I’ve been suspended from Google+ | Hacker News Reader

I’ve been suspended from Google+

infotrope.net

152 pointsdraegtun73 comments

I only wish I could be suspended!

My profile has been "under review" for over THREE WEEKS, meaning that my profile is invisible to others and I am unable to do anything with my Google+ account, not even make comments, until some notional human within Google looks at it and makes a decision.

The irony is that, if I were suspended, I could least click that link to appeal the decision. As it stands, waiting for a review, I can do nothing.

My "crime"? I had a non-standard character in my old Google profile name, where it was not a problem but which was automatically carried over to my Google+ profile. I changed it as soon as I became aware of the problem but, more than three weeks later, I am still awaiting review, possibly permanently.

How the Hell has Google, a company of supposedly intelligent people, allowed such an obvious and avoidable problem alienate some of their previously enthusiastic users?

If a profile is automatically suspended (or, worse, placed "under review"), it should be automatically reinstated if the offending character is removed, it should not require human intervention, especially as Google have so clearly allocated no humans to the task.

So - recently we had a thread where someone was mocked because he wrote about future steps he (might?) want to take.

This is what I did, just now:

- Renamed my profile. It had my real name before, but I gave it voluntarily. Forcing people to use it is below my moral standards. I won't shed a single tear if they throw me out, I can find enough animated gif images elsewhere.

- Thunderbird is downloading my mail archive as I write this. I set up GApps on my private domain in the past and I'm in the process of migrating to my own domain right now (already changing credentials online).

- I blacklisted google.com/www.google.com on my laptop (hosts file). I didn't use it as a primary search engine for a while now (Hey DDG! You are awesome!), but every now and then I fell into the habit of typing google.com/google.de (usually cursing about the idiots that think that redirecting based on source ip is a nice idea. No, I cannot read hebrew. Yes, I really wanted to go to google.com and my browser is very specific about the type of content/language I want: en).

So except for being stuck in the Android world I'm in the process of leaving the harbor. Maybe someone with more sense (Hi, Mozilla?) can solve the social network issue in a better way..

What about email? None of the GMail alternatives seem comparable.

This is the one thing that's holding me back. I'm happy enough to switch to IMAP clients and whatnot, but setting up my own Postfix/Dovecot in a VM that's got a decent antispam setup is somewhat prohibitive. I wish there was a simple, preconfigured Linode (/whatever alternative you prefer) appliance for email - there's a real market for one currently, and I'd happily hand my cash over.

Two questions, if you don't mind:

- what do you consider "a decent antispam setup" ? I've started using a greylist implementation and it has some inconvenients, but is the best antispam measure I've ever had

- what makes you say that there's a real market for an email appliance ?

I work as a Systems Engineer/Developer for an ISP, so unfortunately I've been exposed to the difficulties of configuring a decent antispam engine (our use case is different to that of a personal MX however, and some of the techniques we have to apply to scale wouldn't apply). I'd consider a decent antispam setup one which:

  * performed a full validation at SMTP time of the various protocol bits and bobs (ie. the sending SMTP follows the RFCs)
  * respects DKIM and SPF
  * performs an AV check (clamav is fine here)
  * greylists
  * performs a bayesian analysis
  * uses RBLs like DNSBL and the like
  * supported encryption/TLS for SMTP

Overall, setting something like that up isn't so difficult, but it is time consuming and fiddly. A turnkey virtual appliance which configured Postfix, Dovecot and all the other extensions would be very useful. FWIW, after posting this yesterday I found http://www.iredmail.org/ which actually does all that - so fired it up on a Linode and was very impressed :).

I believe there's a market for it because I believe there's a growing amount of users who want to switch off Gmail (and other cloud email providers), considering posts like this. The threat of losing your communications infrastructure is pretty terrifying for most; I funnel mail from 3 or 4 different domains to my Gmail account and if it got taken away I'd be screwed. As people become distrustful of cloud providers - where else would they go? A simple "run your own email" appliance would give those concerned with their privacy and security online the ability to setup their own instance without having to delve into the arcane magic that is configuring an MX in this day and age :).

That's why the trend seems to be (and I'll follow for now, as an easy way to migrate) to grab free Google Apps on your domain.

You still need to backup your mails (run an imap/pop client somewhere) in the case that Google locks you out. But in that case mail to you is targeted at _your_ domain, you just drop the DNS entries for GApps and set up your mails _then_.

(More clever: Set it up before, but don't list it as MX. That way as soon as DNS propagates you're able to receive mails again)

Google's already locked me out of one domain for no apparent reason at all, so I guess I'm already at step 2.

fastmail.fm?

