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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 medi

by 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.
- vidarh 15y ago
  You are making a lot of assumptions. First of all, lots of us have friends or acquaintances we have never met in "meatspace". In many cases we do only know them by pseudonyms. Pseudonyms we now can't use if we wish to connect to them on Google+ I started out in the C64 demo scene, and though I never released anything of significance, there were at least at one point more people that knew me by my pseudonym than by my real name. I don't use mine any more, but many do. For a lot of those people, being able to be searchable by their pseudonym is important if they are to connect to friends, and in many cases, it may be detrimental for them to have their pseudonym tied to their real name. Conversely many people very intentionally do not want to be searchable. Google is free to operate with whatever rules they want within the law, but it is pretty infuriating when on one side they've shown they in some ways understand the social graph far better than facebook ("friendships" are NOT in any way symmetrical in real life, and we're usually very careful about what we share with whom), while in other ways totally failing to grasp that pseudonymity is also a massive part of human culture: We don't carry around giant posters with a bunch of personal information tied to our full name. We often intentionally don't give our last names out. We often choose to either share about ourselves or let someone know our "real" identity. Failing to grasp this is one thing. Continuing to boneheadedly refusing to acknowledge the problem and fixing it is another. It shows that Google understands the social graph far less than what the initial rollout of Google+ seemed to indicate.

by 0x12 15y ago

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.
vidarh 15y ago
You are making a lot of assumptions. First of all, lots of us have friends or acquaintances we have never met in "meatspace". In many cases we do only know them by pseudonyms. Pseudonyms we now can't use if we wish to connect to them on Google+ I started out in the C64 demo scene, and though I never released anything of significance, there were at least at one point more people that knew me by my pseudonym than by my real name. I don't use mine any more, but many do. For a lot of those people, being able to be searchable by their pseudonym is important if they are to connect to friends, and in many cases, it may be detrimental for them to have their pseudonym tied to their real name. Conversely many people very intentionally do not want to be searchable. Google is free to operate with whatever rules they want within the law, but it is pretty infuriating when on one side they've shown they in some ways understand the social graph far better than facebook ("friendships" are NOT in any way symmetrical in real life, and we're usually very careful about what we share with whom), while in other ways totally failing to grasp that pseudonymity is also a massive part of human culture: We don't carry around giant posters with a bunch of personal information tied to our full name. We often intentionally don't give our last names out. We often choose to either share about ourselves or let someone know our "real" identity. Failing to grasp this is one thing. Continuing to boneheadedly refusing to acknowledge the problem and fixing it is another. It shows that Google understands the social graph far less than what the initial rollout of Google+ seemed to indicate.