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Jwz: Google's pseudonym support "obvious bullshit"
- TomOfTTB 15y agoI think he's missing a distinction here. There's people's right not to have their name associated with stuff in public. Either because they've established a pseudonym they want to be associated with or they want to speak freely without risking harm to their career, family, etc... That's what I consider pseudonymity and that might take a while to implement. Then there's straight up privacy. That's what he's talking about. The right for you not to be forced to share your name with Google when using a Google sponsored service. I can understand why a person would be concerned with both but I consider both to be different things
- blahedo 15y ago> That's what I consider pseudonymity But that's not what pretty much everyone pushing pseudonymity in this fight considers pseudonymity, so your distinction is not very helpful.
- TomOfTTB 15y agoWas there a vote I was unaware of? (Sorry, the unflinching confidence in your statement made the snarkyness irresistible to me) I realize there's a spectrum to every debate and it's sometimes hard to know where the fringe is. But I have to assume most people realize Google has the right to know who they are providing a service to. Again, I see the distinction here between Google knowing your name (which I think they have the right to do) and Google using your name to build a whole database on you (which I don't support). But these are all privacy issues. Pseudonymity is about how you present yourself to the community at large and to the best of my knowledge it always has been. For example, Samuel Clemens published under Mark Twain but his publisher paid Samuel Clemens.
- pessimizer 15y agoAre you sure that the publisher paid Samuel Clemens, or are you just assuming that? Things like that are often directed through lawyers in order to maintain the pseudonym. Writers often take pseudonyms seriously, one reason being because what you write could have consequences in your real life.
- mikeryan 15y agoI think he understands the distinction perfectly. He's saying you can't have true Psuedonimity (as you, and Google define it) without complete privacy. If someone can scratch the surface of your psuedonym and find your real name then there's no real point.
- TomOfTTB 15y agoIf Google knows your name but allows you to post under a pseudonym then how can someone scratch the surface and find out your real name (unless they work for Google)? That's like saying you can't post an anonymous blog because the web provider knows your real name.
- mikeryan 15y agothen how can someone scratch the surface and find out your real name A subpoena will do it.
- TomOfTTB 15y agoAgain I think that's a privacy issue more than an issue of being pseudonymous. Someone using a pseudonym wants to be identified they just want to do it on their own terms. What you're talking about is complete anonymity which is a different concept.
- barrkel 15y agoNo; the difference between pseudonymity and anonymity is consistent identity over time. When you have two actions by anonymous actors, you can't correlate them as being initiated by the same actor. With a pseudonym, you can. Correlation with an underlying "real" name is independent. (Misrepresentation and misattribution aside.)
- bigiain 15y agoBy getting a warrant. By not getting a warrant but saying it's a matter of national security. By fraudulently misusing your government id and claiming you have some right to the information.
- joebadmo 15y agoI'll bet they still require you to register with your "real" name, but then they'll graciously allow you to have a linked nickname or two, I agree, and I think this is probably the right thing for them to do. (Well, probably stop kicking people off, too.) And I think they're probably doing this in an attempt to allow people to better represent themselves in the ways that they choose, and more in line with how they can offline. I just wrote this today: http://blog.byjoemoon.com/post/11670022371/intimacy-is-performance http://blog.byjoemoon.com/post/11670022371/intimacy-is-perfo... meaning they're still fully prepared to roll over on you to authoritarian governments or advertisers at the drop of a hat. I'm not sure what the suggestion is here. They should be prepared to flout the law? Or just not gather any of the information in the first place? What purpose would this have for them, in that case? Seems fairly obvious that anyone who's really worried about authoritarian governments or advertisers shouldn't be using google products.
- blahedo 15y ago> > meaning they're still fully prepared to roll over on you > I'm not sure what the suggestion is here. They should be prepared to flout the law? Why would you draw that inference? JWZ seems to be presuming the opposite, i.e. that Google plans to comply with the law---and since they will have carefully collected legal names to go with every account, they can be maximally helpful to the authoritarian governments who want to track users down. > Or just not gather any of the information in the first place? This one. Or at least, if not "any of the information", maybe not gather all of the information. Permit users to associate their account with their established pseudonym and provide exactly as many RL details as they feel comfortable providing.
- joebadmo 15y agoI meant what was his suggestion to correct this. That they should flout the law? This one. Or at least, if not "any of the information", maybe not gather all of the information. Permit users to associate their account with their established pseudonym and provide exactly as many RL details as they feel comfortable providing. Use a fake but real sounding name. Then use a pseudonym attached to it. Then provide exactly as many RL details as you feel comfortable. Why does it matter that the pseudonym is somehow canonical?