"To help fight spam and prevent fake profiles, use the name your friends, family or co-workers usually call you." And this is what bothers me about this whole ordeal. Google's playing a stupidly dangerous ( in regards to making people want to use their services ) game of determining whats a "real" name before we're asked of all things to show our ID? That's a little absurd for a social networking client.

We get why you're doing this, you're fighting this the wrong way.

That's it. Google's policies are more aggressively invasive than Facebook. They were a company I had some sympathy for. No longer.

Facebook will delete you if you have fake names, too. Mark said at e-g8 too when asked why isn't he allowing people to be anonymous on their network, and he said he knows anonymity can be a useful thing, too, but he's trying to make a social network where people use real names.

I fail to see how Google+ is any different. Use your own name and you'll be fine.

Some users are getting locked out of their entire google accounts, not just G+. That's the difference.

Not for name violations. For name violations users just get their G+ profile suspended.

"When an account is suspended for violating the Google+ common name standards, access to Gmail or other products unrelated to the Google+ profile are not removed. (Of course there are other Google-wide policies (e.g. egregious spamming, illegal activity, etc) that do apply to all Google products, and violations of these policies could in fact lead to a Google-wide suspension.)

It is not our intention to shut off access to all Google services when an account is suspended for violating our Google+ common name standards. This is a misunderstanding, and I wanted to clarify it."

Not being on any social network is starting to get inconvenient, even for (I'm old) me. But if this no fake name thing stays with G+ then I'll be joining the Anon+ network.

I fail to understand this way to reason about the issue.

G+ is young. It has yet to prove its worth. Do I like it? Maybe. Little chaotic, far too much crap content so far (my G+ is worse than my FB stream and I tried to 'follow' only tech guys that I admire otherwise or find interesting to read about). I don't care about these 'see this graph about the explosive growth of G+' graphics: It's completely useless in my world so far. The UI doesn't scale. The content is miserable. 'Social' features are missing (tell me about events, birthdays).

Using it as a _blogging_ software is the most ridiculous thing I've ever read/seen.

Now your argument comes along and says 'You know what? This thing you all dislike about this new product here? The product it tries hard to compete with, one way or another, has the very same issue'.

Uhm. What? Right.. So - it's the same crap regarding 'real names'. Missed chance. Leads (with other things) to (and it hurts me to write that..) lower scores than FB in my world..

You are totally wrong about that, most of my musicians friends use there stage names, and recently I've been working in big media and all the journalists and writers use fake names as well. Quite common for high visibility people to do this.

Facebook seems total fine with it (or turns a blind eye) as long as its actually you (and not a troll account).

I used a nick name myself as I wanted to see if any spam started heading my way with that name. None so far, been using Facebook since it went public. Never a peep out of them.

Up vote this point...

Facebook pretty much allows pseudonyms in practice whatever they say. If Google+ is actively stepping on the pseudonym accounts of people with well-known names, it's a problem - seriously.

Welcome to what I call Google's vision of an "Orwellian Computing Age". Your every action & communication will be monitored, and your entire digital identity can be deleted by a centralized, seemingly autonomous authority. Better comply with the TOS or you might get yourself "ungoogled".

Because, you know, Google+ is completely mandatory and there are no alternatives and you're not allowed to create or even think about an alternative or you'll be arrested or killed.

This sort of comment is more suited to Reddit. Or Youtube.

Why I downvoted you: Objective discussion which leads to new ideas and solutions is generally hampered by name calling and over-generalization, which just leads to "my side is best, your side sucks" ... "no, my side is best, your side sucks". Add in the emotional charge, and people forget to think about what they say before they open their mouths.

I think you might have a point lurking in your polemic, like "I am afraid Google will start to monitor and try to control its users and content too closely, and as evidence I present their behavior on x, y, z." Why don't you rephrase with evidence, specificity, pragmatic alternatives, and scrubbed of ad-hominem name-calling?

(One of these days I am going to write a "Rhetoric for Hackers"...)

Well I didn't intend to write an essay proving something's that's fairly obvious. I think Google's intentions look harmless on the surface, but there may be some sinister consequences if they continue down this road. And at the very least, they have a bad PR problem on their hands because I can't be the only one left with a bad taste in my mouth about this corporation.

Google's strategy is to entice you to give up all concept of personal privacy. Yeah, nobody's forcing you to sign up for their services. But since Google gives away it's well engineered products for free, they are purposely making it difficult or impossible to build competing services that are capable of making money. They don't need to even compete in the marketplace based on price because they've adopted a "burn down the forest" strategy that's subsidized by their advertising revenue. Want to develop an online calendar/document editor/spreadsheet system? Better find a way to make it free to compete with Google.

