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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

by ElbertF 15y ago

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."

bad_user 15y ago
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/ http://www.fakesteve.net/ https://twitter.com/#!/FSJ https://twitter.com/#!/FSJ
- ElbertF 15y ago
  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.'"
  - grandfathered 15y ago
    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.
    - marshray 15y ago
      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!
      - raldi 15y ago
        ...as mandated by law.
        lreeves 15y ago
        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?
        raldi 15y ago
        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children%27s_Online_Privacy_Protection_Act 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.
        lreeves 15y ago
        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.
        dmoy 15y ago
        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.
  - protomyth 15y ago
    What are they basing the well known part? If it is only online or celebrities then I think it is still problematic.
dkl 15y ago
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.
- ElbertF 15y ago
  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.
- muyuu 15y ago
  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.
darklajid 15y ago
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.
obtu 15y ago
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.

by ElbertF 15y ago

bad_user 15y ago

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/ http://www.fakesteve.net/ https://twitter.com/#!/FSJ https://twitter.com/#!/FSJ

ElbertF 15y ago
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.'"
- grandfathered 15y ago
  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.
  - marshray 15y ago
    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!
    - raldi 15y ago
      ...as mandated by law.
      - lreeves 15y ago
        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?
        raldi 15y ago
        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children%27s_Online_Privacy_Protection_Act 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.
        lreeves 15y ago
        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.
        dmoy 15y ago
        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.
- protomyth 15y ago
  What are they basing the well known part? If it is only online or celebrities then I think it is still problematic.

dkl 15y ago

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.

ElbertF 15y ago
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.
muyuu 15y ago
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.

darklajid 15y ago

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.

obtu 15y ago

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.