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> They want to correlate my online activities with my offline identity. It seems to me that the only legitimate use of circles is with respect to people you ar

by esrauch 15y ago

> They want to correlate my online activities with my offline identity. It seems to me that the only legitimate use of circles is with respect to people you are sharing with that you know in real life. If you want to talk to total strangers, then you want to be pseudonymous but you also have almost no reason to not post publicly. That's fine; there is twitter, tumblr, even HN fit that model. All pseudonymous posts, all public all the time. Discussions with strangers. Google+ can be used that way; I guess many people do. I somehow got marked as a redditor when I first signed up and I still have about 3 redditors that are strangers start following me every week, and I think it's pretty awful. There is a huge space for online interactions with people who you know in meatspace, and plenty of reason why Google would want to get into that game. Product recommendations is the first thing that comes to mind; would you rather buy an item that your real life friend says is good or that a random person on the internet says is good? That is a benefit both to you and to google if they can provide that. If you don't want to interact with people you know IRL, there are plenty of other services besides Google+ available online. Gmail remains one of them, it's a perfectly legitimate service to interact with strangers. It seems to me that you are throwing out the baby with the bathwater just because they are offering a product that you don't want to use, but that's obviously your choice. > 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. This is seriously bordering on "batshit crazy" level conspiracy theory. What you are describing is impossible on so many levels; legal, technical and PR. I have no idea what they are implementing, but it's probably more along the lines of allowing people who are demonstrably known in real life by pseudonyms (like Lady Gaga, but less famous). The advantage is not from you using your real name, the advantage is from knowing the name that lots of people already know you by so all those people can easily find you on Google+. No one you know in real life would be able to find you on HN unless you specifically linked them to your profile; which again is fine, it is simply providing a different service, one where you could be talking to your best friend and never even know it.

