Google+ names policy discriminates against American Native Indians

> Google, pick up your act. It's getting really old. Frankly, the fact that Elaine Yellow Horse appealed your policy three times and it was only once the media got involved that you did the right thing shows that your staff are either incompetent, or racist. ...

My guess is neither. They're probably very smart people, and they may just arrogantly assume that their specification of their algorithms are correct, are correctly implemented, and therefore produce correct results. All three assumptions are clearly and demonstrably wrong.

That said, good intentions and brains can inadvertently produce racist and incompetent results.

Re: Google+ names policy discriminates against American Native Indians

#5

Post by harshreality » Sat, Mar 08, 2014, 1:31 PM UTC

Obligatory: patio11's Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names

http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-b... (was dead, now live, if dead again it's in google's cache)

However, until Google's (and Facebook's) absurd name restrictions (or even the idea that "proper" "official" names exist at all for humans) start seriously affecting their real customers (advertisers), they will not give a shit.

Another link, this on the consequences of real names policies: http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Who_is_harmed_by_a_%22Rea...

Re: Google+ names policy discriminates against American Native Indians

#6

Post by chris_wot » Sat, Mar 08, 2014, 1:31 PM UTC

Tohhou wrote: post #3

"Discriminate" because this was obviously intentional prejudicial racism! Of course it's not malicious. This guy is not good people.

How do you explain it then? It's good enough for a BuzzFeed writer to get it reinstated, but not good enough to at least verify that it's a real name?

Re: Google+ names policy discriminates against American Native Indians

#7

Post by chris_wot » Sat, Mar 08, 2014, 1:33 PM UTC

a3n wrote: post #4

> Google, pick up your act. It's getting really old. Frankly, the fact that Elaine Yellow Horse appealed your policy three times and it was only once the media got involved that you did the right thing shows that your staff are either incompetent, or racist. ... My guess is neither. They're probably very smart people, and they may just arrogantly assume that their specification of their algorithms are correct, are co…

Arrogant assumptions that a specification is correct and implemented correctly is, in my mind, no different to incompetence.

If they want to maintain a real name policy for the whole of the planet? They're going to have to understand how people from many different cultures and nations identify themselves.

Re: Google+ names policy discriminates against American Native Indians

#8

Post by tonetheman » Sat, Mar 08, 2014, 1:35 PM UTC

Pretty sure this is not arrogance or racism, more like some programmer somewhere said how many fields do I need for names and two is a good guess.

Stupid article.

Re: Google+ names policy discriminates against American Native Indians

#9

Post by jedanbik » Sat, Mar 08, 2014, 1:37 PM UTC

I really can't think of a better way to get this fixed than to write an angry blogpost about it like this. Google's feedback loop can be arrogantly useless at times, and this is a fantastic example of one of those times.

Re: Google+ names policy discriminates against American Native Indians

#10

Post by nysv » Sat, Mar 08, 2014, 1:48 PM UTC

chris_wot wrote: post #6

Tohhou wrote: post #3

"Discriminate" because this was obviously intentional prejudicial racism! Of course it's not malicious. This guy is not good people.

How do you explain it then? It's good enough for a BuzzFeed writer to get it reinstated, but not good enough to at least verify that it's a real name?

Their policy on this has been pointed out to be bad and absurd so many times by now that I'm leaning towards Hanlon's razor now: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."