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Comment by bad_user | Hacker News Reader

Relevant opinion by jwz [1] ...

     Google's statement is obvious bullshit, and 
     here's why. The way you "support" pseudonyms is as 
     follows:

     1. Stop deleting peoples' accounts when you suspect
        that the name they are using is not their legal 
        name.

     2. There is no step 2.

UPDATE: Also, Google hasn't "relaxed" their policy. The name(s) you choose are still passing a review process and once a name is "flagged" you'll have to provide evidence that the name(s) in question represents you and is an "established identity".

And for example, in case the name represents an online identity, you have to have a "meaningful following" -- basically, there can be only one +Madonna, except these aren't random/made-up user handles, such as on Twitter.

Also, most importantly, Google+ still bans anonymity.

UPDATE 2: I was partly mistaken in my conclusions. See comments by @ElbertF below.

[1] http://www.jwz.org/blog/2011/10/eff-declares-premature-victo...

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This policy is even worse than deleting users accounts for obvious non-real names:

"we’ll be adding support for alternate names – be they nicknames, maiden names, or names in another script – alongside your common name."

The whole point of a nickname/handle/etc is to disconnect it from your real identity. Google wants Google+ to be a phonebook connecting people to their semi-anonymous nicks?

Google can go fuck themselves. Thankfully all of the hot girls are still using Twitter and FB; I'll stick with those and leave the geeky stuff to semi-anonymous participation on the internet's various sub-communities.

My biggest practical issue¹ with G+ has always been that I could never recognise any of the people in my circles because they used their real names instead of the names I knew them by. As long as I can see people's nicknames and figure out who I'm talking with, I can grudgingly put up with the rest.

¹: As opposed to philosophical issues like centralisation or privacy.

Ideally I'd prefer that people be authentic if possible, but I know in the real world there are various problems that makes this not always possible. I'd push for these problems to be fixed too.

Yonatan Zunger (who works on Google+) posted this in a comment:

"Our name check is therefore looking, not for things that don’t look like “your” name, but for things which don’t look like names, period. In fact, we do not give a damn whether the name posted is “your” name or not: we will not challenge you on this basis, nor is there any mechanism for other users to cause you to be challenged for this."

I recently make a new google+ account with a handle name (obviously wasn't a real name), got a huge number of +1's with a public post and then google stepped in and said they'd remove my account if I didn't use a real name. So, I used a random name, and then "approved it". How is a fake name better than a handle of some sort? It isn't. Google's position is just dumb.

He addresses this too:

"The other important thing it’s trying to catch is people who are creating individual accounts, rather than +Pages, for non-human entities such as businesses or organizations. The behavior of +Pages is deliberately restricted in the system, and we don’t want people to be creating fake human accounts to circumvent that. The name check turns out to be a very powerful tool to catch these."

This is followed by the previous quote.

Blimey. John Smith is going to be popular.

Won't be using G+ anyway, breaking trust is a one-way road for some of us. I also use FB with strictly fake data.

That's refreshing to know, however I feel that it should be clearly mentioned in their names policy.

Also, I take away from this quote that an account such as Fake Steve Jobs would not be allowed, right? Daniel Lyons, the editor behind the Fake Steve identity, revealed himself after 14 months and his anonymity was pretty cool.

http://www.fakesteve.net/

https://twitter.com/#!/FSJ

From the same comment (no way to link to it directly):

"The other case is people such as +trench coat, who are so well-known under this handle that it would be bizarre not to let them onto the system under this name. For this case, we allow appeals based on being well-known under the name: thus the ability to prove the 'established pseudonym.'"

This is not really sufficient. Anyone who does not have an established handle needs to spend a year or so acquiring a following under some other services in order to be good enough for Google Plus. Consider, for example, kids who want to create their first pseudonym. This kind of policy very much pushes them toward using their real names, arguably at the time in their life when it is worst to do so.

This is incorrect. If they find out you're a kid trying to be safe online, they'll help you out by summarily deleting your account.

Problem solved!

...as mandated by law.

Actually that's not mandated by law at all.

What is in the law is an onus of responsiblity on service providers like Google to protect people under 13. So the response of Google/Facebook etc.. simply make it part of their terms that children cannot use their services - and will be summarily deleted if they do. (Google policy not 'the law').

Net result is parents help their kids online by showing them how to lie about their age. Google's ass remains covered but they are not able to actually protect kids because they don't know their ages.

Not good enough by any stretch.

So which of the following obstacles should Google place as a sign-up barrier in front of every new user on any of its services?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children%27s_Online_Privacy_Pro...

Which law? I'm not American so I'm not familiar with this. But there's certainly plenty of kids on other sites that are used for communications, so what makes Google delete kids' accounts?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children%27s_Online_Privacy_Pro...

The tldr is that it's a notoriously difficult law to comply with unless (1) your site has limited userbase or functionality, or (2) you delete children's accounts on sight.

Holy shit. You'd think someone at Google would be evaluating hosting mail in a datacenter outside the US, at least for the accounts in question.

