Anonymous gets banned from Google+, creates his own social network | Hacker News Reader

Anonymous gets banned from Google+, creates his own social network

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49 pointsDeusExMachina38 comments

They didn't create their own social network. They registered a domain, added a development forum, wrote an ethereal sounding warning message about the coming 'future', wrapped it in a goth inspired theme, and posted it to the internet. They are two different things. The "Revision :0.1 Alpha" at the bottom is what makes me smile the most.

That said I'm not against them coming up with an open anonymous social network... I think that would be an interesting addition to the online world. However to say they created their own social network at this point is slightly over-stated. I look forward to seeing what they produce.

the expect us was their slogan for a while...

> Didn’t take long to get banned from Google+ our Gmail is also gone...

This is a major concern for me and Google+. Who knows what violates their community standards -- and loosing my gmail (and google docs, and analytics and...) because of Google+ is unfathomable.

Google+ really needs to separate out its services so that running afoul of the Google+ "community standards" dosn't lead to the death of all your Google services.

the thing to worry about with Google, is that they are notorious for changing the rules and banning people retroactively for things they did in the past.

happened to me with my adwords account, ran a campaign just fine...paused it...then 8 months later got my account permanently suspended by a bot for a campaign that's been paused for 8 months.

contacting adwords was useless since they just repeat that there is nothing they can do.

I had my five-year-old, $30k/year Adwords account suspended recently, through no fault of my own. I made a few polite phone calls and they were surprisingly helpful; eventually, in about two weeks, my account was reinstated. Although the telephone staff can't unsuspend your account, they can escalate the matter internally so that a human reviews your suspension. It has taken a lot of time, but Google might finally be starting to understand that customer service matters.

> Who knows what violates their community standards

http://www.google.com/support/accounts/bin/answer.py?answer=...

I think that the terms 'anonymous' and 'social network' are reasonably opposed to each other. If you have enough connections it's probably reasonable to be able to figure out who you are, especially if one of the people in your social network has been identified.

Or they could support existing open source social networking projects, instead of, once again, reinventing the wheel.

Or, if they want to be in control, provide an implementation of one of the existing federated social networking standards.

If you read their dev forums it doesn't look like they're trying to make an open facebook, but rather a system with built-in anonymity, encryption, and filesharing. It'd be cool if they could get it off the ground, but they'd have to marshal far more dev time than they've been able to in the past.

"The sheep era is over. The interwebz are no longer your prison."

Isn't the problem with being a sheep that you're anonymous? I don't get it, to me Anonymous exemplifies the metaphorical herd perfectly.

It does seem perfectly tribal. Down with the oppressors, join this group with me to protect yourself against the oppressors. Then the groups fight incessantly until one of them eclipses the others and invents nationalism. On the other hand, Anonymous is supposedly structured so that individuals can opt in or out of campaigns without worrying that their efforts will end up supporting actions they disagree with. With most organizations, you have to try to predict whether they will put your time and money to good use before you actually commit your support, and then your efforts are controlled by the leadership until you retract your support.

That would make Anonymous an organization that is uniquely driven by the individual choices of its members, which is a very attractive idea. That's the potential, anyway.

This is fatally flawed by virtue of the fact that it's a .com. The US government has already claimed it has jurisdiction over the com TLD. Should a judge agree that means the social network could be shut down just by appropriating the domain. Also, anonymous is supposed to be decentralized whereas this is anything but. I like some of what anonymous does, but I don't trust them at all.

That site isn't the social network, that apparently is only in planning phase. It's just a forum.

`anonplus.com` is presumably the home of "anon+", not the forum, which is hosted on ZetaBoards.com (another .com there too).

There is already an anonymous social network, that is where all this Anon stuff started.

It's pretty useless for anything beyond memes, however.

Isn't the anon social network just 4chan?

Why the links black, with a black background?

On a more technical front, the link to Anon+ goes to a site[1] which really only has a link to the Anon+ dev forum[2], this is hosted by ZetaBoards. A company in Maryland[3]. And the "anonplus.com" URL is: A) a .com domain, which I believe the US has recently claimed rights over, and B) all the contacts visible from `whois` are in the US.

Yup. Can't be shut down. Won't be silenced.

[1]: http://anonplus.com/ [2]: http://s13.zetaboards.com/anonplus/index/ [3]: http://www.zetaboards.com/contact/

A social network lead by hacktivists? I'm sure the general public will come flocking...

I don't think it's for the general public, but there are enough 'subversive individuals' out there to make this work for them, I'm personally extremely fed up of the increasing lack of anonymity on the services that I use ...

Lol a social network where every users name is anonymous. What a great plan ;)

What's it called, Moronymous?

you mean like 4chan? Can't see that working either

The lesson here is the Google is a corporation with a corporate agenda, with an allegiance to share holders and not users. I think this is the 3rd such story I've read in the last week.

The other complaints I have seen are from gaming communities. I can understand anon getting banned as they probably breached TOS by supporting criminal activities. But it hasn't been the case for other instances I have read about.

Anyone who thinks Google+ is a social network designed to improve the world is sorely mistaken. Its purely designed to harvest consumer to increase profit margins. If your data can't be sold to 3rd parties via Googles ad netowrk then you aren't welcome.

Whats the saying? "If they aren't selling you something then you're being sold"? no idea who to attribute that quote to.

*plans to create

I'll be surprised if it materializes, but an anonymous (the literal term, not the group) is pretty neat.

Personally I prefer people use their real names if possible, but I am not in favor of sites requiring it.

How long until their domain gets seized?

Namecoin and .bit

Nice try NSA..

It is a forum.

The 45334824923049203492th social network. Congratulations!

How many social networks are there "IRL"?

One.

stupid buzz is stupid

And what are they going to do, reinvent Diaspora?

That's actually what I found confusing; they seem to be planning to build it all from scratch.

And then there is "The relationship database with permissions is kept on a central server". So much for decentralization.

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