What happens when Google+ cuts you off? | Hacker News Reader

What happens when Google+ cuts you off?

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51 pointsmmavnn22 comments

Google: If your profile is under review, you will not be able to make full use of Google services that require an active profile such as Google+, Buzz, and some social features of Reader and Picasa Web Albums. For example, on Buzz, you can't create content, on Reader you can't share items with other users or follow other users, and on Picasa Web Albums you can't comment on photos.

That's funny, I thought Google "explicitly said the no other service of theirs will be affected." [1] and that "Other services aren't affected. Period." [2]

Seems like the people who support this G+ policy have just been flat out lying. Period.

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2907098

[2] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2907104

"Do no evil" is now satire

It's "Don't be evil":

http://lists.canonical.org/pipermail/kragen-tol/2011-August/...

Is depriving people of social networking features truly evil? It's "Don't be evil," not "Don't do things that people don't like." Now, there may be other cases in which you may be able to correctly accuse Google of being "evil," but I don't think this is one of those.

> Seems like the people who support this G+ policy have just been flat out lying. Period.

Of course they have, Google's goal has long been to coalesce all their services under a single ur-account (hence youtube accounts being dead and the complete mess when you have both "personal" and professional "google apps & shit" accounts), when that account gets restricted/halfbanned how could the restrictions be localized?

The more time passes and the more dangerous relying on Google's services gets: if you or they fuck something up, half your online existence suddenly gets unavailable. And since Google has proven twitchy with the ban button and still provides no way to reach anybody unless you can make a major splash across the web, it's like playing russian roulette on your own with 5 chambers full.

Yesterday Google mail was having conniption fits about "invalid cookies" in one of my machines (personal + business gmail). Trying to get to the settings page only led to the same error page advising clearing browser cache and cookies. Ended up having to clear all cookies - just the obviously googly ones didn't work first time.

So, your evidence is an HN commenter? They have mentioned that social services like Buzz and features of Reader and Picasa would be affected. You could imagine the share feature of any service which will be extended to share to G+ will be impacted -- that doesn't mean the service will be cut off entirely, probably just its social features.

Evidence? Evidence for what? Perhaps it was unclear, but I was suggesting that the people who have been defending Google over this, on HN and elsewhere, have been putting forth a lot of misinformation, so that is what I provided evidence of.

I've seen no official statement from Google saying that other services aren't affected, and clearly they are as this latest statement confirms. Yet just a few days ago people who had had their G+ accounts closed were told on this site that they were wrong to spread the "vicious rumour" that other services were affected. I was baffled by the level of aggression shown towards those who were critical of the policy and those who related their personal experiences (words like "obnoxious entitlement" and so on being used).

My comment was not about contradictions in Google's public statements (which I'm not aware of, except at a broader policy level, for example their statements about Korea's real-name policy [1]), but about the attitudes of those who defend Google on this site and elsewhere.

[1] http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2009/04/goog...

For example, on Buzz, you can't create content, on Reader you can't share items with other users or follow other users, and on Picasa Web Albums you can't comment on photos.

Honestly, what did you expect to happen if you try and use social features of Google services when those social features rely on Google+, and your Google+ profile has been suspended? Of course it's not going to work.

Or did you really think that they would maintain the pre-Google+ code and functionality indefinitely just so that suspended users can have their own weird eco-system where they only get to interact with each other?

So the short answer is: If you don't want to use your real name on their thing that requires real names, you don't have to use their thing that requires real names. And you can back out of it in such a way that the rest of your Google universe is unaffected.

Sounds perfectly reasonable.

Yes, in terms of absolutes this is right: You can avoid it (they are not forcing it down your throat to use other services) and even can get out again.

Still, it's not perfectly reasonable for a number of people to insist on the real name in the first place. Is one potential answer 'Don't use it then'? Sure. Is that satisfying? No.

There are two issues with this:

* People have seen their G+ account restribanned while using their real names, with the restriban not lifted even after providing a governmental id, which was deemed insufficient

* When a significant portion of your ecosystem is moving to G+ (as is happening in the Python community for instance, many high-profile pythonistas now make significant use of G+ for info broadcasting and discussion) not being able to interact with them gets annoying, if not downright problematic

A bit off-topic, but now you don't have to follow the G+ name rules if you're famous enough. At least if "famous enough" means "being Madonna". [1]

I don't remember her last name, but I'm pretty sure it is not ".".

[1] https://plus.google.com/101336441946387245415/posts

pretty sure the rule is not that you have to use your real name, but rather the name you're commonly known as in 'real' life. Madonna, in this case, is fine

The de-facto rule is 'your real name' since they ask for government ID in case your profile gets flagged: "Please select a clear, readable copy of your valid driver's license, national ID card, or other photo ID. Our team will not take action if you send a photo of anything other than your ID card." (from https://www.google.com/support/accounts/bin/request.py?conta... ).

From your link:

"we need to verify that your identity matches the one on the profile"

That doesn't necessarily mean that the profile has your [full] legal name attached to it just that it is properly associated with you. YMMV and probably will.

No, that's crap.

As lots of people have proven already, this doesn't work. There were suspensions of people that went by their 'commonly used name'. Lots of people still cannot use their 'commonly used name' because Google likes to play the 'I don't believe that you provide a common name for you. Prove it!' card.

'Commonly known' is totally undefined and the process to 'verify' this fact (why? why?) is undefined as well. So the whole rule is - bull..

As someone else said it: It's really just a 'give us the name on your passport' rule, with exceptions for celebrities and some very vocal/prominent/supported few.

Tell that to Skud (who has friends who only know her as Skud).

Unless Madonna writes about herself in the third person, that's not actually Madonna updating that profile.

Except that only works if you're famous, there have already been dozens of examples of people whose online identity (and even offline) is mostly accessed through their pseudonym and who got restricted or banned from G+ for using that pseudonym. Violet Blue (from TFA) is one (and, you know, not only is it her "official real name" she's given two techtalks at Mountain View), Doctor Popular an other one[2], Skud[0] yet an other one, and he listed a bunch of other accounts suspended for a number of name-related reasons including pen names, adding pseudonyms to your real name or somebody at google not liking your real name[1] (the latter being VB's issue but she was far from the only one).

And of course, being banned from G+ for using your real name is one thing, but it also partially or completely lock you out of other, unrelated Google services (Reader, Picasa, Data Liberation, your Google profile, potentially GMail and Google Chat). G+ is a death trap.

[0] http://infotrope.net/2011/07/22/ive-been-suspended-from-goog...

[1] http://infotrope.net/2011/07/25/preliminary-results-of-my-su...

[2] http://www.docpop.org/2011/08/googles-antisocial-behavior/

The rules say that, but that's not how it's been enforced. Dr. Popular was removed for weeks even after sending proof that that's what everyone calls him, and Dr. Kiki was not reinstated for weeks even after fixing her profile.

This issue is going to massively hamstring G+, and may even keep it from growing period, and it has nothing to do with whether they allow gyms or not.

Technical people may understand what a disabled G+ profile means, but to the average user, they are hearing, "OMFG, IF I USE G+ I WON'T BE ABLE TO USE GOOGLE!"

Google is underestimating what these kinds of stories are doing to their ability to grow G+.

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