Nym Wars (Google+ "real name" rules)

http://www.jwz.org/blog/2011/08/nym-wars/

by bigiain • 15 years ago

123 71 15 years ago

wccrawford• 15 years ago

I had a feeling the policing of this was stupid, but I didn't think it would be downright incompetent. If you can't police a policy properly, don't have it in the first place! Especially one that serves no real purpose and incites so much anger. Jeez.

yanw7• 15 years ago

Any anger here is manufactured. It's just a way for social-media types to publicize their social web theories.

sixtofour5• 15 years ago

Yes, my account is scheduled for suspension tomorrow, for attempting to use my real "wallet name," which happens to be a mononym. I'm angry. I'm particularly angry at their oily statement that I don't "comply" and that I'm free to leave. Google has manufactured that anger.

alextp• 15 years ago

About the McLovin ID thing, I don't think it's Google's responsability to police which ids are fake and which are not. As far as I know faking an ID is a misdemeanor or a felony in most US states [1] and some other countries (like Brazil), so if there is any complaint against a reporter and he is found to have submitted a fake ID he is in for a fine and maybe jail time. I'm personally ok with requiring a user to commit a crime to cause antisocial behavior, as this ensures that they can be prosecuted in some way (this is the same principle behind DMCA takedown notices, where the person sending the letter is liable for a number of crimes if they are not who they claim to be or if they do not in fact own the right to the media at hand).

[1] http://www.celticfringe.net/teenlife/fakeid.html ) and

sp3325• 15 years ago

This isn't about liability. They already have common carrier status, which means that they won't be held accountable for what users say. This is about the kind of community they want to have. Unfortunately, by putting restrictions on the kind of community they want, they have also restricted the number of people who will be able to participate. Google+ can never be universal if they limit the interactions people are allowed to have.

shabble2• 15 years ago

"[x] I declare, under penalty of perjury, that the information in this notification is correct."

From http://4.bp.blogspot.com/--qy3pZh_8qI/TkFAOdMMLvI/AAAAAAAABi...

No idea how enforceable that is, from any legal standpoint, but you can't claim you didn't know about it, at least.

Joakal2• 15 years ago

Google's handling is pretty cold. They encountered a critical issue with having a social [human] network, their support isn't human.

They prefer automation over everything. And that aim will keep biting them in the ass.

jrockway2• 15 years ago

I'm not so sure. Look at all the companies that have non-automated support: Best Buy, Comcast, Bank of America, and so on. Nobody likes those companies either.

Ultimately, being nice to people doesn't scale. And making money requires scaling.

Joakal2• 15 years ago

What are you not sure about?

yanw7• 15 years ago

It's nowhere near the big issue that the self-described activists think it is.

I'm certain the data suggests that using real names isn't a problem for the vast majority of people but merely the obsession of the very loud and self-righteous few, besides it's still a closed beta product and any such criticisms don't apply until they say that it's ready and open for all.

sp3325• 15 years ago

Have you even looked at http://my.nameis.me/ ? These aren't (just) activists, these are individuals who are directly affected by this issue and have many individual reasons for using pseudonyms. None of them are allowed to participate in Google+.

yanw7• 15 years ago

I'm not saying that pseudonyms are without legitimate purpose, I'm saying that Google has decided to enforce certain rules to build their community and this response is deafening and unnecessary.

michaelcampbell• 15 years ago

Right. And? G+ isn't some right that Google is required to make available for everyone.

Google's handling of this is a bit ham-fisted to be sure, but equally irksome is the vitriolic entitlement mentality that a lot (not all) are bringing to the discussion.

superuser25• 15 years ago

Okay. Let's take Andie. Google+ doesn't want to be your PR tool. It's not for pushing a message. It's for talking to the friends and family and coworkers who you trust with your real name.

Gwyneth. Google+ is not deviantart or IRC. You are absolutely entitled to a second life (inside and outside of Second Life) but that's not what Google is trying to enable.

Talel. Google+ is only interested in Talel. The person with Talel's ideas doesn't have coworkers or friends; Talel does. That person belongs on Blogger or Wordpress.

Jin Shei. Facebook and Google+ are for your friends, family, and coworkers. Blogger and Wordpress are for the web at large. I would share your outrage if if you needed to use your real name to blog, but that's not what's happening here. You're only being forced to use your real name to share vacation photos with your parents.

Fyodor. Absolutely! Everyone deserves privacy. Google+ is for your friends, family, and coworkers. You don't have to make your real name public to get a Linode and slap Apache and Wordpress on it.