If you want evidence of Google's vision, let's go step by step through Wikipedia's definition of "Orwellian":

  Invasion of personal privacy, either directly physically or indirectly by surveillance.

If you use Gmail, Android, Google Search (all free products), Google will track and process your actions. I don't need to prove anything here, this is their business model.

  State control of its citizens' daily life, as in a "Big Brother" society.

If you were to use every Google service including Android, ChromeOS etc, they would be able to curate every piece of information you consume. This is what the Google Filter Bubble concept pointed out very clearly.

    Official encouragement of policies contributing to the socio-economic disintegration of the family.

(not applicable)

  The adoration of state leaders and their Party.

There was no end of media coverage about Larry Page taking over for Eric Schmidt. And even here on HN there are an awful lot of apologetic Google-fanatics and employees.

  The encouragement of "doublethink", whereby the population must learn to embrace inconsistent concepts without dissent, e.g. giving up liberty for freedom. Similar terms used, are "doublespeak", and "newspeak"

I quite often hear people say "My data is safe with Google", and very clearly this turning out to be wrong.

  The revision of history in the favour of the State's interpretation of it.

Google's censorship cooperation with China was fairly despicable. And they only started changing after they were publicly humiliated by PBS.

  A (generally) dystopian future.

This is somewhat subjective. But I can't think of a better example of dystopia than if Google were to become an even more omnipresent part of the internet than search/advertising.

    The use of euphemism to describe an agency, program or other concept, especially when the name denotes the opposite of what is actually occurring. E.g. a department that wages war is called the "Ministry of Peace" or "Ministry of Defence".

"Don't be evil".

I bet Google probably doesn't care all that much. Users are product sold to advertisers.

Thinking about it, wouldn't a user who doesn't want to give his/her real name be less valuable to an advertiser?

He's aware of that. His response was mainly aimed at the Google-apologist above.

  > Google's censorship cooperation with China was fairly
  > despicable. And they only started changing after they were
  > publicly humiliated by PBS

Interesting, do you know where to find both of these stories (or just the PBS story)?

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/cyberspace/jan-june06/google_...

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business/jan-june10/google_01...

The first link is really a great retrospective (thank god for PBS) and it gives a much more nuanced look at the situation than the overly simple statement you made. The final outcome showed, at least for me, that Google is willing to learn and grow from it's experiences[1]. Thank you for sharing it.

All-in-all, your essay reads like a conspiracy theory that takes leaps of reason and logic so large that it would probably be better received and more relevant for some other parts of the internet. Anyone on HN understands Google's business model and the trade-offs involved.

On the other hand, there is nothing wrong with trying to drum up support for better policies from the services you use. However, this over-the-top rhetoric does not help your cause, and may even hurt it. Google certainly has room to improve (I might even be with you on some substantive points that were not mentioned), but IMHO, they have done a much better job than many of their competitors at freeing up users data[2] and being transparent[3].

[1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8456950.stm

[2] http://www.dataliberation.org/

[3] http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/

Where Orwellian phenomena are seen (even if it requires a little squinting), they mustn't be ignored.

(One of these days I am going to write a "Rhetoric for Hackers"...)

Please do. I for one think it sounds interesting.

Why I downvoted you (redux): starchy would-be HN exceptionalism and undergraduate pomposity ("we're so much better than Reddit, ...").

The grandparent post was a bit overheated, but not exactly an out-of-control polemic. Much of what he wrote is literally true. It might be "improved" by pumping it up with a pile of "of course, there are many points of view here" and "other companies also do bad things" and "let's remember all the awesome things that Google has done". But so what?

Your rewriting actually removes content. He is not "afraid that Google will start to monitor and try to control its users and content too closely". He's saying it's already happened.

What you're asking is that instead of concisely putting forth their point of view posters puff up what they're writing with pompous polysyllabic mini-essays on Every Goddamn Thing, with copious footnotes, links, etc. Same biases, more tl;dr.

Forcing everyone to furnish "pragmatic alternatives" is also another great way of turning every concise 4-line statement into a tedious mini-essay. It's actually OK to be against something without necessarily having to lay out an 8-step plan to substitute for it...

Finally, ad-hominem name-calling can be fun and brightens up everyone's day, as long as it's not bullying. The guy isn't exactly going to ruin Brin/Page/Schmidt's days by taking a swing at the goog, now, is he?