- natrius 15y agoSolution: Don't use Google+ to speak out against your authoritarian government. "Fuck those guys" is a pretty strong response to people who've decided their product isn't for you.
- jxi 15y agoI agree. Also, why is this kind of post even on the front page? There was just a short speculative paragraph ended by an expletive. Google releases one product you don't like and people are "deserting" all their products. How childish can you get?
- mindstab 15y agoEveryone is also missing the bigger point that Google's idea of a valid real name is incredibly north american and anglo centric. There are plenty of cases of people using their real names, be in European, or African or what ever and google still kicking them off. Google's policies do not work, and are verging on racist. I know some people who would be better off using a fake anglo name than their real name to keep using google+. That is defective.
- nirvana 15y agoI've been using Google pretty regularly for the past 11 years, and have had a gmail account since soon after it was announced. However with the release of Plus and the revelation of their policies on "real names", I've come to realize that I no longer trust google. Gmail accounts can be effectively anonymous. Yet plus accounts cannot be? Google does not need anyone's real name in order to track and advertise to them. I'm fine with google tracking and advertising to me. Assign me some arbitrary UID and give me a 20 year cookie you refresh whenever I load a page with adwords or visit plus or login to gmail. I've been fine with that, all along. But requiring a real name, tells me that google doesn't just want to track me to advertise to me. They want to correlate my online activities with my offline identity. I consider that a violation of my privacy. And so, I'm removing myself from google. I'm setting up mail services elsewhere, I'm migrating my Google Apps and App Engine accounts to other services. I've stopped using Plus, and as I move things elsewhere I'm deleting them from google. For me, they've gone too far, and I no longer trust them. Hell, even their search results have been in steep decline lately, so DuckDuckGo, here I come! PS-- I agree with jwz. The only reason that it would take months to implement is because they're using some authoritative method - maybe ISP customer info, or government supplied info- to correlate users to reveal real identity. I don't see this recent change as google actually relenting on the issue.
- thwest 15y agoWhat are the best alternatives for email?
- kb101 15y agoDon't know about best, but www.fastmail.fm/help/overview_features.html is pretty cool. It is what it says, fast. No graphics, clean web interface, runs quick on anything, including crappy old hardware or phones. Opera recently bought them so if you run Opera on your phone it is especially nice. Very reliable, hardly ever down and on the rare occasions it goes down it's usually back up within minutes. You can hook up pretty much any client you like, of course. And they don't read your mail to serve you ads.
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- tlrobinson 15y agoWhile I don't know what their plans are, I think it's reasonable to require you declare whether your the name you use is your real name or a pseudonym, which is a non trivial change.
- joshma 15y agoI'm sick of these posts. What I got out of the article was "I think I know how Google should design its product, and thus I deem decisions not in agreement to be total bullshit." Personally, I prefer to respect the work they've put into the product and to accept that they may have insights deeper than mine. It's evident from Google's announcement that they see more complex issues around pseudonyms, and I will form an opinion after I see their changes. I do not understand this attitude of "Fuck those guys" - so much anger over a social network!
- justina1 15y agoThis. Thoughtful analysis is far more useful than these sensationalist rants.
- p4r4d0x 15y agoSober, thoughtful analysis doesn't get as many pageviews though.
- rhizome 15y agoWhy do you think they're hiding these "deeper insights," do they think we're too stupid to understand?
- tedunangst 15y agoHiding one's deeper insights into a market's dynamics is frequently a competitive advantage.
- rhizome 15y agoIf these Google insights into the undesirability of anonymity are so hidden, can they even be said to exist? As the poster asserts?
- tedunangst 15y agoAsking if a hidden insight can exist is a peculiar phrasing, but anyway, one example I can think of is some study that demonstrated people using their real names were 50% more likely to remain active users two years after registration. Or "abuse", however defined, was reduced by 40%. Whatever. The point is that if Google keeps such knowledge secret, other networks that allow anonymous users will be at a competitive disadvantage. I have no idea what such effects may be, I only allow for the possibility they exist.
- loopdoend 15y agoIf Google still requires you to use your real name to register but allows you to show only a pseudonym, the problem ceases to exist because there is no one able to rat you out. That is, unless they write an algorithm that checks for "Dear realname" in your emails and compares it to your purported name & pseudonym. Yuck.