0x12 15y ago
You can be pseudonymous to google but known to your friends, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. After all, google is just the transportation medium why should it have any knowledge on whose data it transports, as long as it reaches the intended destination it's all good.
- esrauch 15y ago
  > You can be pseudonymous to google but known to your friends, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. That's all good in theory but it's basically impossible in practice. You have to specifically get someones username in meatspace to be able to start following them on twitter; that probably works for your close friends but not at all for acquaintances. There are a couple of dozen people on Google+ and Facebook that follow me and vice versa that I have some interaction with that I never would have just gone up to and said "Send me your google+ username" in real life. It just doesn't scale well at all; you have to memorize the mapping from username to actual name for your entire social graph. I have no desire to learn two names for each person, one actual name and one that looks like "0x12". If I have an old friend named Pete Smith that I haven't interacted with in a while that is among the 200 people I am following on twitter, it's impossible for me to go look at his recent tweets or at-tweet to him something awesome that reminds me of old times, because I have no idea what his username is. His name is Pete Smith, that's what I always called him and that's what everyone calls him, why is he using a new name that potentially doesn't even map to something that people would identify as a name. There was a time where I knew my friend's username on a forum was some insane misspelling of Obsolete Oaf, and it was just literally impossible for me to type it because it was something like Obs0le7e 0af. I even knew my friends username was (in one sense) and I still didn't know it well enough to type it in to search. There is enormous value to me in having people's names online be discoverable and searchable by the name that I actually know them by. Google+, Facebook and LinkedIn provide enormous value to me, tumblr and twitter provide almost none, and I don't think that is a coincidence. Your experiences may differ, twitter and tumblr are both obviously very popular. I'm really not saying that you are wrong if you want to use those services, I do think you are wrong to act like a company is evil because it is providing a service that isn't what you want to use.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - frossie 15y ago
    you have to memorize the mapping from username to actual name for your entire social graph Well, what can I say - in the cases where I know both wallet name and online identity for somebody, not only can I remember both, but if anything the pseudonym is easier. I mean, I can type Skud right off, but I have to go check how many Rs are in Kirrily (Kirilly? Kiriley?). Also in my experience, if you slip and call someone by their nick in real life, they aren't offended. Unless you are writing them a job reference, it doesn't seem to be much of a problem. And let's don't forget than in some cases an online persona's personality really is quite different from the meatspace one. In cases where this happens, a different name is almost a necessity. Who knows what the Macalope is like in real life? It doesn't matter, it has a name and a persona it the space that it operates in.
Leynos 15y ago
>It seems to me that the only legitimate use of circles is with respect to people you are sharing with that you know in real life. If you want to talk to total strangers, then you want to be pseudonymous but you also have almost no reason to not post publicly. The typical usecase for circles I've seen (aside from the obvious of protecting privacy) is when someone has multiple interests, not all of which any given contact will find interesting. For example, a person might have a foodies circle, a roleplaying circle, an anime circle, etc. And many of the people who have circled me in this way I do not know IRL. (Although my own take on this is that this is probably not an optimal use of circles, it has none the less sprung up as a fairly common application.)
- waqf 15y ago
  Unfortunately G+ circles are not a good fit for the use case you describe, because whether you are permitted to see a post (which certainly should be at the author's discretion) is different from whether you are interested enough to see it in your stream (which should be at yours, but G+ can't handle that).
  - Leynos 15y ago
    Generally, what someone will do is make a public post with their list of interest based circles, then ask people to reply stating which they'd like to be in. I agree though, this does tend to be rather awkward.
dredmorbius 15y ago
Since it takes only one counterexample: I participate (pseudonymously) in G+. I follow a number of people who associate by their (so far as I can ascertain) birth / given / legal names, and a number with evident pseudonyms (having gone so far as to seek out same). Several of these have noted that the apparent pseudonyms are in fact birth / given / legal names, go figure. I use circles to categorize both inbound and outbound posts by content and context (NB: this doesn't work very well, and recent improvements in search help). There are people I do know IRL who are on G+. None AFAIK actually know the link between my pseudonym and my legal identity, though of course, some may have done the math. I frankly don't trust Google (or by extension its successors and/or business/government "partners") with my personally identifiable data, to this degree. I've had the batshit crazy conspiracy shibboleth thing thrown at me before. Sometimes it's a valid criticism. Surprisingly often, it's not. As for the "use another service" shibboleth: network effects and social/commerce expectations currently all but require use of Facebook in some contexts, and similar effects would almost certainly arise for any closed, proprietary successor. So long as social networks are closed, there really isn't a viable alternative. It's the equivalent of trying to exist without a phone or postal service in the 1980s or 1990s. Yes, it's possible, but only in a highly marginal way, and you'll find you're excluded from many interactions and services. The real solution, the one I've been considering for some time, is an open social networking framework that breaks the silos. If social networking is truly the cat's meow, and sufficiently valuable that people demand it, and systems such as Diaspora can gain traction, I see the third-tier networks and open solutions (Diaspora, etc.) developing an open model. Think very strong analogs to how the GNU project and Linux emerged to the point that no proprietary Unix vendor can credibly be called a market leader, though several do survive (Sun as an Oracle subsidiary, AIX within IBM, Mac OS X as a consumer product, etc.).

by esrauch 15y ago

0x12 15y ago

You can be pseudonymous to google but known to your friends, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. After all, google is just the transportation medium why should it have any knowledge on whose data it transports, as long as it reaches the intended destination it's all good.