Maybe his comment wasn't perfect, but there is a good point buried inside of it. I'm not a big privacy freak, but let's call it what it is.

If you think of a social site as a party, the rules you set create the environment. And to be fair to Google what makes Facebook good to a degree is that people are anchored to a real identity — this prevents flame wars and all sorts of other noise. Honestly part of the spam problem on Twitter is the ability to setup a fake profile via robot and start spamming everyone within seconds -- fake IDs also are part of what made MySpace feel like a collection of misfits (not that that in itself is a bad thing, but it doesn't lend itself to marketing to a broader audience).

So yes I'd expect Google to want you to be real -- on the other hand that may give room for Twitter or someone new to do something more interesting. Just don't expect said site to be mainstream if you're using 4chan rules for your party!

The flip side of that metaphor, though, is that most of us go to lots of parties without necessarily taking the same identity with us to each party. Further, using people's legal names (if this fiasco demonstrates anything, it's that the concept of a "real" name is kind of a crock) doesn't guarantee better interactions - at the Facebook party I run into objectionable relatives all the time, but it's not really my party and I can't kick them out.

> this prevents flame wars and all sorts of other noise

I don't think this has been proven. In fact, I think if you look at real world locales like bars and clubs, you see the exact opposite.

I like what Google is doing, but I don't like how it does it. I live in Tunisia, where almost all of my friends and family members uses Facebook. It's important to recognize the right person, because sometimes some friend add you and it's not really your friend. There is also e-militia that browse pages and comment to create false political ideas. These are two problems that needs to be solved.

It's good that Google is making effort on this, but disabling one user account is WRONG. It only happens with Facebook when you spam. Why not create an algorithm and mentor how it works? It's necessary to get this feature now, especially that it's not accurate.

And also, if you are making this feature, make sure you have a stellar support. G+ has just started and blog posts like this will KILL it.

I wonder what Google intends on doing with people who simply use a fake name for their Google account/Google+ persona. Will they also get banned/have etheir Google+ accounts disabled? What about people from foreign countries? For example, if someone uses a name that basically means John Doe in a not-so-well-known language, will that also be considered misuse of the G+ service (use of a fake persona) or will it remain ignored because checking whether that is indeed an actual person's name or not would take too much resources on Google's end?

Cost of a false negative here: nothing.

Cost of a false positive: I suppose Google could lose its hard-won reputation for conscientious individualized customer service.

I'm not sure I understand the real name policy of either Facebook or Google+. Isn't the whole point of a social graph that it is personally curated by me? The identities of my friends/circles are verified by me.

What if I want to find someone I met ten years ago and have no idea what nickname they have chosen? What about friends of my friends?

If one does not agree with the policy—just don't sign up. I find fake names on Facebook really annoying.

It’s not up to you how someone chooses to make themselves known to others. If they want to change it’s probably for a reason.

OK, and what if I want to find someone I met ten years ago, and I have no idea what their real name is because no one ever uses it? A ton of my friends in high school and college went by nicknames the entire time anyone ever interacted with them. I had a good friend in college whom /everyone/ called "C.C." (as in, "see see"): her name was "Corrine", but I don't really know how to spell it and I'm one of the few people who ever actually bothered to learn it.

The simple answer is: The internet, and society, does not owe you the right to identify and find anyone you've ever met. People are entitled to their anonymity and privacy.

Just because someone went to school with me, or was buddies with me in school doesn't mean they get to know what I'm up to now or where I am, or even how to get ahold of me.....

Well, if you think that, you also are going to be taking issue with rimantas' point as well, so it is kind of a wash. The goal of my response was to show that /if/ you agreed with rimantas (and you don't), then you actually had to support nicknames in addition to real names.

That is begging the question. What if the person WANTS you to be able to find them, but they have always gone by a nickname that they can't use because facebook's policies is real-names-only?

"People are entitled to their anonymity and privacy."

I wish more people would respect this- Google, Mark Zuckerberg, users.

It's ironic how back in the early days of the internet, there was a sense of anonymity where people were afraid to share info online but now anyone willingly posts their most personal details for all to see because those "dumb fucks"[1] trust Mark Zuckerberg.

Now, we've opened ourselves up to this: http://blogs.forbes.com/kashmirhill/2011/06/20/now-your-emba... and it could come back to bite us all in the ass.

1. http://gizmodo.com/5538489/19+year+old-facebook-ceo-didnt-ta...

Yes!

I have nothing to add to this, but I believe this is an important right, too important to up-vote this comment in silence.