I believe most of this outrage comes from people misunderstanding what Google+ is and isn't.

sixtofour5• 15 years ago

It doesn't have to be a big issue. My name and identity is what I say it is, because I say it is.

cookiecaper2• 15 years ago

The proposition that "real names" significantly enhances a user experience is a bit silly, I think. It may contribute in some small way as far as what you're willing to admit, but generally it doesn't seem to change behavior a lot.

The quality of commentary on a public comment platform has much more to do with a given community's moderation and social mechanisms than the username that appears above the comment. YouTube is a mess because it's a hit-and-run system, there is no social obligation, you just type what you think about the video and never look at it again. Additionally, YouTube has a short length limit on comments precluding in-depth discussions, and YouTube's audience is very varied and primarily non-specialized.

There are many public messaging systems online that have flourished and maintain a high level of quality even though they allow pseudonyms. Hacker News, for instance. I can think of five or six high-quality messaging systems wherein I have actively participated off the top of my head that were not flooded with YouTube-esque idiocy -- the name policy really has very little to do with it, I think.

Google+ is completely controlled by its users; you must explicitly accept any author's content that you wish to view and you can block and explicitly reject any author's content that rubs you the wrong way. It is a fundamentally different model than YouTube. In this case, people are generally only going to accept you into their circles if they know who you are at least vaguely, whether the displayed name is "cookiecaper" or "Jeff Cook". I just don't see the point in even having the argument regarding Google+ when it has to be explicitly regulated by the user anyway. Facebook likewise.

I think the real motivation here on the part of both Google and Facebook is to discourage the use of multiple identities so that it's easier to target advertising.

Pseudonymity is still possible, though, so I'm still not sure why this is such a major deal, because you can just go create a Google Account with whatever plausible name you can dream up. You can then reveal your identity to the persons you'd like and everyone else knows you as generic John Smith. In fact, I do this on Facebook, and I presume that many others with an interest in pseudonymity do so as well.

yanw7• 15 years ago

I don't think there has to be an ulterior motive to this sort of policy, they have decided upon a set of rules to build their community and that is it.

And persons with theories about how socializing on the web should be, start chiming-in as they chose this pseudonym topic to publicize and unfold their theories and criticisms. They can go elsewhere to be as pseudo-anonymous as they like, I recognize that pseudonyms have legitimate purpose but all this self entitled rhetoric is just trolling.

troymc3• 15 years ago

You, as "yanw", have accumulated a karma of 7218 on HN, which is quite impressive, even though I have no idea what your "real life" name is. Do I need to know? Of couse not. But you're not welcome on Google+ (as yanw).

wisty2• 15 years ago

No, I think it's that real names are bad for privacy, but friends can find you more easily using your real name. Google+ doesn't suffer much if you damage your career using a real name, but it does suffer if your friends don't find you and so you go back to facebook.

cookiecaper2• 15 years ago

Google could easily promote and encourage real names a la Facebook and still let pseudonymous profiles slide. I think that the typical first/last name convention is good, and that it'd be fine to require pseudonyms that follow that convention.

rimantas3• 15 years ago

Posting things you want to keep private on the internet is bad for privacy. Real neames are not.

gte910h• 15 years ago

People who aren't friends can too, and you can't exactly coyly avoid people in many forums.

dws• 15 years ago

Friends can find you more easily using your real name? Try that if you have a very common name. There are over 80 pages of G+ results to sort through if you have mine, and I have it easy. Friends with common Chinese or Indian names have it a lot worse.

rfurmani2• 15 years ago

Good point, although I feel that real names would make things better on Hacker News by giving (1) accountability for comments (2) credentials and justification for opinions. By the latter, I mean that it constantly seems that (for example) on many posts lately involving mathematics there's an argument where one side is forcefully saying one thing that's false and covered in any good college pure math course. For third-parties it isn't obvious that one side is correct and that one side may be a professor or PhD.

waqf• 15 years ago

I like to think my HN comments are more likely to be believed by others and useful to them because of my cogent observations or clear writing style, than because of my name which is probably not known to most people, or my degrees which are not relevant to most topics.

superuser25• 15 years ago

I don't want to have to deal with pseudonyms to talk to people I know in real life just because I'm using a computer.

Facebook understood this, and Google does too.

Pseudoynm communities can still be awesome for situations where you want your persona to stay within the internet. I love HN, and I wouldn't want to use my real name here. Same with most forums. But pseudonyms have no place in social networking. As Zuckerburg figured out from watching MySpace unfold, having Internet-only "friends" is sketchy, unfulfilling, and kind of dangerous; the mainstream wants to use the internet to connect to their real-life friends. That was the principle behind Facebook, and that's what Google+ is trying for.

There is still a segment of people that likes talking to anonymous strangers. Usually it's about some topic, but some people still have MySpace "friends." There is certainly a market there, but it's not for everyone. Google tends to build products for the widest possible audience, and I don't see why Google+ would be any different.

troymc3• 15 years ago

Are you kidding?

