usable since the fancy UI designers came in and screwed them up.

Re: Nonplussed

#12

Post by joelrunyon »

Bahamut wrote: post #7

I'm probably in the minority here, but I'm all for this change, largely because of the crappy anonymous comments you see out there on YouTube, which was the point of this transition in the first place. However, forcing Google+ onto people does have me wary as well. I don't mind using Google+, but it seems like Google's way to slowly worm their way into people using its social component. I admittedly am not sure why i…

If you've seen what FB comments does on news sites - then you know that using real names doesn't really guarantee improved quality.

Re: Nonplussed

#14

Post by joelrunyon »

petercooper wrote: post #3

It’s not that I find Google or even Google+ itself bad. But the connections between the account, the Google+ profile, the Google profile, the various websites and contact lists This is totally it for me. I have a few Google accounts (an 'original' one and two Apps For Your Domain ones for e-mail and work) and it seems Google has made Plus accounts for each and I have things spread around them all. I've seen stories w…

This is getting really bad. You used to have to have multiple google accounts due to various things (having multiple youtube or gmail accounts) & now they want to make you have to only have on account & there is no good way to merge them.

I can't believe this is their final solution.

Re: Nonplussed

#15

Post by joelrunyon »

jenius wrote: post #9

I may be mistaken, but I think the entire point of this recent change was to force people to use their real names and faces rather than commenting anonymously (due to the fact that youtube comment sections are typically the worst things ever), and if so it seems like google has actually achieved it's goal. Now, whether it's a good decision to make it difficult/impossible to anonymously comment on youtube videos is an…

Where is the proof that "real names = better quality." That argument gets paraded everywhere but I've yet to see an actual study or proof of this.

Re: Nonplussed

#16

Post by turing »

chimeracoder wrote: post #2

I wonder how much engagement Google/Facebook/et. al. lose from people who are about to make a comment/post a status/etc., and then thing 'Hm, no - this is private now, but what about in a year when they automatically change my privacy settings without asking me?' Put another way, imagine I am a teenager or college student who uses Facebook. 1. Start to upload a photo from my phone of me and my friends doing shots 2.…

The scenario you describe is precisely why I like G+'s circles; every post and every photo shared is shared with a specific subset of my contacts. The vast majority of my posts on G+ are targeted at only a fraction of my friends.

Re: Nonplussed

#17

Post by shawnz »

joelrunyon wrote: post #15
jenius wrote: post #9

I may be mistaken, but I think the entire point of this recent change was to force people to use their real names and faces rather than commenting anonymously (due to the fact that youtube comment sections are typically the worst things ever), and if so it seems like google has actually achieved it's goal. Now, whether it's a good decision to make it difficult/impossible to anonymously comment on youtube videos is an…

Where is the proof that "real names = better quality." That argument gets paraded everywhere but I've yet to see an actual study or proof of this.

So does that mean Google should not even experiment with the idea, just because nobody else has published data about it yet? Why does there need to be "proof"? It is Google's choice, just like it is your choice to use Google products.

Re: Nonplussed

#18

Post by seiji »

scholia wrote: post #11
seiji wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do we reconcile Google Only Hires Geniuses with their executional incompetence across multiple (dozens of?) products? Is it a pride of ego fallacy? They think they are the best and they can do no wrong, so they just keep doing things without thinking results through? Too many logical programmers trying to have input on end users/UI/UX decisions where visuals and emotions are more important? Too many 24 year old b…

I agree with the sentiments, but most Google products worked better when they were done by logical programmers. They've all got much less usable since the fancy UI designers came in and screwed them up.

Good point. There's the genius of the original Google Search experience versus the new horrendous "three to five floating javascript toolbars taking up 50% of the screen" Google+ pages with unreadable URLs.

"Which post? Oh, post 43278947329849783223? Yeah, I liked that one too."

Re: Nonplussed

#19

Post by spodek »

Experiences like this led me to leave Facebook, then LinkedIn, a while ago. I haven't deleted my Google+ account only because laziness and fear of an experience like the article's author prevent me from going to the site. People describe leaving as trendy, as if leaving had something to do with other people as opposed to the sites' own repellent behavior. For me leaving was easy and fun -- http://joshuaspodek.com/leaving-facebook-easy-and-fun. Experience has unequivocally shown me my life is better without them.

I have a feeling the market forces forcing Google, Facebook, et al into an arms race after your privacy and personal life will motivate people to leave more and more in favor of small players that do one thing well.

I expect people here will see the writing on the wall first that the sooner you get out the better. Yes, social networks have benefits, but they have costs too.

Deleting Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, etc accounts improves your life. Deleting them earlier improves your life earlier.

Re: Nonplussed

#20

Post by Lewisham »

chimeracoder wrote: post #10
Lewisham wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really want to dive into this conversation in any real depth, but I do want to point out that Google+, with old features or new, has never violated the ACLs that users set. If you set something to private, it remains private forever. To do otherwise would be corporate suicide. Disclaimer: I work for Google, but not on G+.

> I do want to point out that Google+, with old features or new, has never violated the ACLs that users set. If you set something to private, it remains private forever. I know that, which is why I used the example of Facebook. However, Google+ does make it incredibly easy to leak information that I would otherwise consider private accidentally. For example, I can't use Google+ with my primary email address, as it's…

I'm honestly not sure how your email address would be leaked, vanity URLs are name-based and at least one of the reasons Plus uses ID strings was in order to prevent leaking any account details through the URL. I'm sorry that other people are figuring it out, that sucks. If you remember what happened and think that G+ has had a hand in the leakage, please feel free to ping me (my URL is in my profile) and I'll try to follow it up.

Personally I do feel that G+ has done a good job at communicating to users the privacy they do and don't have, as the ACLs were baked in at the beginning. I think users have had the possibility to be confused when data is being used outside the http://plus.google.com domain, like Shared Endorsements and the YouTube comments, as this opens up the worry ACLs are being violated. I think there's more work that can be done to communicate that this hasn't happened, such as putting the "Shared (publicly|privately)" on YouTube comments so you can see why those are there.

Post reply on HN