Comment by bmelton | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bmelton | Hacker News Reader

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This seems to be a common reply to my statements, so I'll say it once here and link to it elsewhere.

I feel that I am empathetic (or at least sympathetic) to the plight of transgenders, minorities and others who feel that they need an anonymous or pseudonymous platform upon which to share their views.

I am substantially less concerned with those who do not see that it is Google's right to offer a platform that requires real names. So long as there are other platforms available and allowed that support anonymity/pseudonymity, I don't see it as a great concern that one particular vendor doesn't work exactly how they want.

If the discussion were framed as a matter of law, and that a new law were coming down requiring all discussion platforms / social networks / blog platforms to use real names, I would be against that law.

It is within the rights of those providing the platform to determine what policies they wish to allow or disallow. It is within the rights of the users of those platforms to use or not use the platforms they agree or disagree with.

I do not feel it is within the rights of those users to demand (or at least, to get a result from the demands) that a platform change its policies to suit their ideals.

I do not feel it is within the rights of those users to demand (or at least, to get a result from the demands) that a platform change its policies to suit their ideals.

Sure it is. The only reason for a company to exist is to provide positive social effects (and capitalism is predicated on the idea that positive social effects correlate with revenue and, less so, with profit). When you want to create an all-encompassing social network, except for people X, Y, and Z, you're not providing positive social effects. You're being a dick. And Google, through their much-trumpeted "don't be evil" policy, has put upon themselves the responsibility of being even less of a dick. They have decided to assert that they're "better," so it is completely reasonable to expect that they should be and to demand it publicly.

"Well, users don't have to use it" is a pretty shitty escape hatch that ignores that social networks only have value through the network effect--and presupposes that people who will leave the social network because of attacks upon others in their social group. This is a sucker's bet because, frankly, of people like you, who acknowledge that they would feel differently if their own ox were gored but do not care because it is not.

At the end of the day, a social network is, at best, a convenience to you. That you're unwilling to suffer the inconvenience of not having the ability to use their network in the way that you want is an opinion I do not share.

It has nothing to do with whether or not it affects me personally -- it obviously does, but whether I agree or disagree with the choice being made here. I happen to agree, and as such, I use G+ (if only rarely). You disagree, so you don't. I assume that nobody is completely friendless or in complete isolation from their friends/family/colleagues because of their decision to not use Google Plus. A social network is not vital, and even if it were, there are plenty of others to choose from. If your friends aren't on that social network, then you don't get the benefit of it, but that's true of anywhere.

Insisting that Google abide your choice is the sucker's bet in my opinion. For what it's worth, almost every social network excludes somebody. In this case, it is 'people who aren't willing to use their real names', in other cases it might be 'people who are spamming the server' or 'people who are preaching hate crimes' or 'child molesters' or 'people outside of America'. An application has policies that it abides. You happen to disagree with one of their policies, and it apparently matters to you a great deal. You can complain as loudly as you like, and you can certainly hope that Google changes their minds, and you can even hold it against them that they don't. That doesn't make what they're doing wrong in any way other than something you disagree with.

(Note -- I didn't mean to intentionally lump any of the categories of people used in network exclusions together, except to come up with examples of why somebody might exclude somebody.)

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