The proposal isn't to force you to learn two names for every person, one for "real life" and one for when you're using a computer. That's a straw man.

Facebook began as a network for Harvard students, then island networks for other universities, and so on, and it only got merged into one monster network later on. Because of that history, it tends to be a social network for people to connect to school friends, family, work colleagues, etc. (i.e. people you've met in real life).

Google+ has much different beginnings.

Twitter seems to be doing quite well allowing pseudonyms. Same with Hacker News. You wrote "pseudonyms have no place in social networking" but what is Hacker News if not (in part) a social network?

An anonymous comment isn't the same thing as a comment under a pseudonym. People tend to use the same pseudonym (or set of pseudonyms) everywhere they go: people can get a sense of who they are, what they believe. They can even use that pseudonym when not online (e.g. Mark Twain never had Internet access).

"Real names" and pseudonyms are just handles. They're like variable names when programming. The computer doesn't care what you call the variables. Why should you care whether someone goes by the name their parents gave them or something else? Shouldn't that be their choice?

bad_user• 15 years ago

It creates precedents. And just as in real life people will still be assholes, regardless of any naming policy.

I had hopes that Google+ would be a better Facebook in regards to my privacy.

It isn't, so why should I switch from Facebook? Is it because it's newer and shinier?

gambler• 15 years ago

The notion that using "real names" improves the quality of communication is not just wrong, it's utterly ridiculous. What it impels is that the (best? fastest? surest?) way get "better" conversations is to make sure that everyone is afraid of some sort of retribution for what they say. As far as I can see, that is the only thing "real names" achieve. After that, you can coat it any rhetoric you want, it still remain an ugly idea.

protomyth• 15 years ago

"When the rebuttal to your argument is The Federalist Papers, generally that means that you've lost the argument."

That is one of the golden lines of the article and so true. This quest for better targeting of ads is painful.

Also, I cannot wait until some of the folks on the reservations start getting flagged by Google. Many of the names people are know by violate Google's naming policy.

sixtofour5• 15 years ago

To solve the perceived "quality" problem (and that perception is itself a problem), Google has, true to form, relied on a technical barrier (must have one and only one first name, one and only one last name). They have then all but automated catching the ones that get through the barrier, by soliciting users to report fakes. Whether they review those reports before notice to suspend is an excellent question, one that Violet Blue has probably asked. https://plus.google.com/105822688186016123722/posts/LWySptwh...

Google's monolithic lack of customer service is well known, and I believe it starts with good intentions, trying to automate the management of the problem as much as possible. The problem comes from believing too much in their algorithms and automated solutions. They're all very smart, but their solutions are not as smart as they think. Or, maybe they're even smarter than I think, and they've gone the Pinto route and calculated that a certain amount of customer "disasters" is relatively tolerable.

yuhong• 15 years ago

Personally, I am not for real name policies, but the problems with using real names needs to be fixed if possible.

pasbesoin• 15 years ago

Some of the best, most meaningful and informative "social" participation I've had online has been with pseudonyms. And those people would not have been there if not for the pseudonyms.

(People shared their real names if and as there were ready, and one-to-one. I'm still in touch with many of them, a decade and more later.)

I'm not terribly interested in Google's (and Facebook's, et al.) seemingly self-serving "speculation" on this topic. I'll base my opinion, and decisions, on real experience.

Buzz. Wave. Get on the clue train, folks.

Estragon• 15 years ago

It's a shame that Google hasn't chosen to address this in the empirical fashion they're famous for: why not have two google+'s for a while, one which enforces the "real names" policy, and one which is free for all. See which results in the better data.

FaceKicker• 15 years ago

Because that wouldn't replicate a world in which either one existed as the sole Google+...like, at all.

EGreg• 15 years ago

Your site hurts my eyes

gbog2• 15 years ago

I haven't seen anywhere noted that a significant part of humanity don't have surnames, eg many Indonesians. How to enforce a real name-like policy under these conditions?

shabble2• 15 years ago

Or the massive variation in transliteration from non-latin alphabets.

Not to mention, the vast majority of Chinese students I met at uni would pick an easily pronounceable "English" name. I bet that's not on their passport.

gbog2• 15 years ago

Chinese people with English names: a bit off-topic but the current trend for Chinese where I work and around (Beijing Web corps) is to avoid these English names and use the pinyin translitteration or abbreviations instead, but this also is a can of worms if one want to enforce real name policy. In the South of China some people's family name is just "Ng", some legitimate transliteration of a given name could be "nvzhi" where "i" is not a vowel but "v" is! I which a good time for the humans or the bots that will have to enforce real name policies there...

Nym Wars (Google+ "real name" rules)

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