I haven't read through COPPA, but I believe that Google, as a US company, has to abide by COPPA restrictions, regardless of where they're storing data. (It might even apply to non-US users...) As the user above pointed out, COPPA is really, really hard to 'get around.'

Some verification / disproving would be welcome.

I've always been confused by this. Does "as a US company" mean that it's HQ is in the US? Or that it is incorporated in the US? Or just that it does business in the US?

What are they basing the well known part? If it is only online or celebrities then I think it is still problematic.

1) As long as this is not clearly spelled out in the TOS _and_ you trust the company (again?) to keep it up, without changing it back in the future, you could now go with a fake name. You'd invest in a social network that asked for IDs in the past to get access to the data you created on their platform and wouldn't be able to provide an ID to get to the data for this account, even if you'd wanted to.

2) The criteria are still unclear. At what point does it stop looking like my real name? Should I play safe and go with John Smith? Is that maybe already very suspicious and probably not my name, period? How creative can I get choosing the required fake name without triggering this alarm that would block my profile?

3) This defeats the whole purpose of the policy in the first place. A "real name policy" (call it community guidelines or whatever, if you like) only makes sense if you verify the names. Otherwise it is a 'no funny names' (what's considered funny?) or 'no offensive names' (recently mentioned on Raymond Chen's blog: Microsoft changed the internal abbreviation of customer from 'cu' to 'cx', because the former is an offensive word in Portuguese.. Where's the limit?) policy.

For all intents and purposes: There is _zero_ progress here, and it really took them a loooong time to add an additional simple field to their data model, plus two options on how you want to render it on your profile.

And - nicknames are only useful for searching/lookups. I can put them up in my 'about' section. Google is a _search company_. I doubt that it was impossible to find people that wrote 'Hey, this is MikeMasterOfGuitarHero' anywhere near their profile by knowing that particular name. But being _only_ available using a name that you pick yourself - that's still missing.

This is about setting the tone. Real-sounding fake identities may be tolerated because Google currently can't/won't check every user, but Yonatan Zunger isn't speaking for the company, especially when he disagrees with their official policy. Even then, that concession makes pseudonyms second-class citizens which can be deleted if they are too obvious.

My reading of Google's new policy is that you can't be cuddlybunny1984, but you can be "Cuddly Bunny" or +cuddlybunny1984. Furthermore, if you have a government ID that says your name is cuddlybunny1984, then you can be that too. The goal, I'm assuming, is to prevent the site from looking like Xanga.

(To be honest, I do find it really weird to be using my real name online. "Jonathan has shared XXX" sounds stupid to me, because nobody in real life calls me Jonathan. But that's how I write my first name.

I would prefer "jrockway has shared XXX", since that is more "me" than a first name that 239483 other people have.)

> If we challenge the name you intend to use, you will be asked to submit proof that this is an established identity with a meaningful following. You can do so by providing links to other social networking sites, news articles, or official documents in which you are referred to by this name. Note that this name and your profile must represent you, and not an avatar or other secondary online identity. Profane or offensive names are not allowed.

seems to be the one concession from their policy so far (I consider linking pseudonyms to the real name a screw-you more than a concession).

I'm not sure how established Cuddly Bunny would have to be, but that person would have to work at their identity on a more tolerant site for some time, at which point Google+ needs them more than they do. Hopefully these friendlier sites won't follow Google and Facebook's lead.

Hopefully these friendlier sites won't follow Google and Facebook's lead.

This is weird, isn't it. It makes me wonder what problem Google and Facebook are trying to solve with "social networking". They're basically sites that you go to because you're you, rather than other sites on the Internet that you go to because the content interests you. The rest of the Internet doesn't care what your name is. If you abuse your posting privileges (or whatever), you just get banned, end of story.

Not that Google can do anything here, but personally while I am not for real name policies, I do want the problems with using real names be fixed if possible.

I must negotiate with nosy, judgmental primates to obtain food and shelter. I'm all for fixing that, but in the meantime, I don't put anything substantive and controversial on the permanent record for my True Name.

>I must negotiate with nosy, judgmental primates to obtain food and shelter.

Funny way to word it. Anyway, I did say I am not for real name policies.

CheapViagra DotCom has added you to her circles.

If Cheap Viagra wants to follow me then that's up to them. I don't have to follow them back, after all.

It's more about those messages being used as the spam in themselves.

So Google suddenly can't handle some spam filtering? If I go log into my gmail account right now, am I going to find all the spam dumped in my inbox? And has the webspam team resigned en masse?

Where did this sudden bout of incompetence come from, exactly?

People tend to think Google is just its frontend. They see pictures of people and some blog-like comments and say, "I could have written that over the weekend!" Then, since they don't know how to solve the spam problem, they think that Google doesn't know how to solve the spam problem either. As it turns out, Google does have some spam-fighting ideas. Some things slip through the cracks, of course, but the algorithms are always getting better.

A pseudonym system is ripe for abuse. I can certainly understand why Google would be adverse to implementing it. If not being able to use a pseudonym is a gamebreaker for someone, they should not be using Google+.

Side note: I respect jwz, but I can't take anyone who says "Fuck those guys, seriously" seriously.