- mladenkovacevic 15y agothe point is that Google is still able to rat you out (on a warrant or a subpoena) If you wanted to use the platform to protest against the government, or if you fucked the head of CIA's wife and he found out your g-mail address on her phone, you might be in deep shit.
- kb101 15y agoWow, what a blast of fresh air, reading this. I miss the old Internet, when Aunt Sally still couldn't figure it out and certainly would be horrified to find her birthday party photos posted on it, much less would she even conceive of going and posting them herself under her real name. Why does online marketing have to be built around maintenance of a database of people's Real Identities® ? If it's a page full of comments about guitars, stick a Stratocaster ad on it and be done. The Internet was supposed to be about freedom and personal expression. I used to scoff at things like Second Life and people on BBSes with ridiculously fake avatars, but now we have the horrors of everyday life invading and taking over the "virtual" space, which is less and less virtual every day. Even the visual and auditory carnage of MySpace was preferable to the cookie-cutter sameness of Facebook, helpfully tracking your every single move before you even think to make it, and broadcasting the mundane minutiae of everyday existence to all your "friends". I used to love Google when it first came out, it beat the pants off Alta Vista and it was a fantastic way to extract cool links from the vastness of the 'net. Now people log on to +1 each other on all the right topics and say all the right things and fit themselves into all the right pigeonholes. What if you want to go online not to maintain your identity as it is now, but to explore new ones? What if you need more than one identity? What if the whole notion of "identity" is something you find burdensome and ultimately repugnant? Well then, there must be something wrong with you and you must have something ghastly and awful to hide. So yeah, fuck those guys.
- Tobu 15y agoUnfortunately they are going against the famously unethical and privacy-eroding facebook, which has a real-names policy and the bans to show for it (also, NSA alumni on the board). And besides “the competitor already does it”, here is what Google's reasoning may be: Requiring your real name makes it easier for people you know in real life to find you. Interactions with people who know you in real life will keep pulling you back in, because these people are harder for you to ignore. Once you give your real name and the rest of your identity (they have been badgering for phone numbers for a while, to keep your youtube account, or open a google account, or to avoid annoying security/recovery notices when logging to gmail), you won't be asking yourself “should I be sharing this” questions, because you'll be in the habit of trusting them. Other features, like payments, deliveries and phone notifications, won't have to nag you for explicit personal info anymore. So I think they will offer temporary or per-circle identities at most, while people who want privacy from Google or the US and affiliates will have to fake it while it remains possible, or be shown the door.
- methodin 15y agoGreat. Another opinionated post with no substance that reaches number one. What is this garbage? It's not like this person even has any first-hand knowledge of anything with regards to the cited excerpt. Why would anyone upvote such a short, speculative rant?
- kevinalexbrown 15y agoI think it's still a reasonable "BS" call. If you support pseudonyms, you stop kicking them off. That doesn't take first-hand knowledge to notice.
- methodin 15y agoSo is it common knowledge when they kick someone off for using them? Did it happen after this announcement? Etc... All this article does is speculate on what Google will do in the next couple months... how is it even relevant?
- kevinalexbrown 15y ago"Whatever Google is planning cannot be [just not kicking off pseudonyms], because they think it will take them months to implement." That's relevant speculation, regardless of whether he's right.
- methodin 15y agoYou are correct - I did not mean to say the article was off-topic however speculative it was.
- Uhhrrr 15y agoAllowing pseudonyms is not just technically easy, it's the default. Also, it's no secret that Google uses your data to advertise to you (it is so far from secret as to be their business model), and that various governments at the least would like very much to have access to user data. The piece is almost completely speculation-free. If you think the post's brevity was a shortcoming, though, read this, which was linked from the OP: http://www.jwz.org/blog/2011/08/nym-wars/ http://www.jwz.org/blog/2011/08/nym-wars/
- buff-a 15y agoYeah, I killed my Google+ account today.
- omnibot 15y agoDoes anyone else find it silly that Jamie Zawinski uses his real name on Facebook?
- omnibot 15y agolol, great responses.
