Google Plus to relax the "real names only" restriction? | Hacker News Reader

Google Plus to relax the "real names only" restriction?

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33 pointsthristian25 comments

I think Google's on the right track - they're just optimizing for friends and families instead of brands. It's defensible to posit that the relatively high quality of Facebook's social graph is due in part to how strongly they validated identity in the early days (by requiring e-mail addresses from reputable universities). Further, it might not be realistic for a social network to pursue both the highly validated identity model (i.e. Facebook) and the wide-open, syndication-friendly route of Twitter simultaneously in the early stage.

There's room for improvement, but this has some of the air of the usual end-user indignation that a product doesn't have a comprehensive feature-set at launch.

I'm somewhat concerned that "find a way to use pseudonyms" is some implementation of "multiple pseudonyms, as long as you have your real name on an umbrella account", which completely misses the point.

Well, maybe.

Different people want pseudonyms for different reasons. Some people want to be able to completely divorce content created under one name from content created under another: for example, a well-known public figure might choose to interact with close friends and family under a pseudonym so that those people aren't dragged into the public spotlight. Other people are just known by different names in different social circles — perhaps the people you play tennis with gave you a nickname, or you have friends in another country who find your given name awkward and hard to pronounce. For those people, an absolute water-tight division between pseudonyms is not necessary.

Personally, I'd be happy with settings of the form "To contacts in circle X, display the name Y", and "To strangers, display the name Z". I don't mind my friends knowing my real name, I just don't want friends blocking me because they don't recognise the value I've put in the only name field Google displays.

> Personally, I'd be happy with settings of the form "To contacts in circle X, display the name Y", and "To strangers, display the name Z".

Most of my friends are in multiple circles (a "friends" circle and a circle based on why I know them). If I set different display names for two circles, what does it display to someone in both of them?

That's why I'm just some schmuck posting on HN, and Google are the ones with the globe-spanning enterprise - because they're better at finding answers to tricky questions like that than I am.

If I had to guess, I'd say "use the name attached to the circle with fewer members", because I imagine a lot of people will have a few big circles for reading by content, and a number of small circles that represent their actual social circles.

Personally, I'd be happy with settings of the form "To contacts in circle X, display the name Y", and "To strangers, display the name Z".

Personally I find it absolutely not acceptable to force me to hand over my real name. This isn't a government service, it is not a financial institution, and with requirements like that I will not be joining.

No big loss for G+, I am sure. Just like my absence from Facebook hasn't hurt them. But that is until some other Not-Facebook service does it right, and overtakes both Facebook and G+.

Sounds like they are trying to keep it from becoming another MySpace full of shit names and people being silly.

My intuition tells me a top-down approach isn't the best route, though.

I'm seeing more and more issues on G+ that annoy me about Facebook.

They got some things right, but I'm afraid the core is the same old revenue-oriented and privacy-invading crap.

Not-Facebook is not good enough and looking at the end-result it is kind of disappointing.

I'm getting a lot of down-votes, which is cool but maybe I haven't explained my reasons for thinking like this:

I love email mostly because it is not controlled by a single provider; I can always run my own email servers (and I do). I also love email because you can be anonymous - you can use a pseudonym - heck, you can fake the headers to make it look like you're bill-gates@microsoft.com, although smart email clients will figure it out. I also love email because it doesn't have a single point of failure -- if one email provider goes down, that won't block the Internet. I also love email because if you have your own domain, no email provider can freeze you from sending or receiving emails, although they can try to do that.

Google+ does fix some of the annoyances of Facebook, but it fixes none of the more hard-pressing problems and still has many problems that Facebook has.

Google+ / Facebook are nothing like email.

Wait, was it ever a "real name only" restriction? Didn't it always say that you should use the name that you "commonly use"?

Well, the instructions said "commonly use", but then Google started kickbanning people whose "commonly used" name didn't fit the fairly narrow parameters of Anglo-Saxon real names.

Is there some credence to the rumor that having a g+ account could shut you out of other google services, like gmail?

My profile was suspended on Google Plus, then I can no longer share any Google Reader items.

Chrome Inspector network requests shows that it's a server 500 error, and it tries to call the Multi Sign-on URI even I didn't enable Multi Sign-on.

When I tried to delete my Google Plus service, the page[1] is just 404.

Looks like G+ isn't really a finished or proper tested product.

[1]: https://plus.google.com/settings/plus

Looks like G+ isn't really a finished or proper tested product.

It's currently in a "field trial"[1]. If you're using it now then you are a tester, so complaining about a lack of testing a little nonsensical.

[1] https://sites.google.com/a/pressatgoogle.com/google-plus/fie...

I will not touch G+ if that's even a remote possibility. Just not worth risking it. (Today it's real names. Sure. Tomorrow?)

Agreed. I would be especially worried about this if I had an Android phone (although I hope it is not a real concern).

Android phones are usable without a Google account. You need one in order to log in to Android Market, and obviously the GMail app and contacts sync won't work, but the OS can still be used. Cyanogen, for IP reasons, even goes so far as to package all the Google-dependent stuff in a separate firmware image.

There is a difference between suspension of your Google Profile, and your entire Google Account. Merely violating the common names will not result in the entire Google Account getting shut down; just the Google Profile. This will prevent other people form seeing your Google Plus posts and from seeing your Profile, but things like GMail will still work just fine.

However, if in the course of the review, it becomes apparent that other Google Terms of Service have been violated, such as the 13+ age requirement (and you can thank Slimeball Politicians and Legislators all over the world saying, "Think of the children" for that one), the entire Google account might get suspended.

"or who are using obviously fake names, like "god" or worse."

There will be someone with crazy enough parents for this to be possible, and for the child not to want to change it. For something like this, there isn't really many crieteria you can use, just on the off chance you get something authentic.

It's not an unheard of abbreviation for Godfrey. Jack Bruce, formerly of Cream, named an album that way:

http://www.jackbruce.com/2008/Music/Albums/more_jack_than_go...

I guess the obvious question not asked is whether Google set the "real name" bar artificially high in order to slowly work out where the edges of the issue are. It might simply have been more efficient to wear down a draconian rule than to build up from none.

never saw anything about using a real name, don't have my proper name on my gAccount, so it doesn't matter -- gPlus working fine, identity working fine.

Yes, you are indeed the only person that matters.

It's item 13 in the content policy. Of course, you didn't read that.

removing people who spell their names in weird ways, like using upside-down characters, or who are using obviously fake names, like "god" or worse.

Yes, because fake names and personalities have worked so badly for twitter! Well good to know G+ is safe from people like Fake Steve Jobs.

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