Yeah, but this is Google. They should know better, especially considering how they are integrating Google+ in search results.

Twitter does this much better. They allow people to be whatever/whomever they want. But in case YOUR identity is important to you and your following, then you can get your account verified: https://support.twitter.com/groups/31-twitter-basics/topics/...

Well, Twitter isn't providing this to the public anymore. Mostly because they are saying that the surest way to prove legitimacy is to link to your Twitter account from your website, or other properties.

Isn't this so much better?

It is better and I'll tell you why. This G+ policy won't stop bogus accounts because Google can't verify all the accounts created. But guess who'll get hurt - it won't be the spammers that sell viagra.

"Yeah, but this is Google. They should know better,"

What should they know better? What's the downside to Google from any names policy they've stated or implemented since they started? None to their bottom line is my assumption.

How does a few disgruntled hippies (I'm one) with non-Wasp names compare against the bottom line value of total information awareness?

most of the world, even most of the people on the internet have "Non-wasp" hippy names

I disagree. Here's the scenario I envision with spammers on G+. Tell me if you see it differently because I could certainly be missing an angle.

1. Spammer signs up with fake name (something like John Smith) and either has no profile picture or some picture pulled off Google. 2. Spammer adds users to their circles. 3. Users see the circle request, but, since this is just some random person adding them, they don't reciprocate.

In this interaction, spammers don't have an avenue of communication except via their username. If they could use a pseudonym, their username could be www.getcheapp1llz-ezi.ly, which would be as effective a way as ever to get people to go to their site.

On a site like twitter, where usernames are not limited by any criteria that I'm aware of, the spammer would have the medium of username as a communication method.

Now how much of this is relevant to modern times, where spammers are mainly working on SEO for spam websites? I don't know.

For what it's worth, I know a few people on G+ who clearly have a pseudonym as their name and they haven't been banned yet.

So because a spammer could use a data field as a method of communication, we should screen every possible entry in that data field? Perhaps G+ should substitute all comment boxes with dropdown menus... Seriously, this has nothing to do with spam and everything to do with preserving real identities, which have more value to Google's expected future revenue model.

Unverified usernames do not inevitably result in a site that is overrun by spam. Time-tested methods of downvoting, flagging, reporting, and semi-automated filtering can quickly dispatch such shell accounts. You only need to look to reddit for proof of this--a site where users sometimes employ their username as the punchline to the joke. That's right, a username can be an avenue of communication in itself that carries positive, non-spammy (and dare I say fun?) results. Another example: would @shitmydadsays have caught on fire the way it did if the account was named +Justin Halpern instead? I doubt it. The final obvious example: HN, which thankfully does not require "verified" identities.

When I read discourses from Google like the OP's it reminds me how right moot is when he says that creativity is only preserved in a culture that values privacy and anonymity. When everybody is permanently attached to every action, nobody bothers to test the norms, and all that's left is consumption of "safe" content from centralized producers. Of course that's what Google and Facebook, being glorified advertising networks, actually want. Your anonymous account has no money to buy anything, no predictable real-world holdings or credit score or behavior, and therefore no value to an advertiser.

Perhaps G+ should substitute all comment boxes with dropdown menus

It would help with data hygiene. It would also integrate nicely with a no-keyboard computer. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BnLbv6QYcA "The aardvark admitted its fault."

A strategy that will work much better for spammers (and I guarantee that you'll see it in action) is temporary identity theft:

    1) spammer picks someone popular, signs-up with 
       similar name + similar picture
    2) spammer starts following the same people and 
       some of those people will follow back
    3) spammer starts spamming
    4) Google notices and bans account after some time
    5) repeat from step 1

Also, there are plenty of spammers on G+ already. Twitter is much more aggressive in dealing with spammers.

You don't even need to pick somebody popular, although I suppose it might make certain things easier. If you pick a plausible name and an attractive-looking profile picture, after a few hundred requests to people in the same location, you will have plenty of followers. Perhaps bootstrap with relationships amongst your bots so your profile doesn't look conspicuously vacant. It's not only spammers that do this... guess what, law enforcement does it too. Social networks have not changed how gullible the average internet user is.

A pseudonym system is ripe for abuse.

Systems are "ripe for abuse" in proportion to their expressive power. Consequently, any really great system will have this property.

Google understood this when they went into the Gmail business and found a place where their analytic talent was well-employed.

Google should focus on finding ways that they can contribute to others' success (their billions of users, current and potential) instead of trying to find ways to corral and leverage their users as part of a grand strategy.

I'm trans and am from an abusive family that has stalked and harassed me on more than one occasion. Being pseudonymous allows me to communicate with people who I do care about without worrying about being outed and/or stalked again.

A "real name system" is ripe for abuse. One can imagine everything from states starting demand people use them, corporations surveiling those who use them and people squatting and abusing the "real name" accounts of others.

First of all, we do have a "real name" system in use offline ("legal name"), and effectively online when it comes to anything credit-card linked as well.

As for squatting, that only works if you assume the real names are enforced to be unique, which I don't think anyone has suggested will happen. The only group that does that (as far as I know) is SAG and similar unions.

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