You can't find him by only his nickname. You have to add other things like where he lived, what is his college etc (if he wants to share that info with the world). Nickname/identity is not that important for you as it is for google/facebook.

What if the person doesn't want you to find them?

No, the policy of at least Facebook is you use the real, legal names as determined by the state. If you are locked out of your Facebook account, they ask you to send a copy of a government issued ID to prove who you are.

The idea that you are "curating" might be something they'd like you to think.

In Britain your real name is the name you choose to use for every-day purposes. The state just follows your choice of name.

A nice side effect is the civility of discussions. People tend to be much less likely to spam/troll when their real identity is tied to it. Look at the difference in comment quality between YouTube and Facebook for example.

I like being able to create new identities for different purposes. Why wouldn't Google+ allow that?

Eric Schmidt:

  The people who built the Internet did not get a stable
  version of identity; You need identity, in the sense that 
  you are a person, this is who you are these are your
  friends and so on … The issue on the Internet is not the
  lack of Facebook, the issue on the Internet is the lack 
  of identity.

(from http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/09/eric-schmidt-on-gauging-goo... )

Identity is not the same as "name on your birth certificate". Skud's identity is Skud, not Kirrily Roberts.

I'm all for having stable identities on social networking services, but that has nothing to do with legal names vs pseudonyms.

I agree that effective identity is about who you can become on the Internet. But there really isn't any middle ground between imposing the name on one's birth certificate and letting people create whatever identity they want - after all, every pseudonym has to begin as anonymous pseudonym and gain connections.

The G+ names policy doesn't say "name on your birth certificate". It says "the name you commonly go by in real life", see: http://www.google.com/support/+/bin/answer.py?answer=1228271

Even if Skud does go by that name in daily life, I don't see how it comes as any surprise that he is suspended pending review for that name. He even says it himself:

> I knew I was at risk of my account (under the name of “Skud .”) being suspended

The policy that they are enforcing is that you must use your legal name, leading many people to the obvious conclusion that the policy is bullshit.

> The issue on the Internet is not the lack of Facebook, the issue on the Internet is the lack of identity.

How would one use PirateBay with a real identity? Or browse porn websites? Or anonymously flirting with people in chat rooms? What's wrong with this Internet? </rhetorical questions>

Personalized search and targeted ads can be monetized very well when you have strong identity.

Besides other pragmatic business reasons, partly because in the Christian West we implicitly believe that every body has a transcendent soul, which is the "true" person, with a "true" name, and everything else is a lie. All our stuff about self-expression, being true to oneself, god sees inside when you die and are judged, Freud, etc, etc.

However, the idea of a transcendent subject may be utter bullshit -- who knows? There was a HN thread on the Japanese not having the same need for a "real" person connected consistently to an internet persona.

That philosophy, however, completely goes against the entire concept of Google+ "circles": to let you present yourself differently to one circle than you do to another.

Not really. As you say - you can behave differently to different people. That doesn't change your person - it only changes what facet of your person is obvious to others. So the "true self" concept actually is very agreeable with the "facets of me" concept.

It's also similar to the difference between "private" and "public" life - My coworkers have no particular interest or value in knowing how I bring out my trash, but the way that I do does not violate the consistency with the way that I behave at work.

There is no "person". Only context.

Sounds like I won't be signing up for Google+ any time soon. I don't do anything on the Internet under my real name (and that includes Hacker News).

Well the good point is that google lets you delete your google+ profile easily (without losing your gmail or other parts of your google account).

I've never used Facebook because I value my privacy and was naïve enough to think G+ would be the white knight that would save us all. Way to kill your hype, Google.

Please don't think I'm bitter or it's a ragequit, I'm just glad I leave now before I become "addicted" to the service. I'd definitely be willing to try the service again, if they fix their policies.

Your move, Mr. Cutts.

To be fair, I don't think Matt should be expected to respond to every complaint about Google on HN. Nobody appointed him the official Google spokesperson on HN, he's just another visitor here. Google is a huge corporation and AFAIK, Matt has nothing to do with Google+.

Nobody appointed him the official Google spokesperson on HN, he's just another visitor here.

Probably not, but he's sure behaved like a Google PR/damage-control-drone here, pretty much any time it looks like "Don't Be Evil" might not be accurate.

Also see this post: Preliminary results of my survey of suspended Google+ accounts - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2806448

I get the whole "I would never join a country club that would have me as a member" exclusivity B.S. but they are really being silly now. Is it time to boycott Google+ ???

No need, Google chooses the people it wants to be boycotted by.

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