esrauch 15y ago
> You can be pseudonymous to google but known to your friends, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. That's all good in theory but it's basically impossible in practice. You have to specifically get someones username in meatspace to be able to start following them on twitter; that probably works for your close friends but not at all for acquaintances. There are a couple of dozen people on Google+ and Facebook that follow me and vice versa that I have some interaction with that I never would have just gone up to and said "Send me your google+ username" in real life. It just doesn't scale well at all; you have to memorize the mapping from username to actual name for your entire social graph. I have no desire to learn two names for each person, one actual name and one that looks like "0x12". If I have an old friend named Pete Smith that I haven't interacted with in a while that is among the 200 people I am following on twitter, it's impossible for me to go look at his recent tweets or at-tweet to him something awesome that reminds me of old times, because I have no idea what his username is. His name is Pete Smith, that's what I always called him and that's what everyone calls him, why is he using a new name that potentially doesn't even map to something that people would identify as a name. There was a time where I knew my friend's username on a forum was some insane misspelling of Obsolete Oaf, and it was just literally impossible for me to type it because it was something like Obs0le7e 0af. I even knew my friends username was (in one sense) and I still didn't know it well enough to type it in to search. There is enormous value to me in having people's names online be discoverable and searchable by the name that I actually know them by. Google+, Facebook and LinkedIn provide enormous value to me, tumblr and twitter provide almost none, and I don't think that is a coincidence. Your experiences may differ, twitter and tumblr are both obviously very popular. I'm really not saying that you are wrong if you want to use those services, I do think you are wrong to act like a company is evil because it is providing a service that isn't what you want to use.
- deleted 15y ago
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- frossie 15y ago
  you have to memorize the mapping from username to actual name for your entire social graph Well, what can I say - in the cases where I know both wallet name and online identity for somebody, not only can I remember both, but if anything the pseudonym is easier. I mean, I can type Skud right off, but I have to go check how many Rs are in Kirrily (Kirilly? Kiriley?). Also in my experience, if you slip and call someone by their nick in real life, they aren't offended. Unless you are writing them a job reference, it doesn't seem to be much of a problem. And let's don't forget than in some cases an online persona's personality really is quite different from the meatspace one. In cases where this happens, a different name is almost a necessity. Who knows what the Macalope is like in real life? It doesn't matter, it has a name and a persona it the space that it operates in.

Leynos 15y ago

>It seems to me that the only legitimate use of circles is with respect to people you are sharing with that you know in real life. If you want to talk to total strangers, then you want to be pseudonymous but you also have almost no reason to not post publicly. The typical usecase for circles I've seen (aside from the obvious of protecting privacy) is when someone has multiple interests, not all of which any given contact will find interesting. For example, a person might have a foodies circle, a roleplaying circle, an anime circle, etc. And many of the people who have circled me in this way I do not know IRL. (Although my own take on this is that this is probably not an optimal use of circles, it has none the less sprung up as a fairly common application.)

waqf 15y ago
Unfortunately G+ circles are not a good fit for the use case you describe, because whether you are permitted to see a post (which certainly should be at the author's discretion) is different from whether you are interested enough to see it in your stream (which should be at yours, but G+ can't handle that).
- Leynos 15y ago
  Generally, what someone will do is make a public post with their list of interest based circles, then ask people to reply stating which they'd like to be in. I agree though, this does tend to be rather awkward.

dredmorbius 15y ago

Since it takes only one counterexample: I participate (pseudonymously) in G+. I follow a number of people who associate by their (so far as I can ascertain) birth / given / legal names, and a number with evident pseudonyms (having gone so far as to seek out same). Several of these have noted that the apparent pseudonyms are in fact birth / given / legal names, go figure. I use circles to categorize both inbound and outbound posts by content and context (NB: this doesn't work very well, and recent improvements in search help). There are people I do know IRL who are on G+. None AFAIK actually know the link between my pseudonym and my legal identity, though of course, some may have done the math. I frankly don't trust Google (or by extension its successors and/or business/government "partners") with my personally identifiable data, to this degree. I've had the batshit crazy conspiracy shibboleth thing thrown at me before. Sometimes it's a valid criticism. Surprisingly often, it's not. As for the "use another service" shibboleth: network effects and social/commerce expectations currently all but require use of Facebook in some contexts, and similar effects would almost certainly arise for any closed, proprietary successor. So long as social networks are closed, there really isn't a viable alternative. It's the equivalent of trying to exist without a phone or postal service in the 1980s or 1990s. Yes, it's possible, but only in a highly marginal way, and you'll find you're excluded from many interactions and services. The real solution, the one I've been considering for some time, is an open social networking framework that breaks the silos. If social networking is truly the cat's meow, and sufficiently valuable that people demand it, and systems such as Diaspora can gain traction, I see the third-tier networks and open solutions (Diaspora, etc.) developing an open model. Think very strong analogs to how the GNU project and Linux emerged to the point that no proprietary Unix vendor can credibly be called a market leader, though several do survive (Sun as an Oracle subsidiary, AIX within IBM, Mac OS X as a consumer product, etc.).