- jdietrich 15y agoHypothesis: Google data indicates that pseudonymous users make a net-negative contribution to the quality of an online community (c.f. The WELL). They want a real name not for any commercial reason, but to hold users accountable for their behaviour. Google's real names policy for G+ isn't part of some complex conspiracy, but in fact standard Google practice - following the data, even when the data contradicts what users say they want. Is it evil to put the interests of the entire network above the interests of a small minority? If you can say for sure, you're either an ideologue or you've solved the most fundamental problem of politics. Personally, I think there's room on the spectrum for a variety of standards of identity. At one end there's 4chan, at the other carefully-vetted private communities. In the middle you've got sites that require a "real" e-mail address, or Something Awful charging $10 to join. Google's real names policy is distinctly flawed in execution, I think largely as a result of scale, but I don't think it's a fundamentally bad idea and certainly not categorically evil.
- mapgrep 15y agoNo need to hypothesize, Google has spoken on this. Chairman Eric Schmidt: "If we knew that it was a real person, then we could sort of hold them accountable, we could check them, we could give them things, we could you know bill them, you know we could have credit cards and so forth." http://gigaom.com/2011/08/29/its-official-google-wants-to-own-your-online-identity/ http://gigaom.com/2011/08/29/its-official-google-wants-to-ow...
- ethank 15y agoI think the biggest problem for me is the assumption that there needs to exist a mapping between First/Last name and identity. Its the abutment of two constructs made arbitrary by the media (names and physical self), with the assumption that what emerges is more "real" and thus more consequential to the agent driving it. It's complete bullshit and flies in the face of history, not just what is "right."
- vidarh 15y agoTo take an example from "history". Ask a random person on the street who Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili, and most of them will be completely clueless. Ask them who Stalin was, and they'll at least have a rough idea...
- luckydude 15y agoI was the 4th guy at Google and back then they were not evil (duh). I left to do my own thing but I email Larry and Sergey from time to time and so far they have been pretty cool about listening to me (they have a 747 or whatever it is, I have a Dodge Sprinter, sort of establishes the pecking order, I'm way way down on the list, so the fact that they sometimes listen is cool) I think that Google wants to not be evil but the whole money thing kinda messes that up. I also think that they listen. If you want Google to not be evil, it's a lot like wanting our government to not be evil. If you sit back and complain when they get evil, oh, well, that's what you might expect. If you apply pressure that says "hey! don't be evil, we liked that part!" you might be pleasantly surprised. It's passive or not. If you are passive and unhappy with the results, try being more noisy, I think there are a lot of people that want to do the right thing but if the only noise they hear is from money people who want more money, well, they take care of those people. Make some noise.
- chubot 15y agoAre you one of the guys who worked with them at Stanford, or after the company started? What did you work on and how did you find them? (just curious)
- luckydude 15y agoI was with them in the garage. They found me, I was fairly well known as a Linux perf guy at the time. I worked on the beginnings of what became GFS. I left pretty quickly, I really wanted to be doing my own thing.
- andrewljohnson 15y ago4th guy at Google eh? I'd love to see an Ask-Me-Anything post!
- luckydude 15y agoI doubt you'd be that excited about the reality of that post. I was only there a month before I moved on to do my own thing. It was a fun (and profitable for me) month, but there isn't a lot of light I can shed on the workings of google from such a short stay.
- kbanman 15y agoHow did this post get so popular? Google isn't doing any of this behind your back. If you don't want to share your identity with Google, don't use their services. Simple as that. It is no secret that Google is a corporation. The only thing that matters to a corporation is to make money. Google doesn't spend millions on improving their search engine and developing a fantastic social networking service because of some altruistic motive. Don't be so naive as to expect companies like Google and Facebook to adhere to your idealistic views of privacy and anonymity if that means a reduction in profit. Direct your energy to keeping the internet free. As long as we have that, we can represent ourselves however we like by being able to choose which services we use.
- DanBC 15y agobut what about people who do want to share their real identity with Google but who are banned from google?
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- Tyrannosaurs 15y agoI'm shocked that they haven't come down on William James Adams, who seems to have managed to set up a profile under the name "will.i.am". https://plus.google.com/109351399938437494273/posts https://plus.google.com/109351399938437494273/posts
- ThaddeusQuay2 15y agoOne of the commenters on that article says: "The idea that anyone should ever need to show ID to use a social network is so fucked up that I find it astonishing that it is a point of discussion." Not really. I recall, in 199x, that a BBS required me to physically mail a copy of my driver's license, along with my payment, before they would give me access. It wasn't an "adult" BBS. I think that the requirement was that I was at least 18, just so that they wouldn't get into trouble over anything that might happen with regard to age minimums. Rather than the exception, the idea of showing ID, to use a social network, used to be considered a normal part of doing business.