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To pause the Google-hate, and the same G+ identity talk for just one second I'd like to point out that the details in that post are not accurate. First and mos

by ritikk 13y ago

To pause the Google-hate, and the same G+ identity talk for just one second I'd like to point out that the details in that post are not accurate. First and most important - the linchpin to that whole post is wrong: Google's response was that her outing was "user error" - Google blamed her, the user for not understanding the new, confusing integration. That statement is untrue, the author is citing a previous reporting that never received any statement from Google: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jan/07/google-hangouts-faces-criticism-after-outing-trans-woman http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jan/07/google-han... Nonetheless the incident itself was self-inflicted: The trans woman in question flashed a ROM which skipped the usual disclaimer and notice about which identity will be used: https://twitter.com/eiridescent/status/419604310213672960 https://twitter.com/eiridescent/status/419604310213672960 Also it's very unfair to cavalierly invoke that Grantland tragedy and to choose that very provocative title to drive page views.

darklajid 13y ago
I tried following your arguments, but failed. The woman in question flashed CM11 and (official, unchanged, albeit unsupported/in a grey area if you grab them yourself?) GApps. G+ etc. is part of that and as far as I can tell and that is what the person in question states in the discussion you link. How do you know that 'The ROM'(?) 'skipped all disclaimer and notice about which identity will be used'? The Twitter link at least doesn't say that at all. Obviously you might have a point, but you didn't present it well/the facts given don't match what you claim to know.
- ritikk 13y ago
  Because I got the disclaimer: http://www.groovypost.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Hangouts-SMS-turn-on.png http://www.groovypost.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Hangout... And another screen after it notifying me.
  - pilif 13y ago
    That screenshot doesn't seem to indicate to me that any change to any outgoing identity is to happen. The only thing it tells me is that I can use Hangouts to send SMS. I haven't used android in a while, so you still might very well be right, but the screenshot you've posted as an example doesn't tell us anything.
    - ritikk2 13y ago
      Once SMS is turned on you get a message on top of the screen informing you what identity will be used, can't seem to find a screen shot of that (probably since people don ' way to publicise that info).
      - DanBC 13y ago
        You appear to be extrapolationg your experience of an OS on a device with a bunch of accounts to her experience of a differently installed OS on a different device with different accounts. Then you appear to be saying that she is wrong and that it's her fault. Part of the problem is the lousy quality of journalism. From reading TFA we can't know what actually happened. But if you know what happens on simillarly installed OSs and accounts it'd be great if you could present a clear wallthrough. At the moment you seem to be making irrelevant points.
        FireBeyond 13y ago
        It's certainly not Google's fault, either, if someone flashes a third party "mod" ROM to their device that may or may not have had disclaimers and EULAs removed, any more than it's Adobe's fault that I didn't see a claus in the EULA claiming my firstborn because I didn't buy Photoshop but instead pirated it, and the pirates replaced the EULA with an ad for their 0-day warez site.
blumkvist 13y ago
Google creates a real identity for you, without you explicitly asking them to, based on the information they already have about you, like your interests(google now), gmail account (and its contents!!!), youtube, blogger, author profile, G maps, waze, android (photos, who you call, who calls you) GPS (where you go, with whom, how much you stay there), your friends, coleagues, acquaintances and possibly indexed 3rd party web pages. And they buried what they are doing and the privacy controls through dark patterns, so most of the people aren't even aware of that. Not only they are forcing the majority of the internet population to have an account pulling information from different parts of their lives, they are forcing them to use that account publicly and start identifying with it - youtube, sms, email, blogger (soon waze?). Tell me how dystopian this is? Now consider that the same company knows all the sites you visit and how you got there.
- ritikk2 13y ago
  Except that isn’t true! your G+ account is only created by you and only shows what you want it to. That is just another one of the inaccuracies in that post that are stated as fact.
  - blueskin_ 13y ago
    Nice try, google employee. Even if people don't have a google+ account (even if they don't have a gmail account), do you really think google aren't building a profile with as much personal data as they can collect?
    - ritikk2 13y ago
      That is not the same thing. An ad targeting secret profile is different form a public G+ profile.
      - dredmorbius 13y ago
        So you're not denying the Google employee charge?
corresation 13y ago
This article is riding the anti-Google+ bandwagon, as you mentioned exploiting a very complex, highly nuanced tragedy to try to bolster page views. It's just as unfortunate to blame complex societal issues (like the acceptance of transgenders, criminal backgrounds, educational history, etc.) on a technology or software product, as if Google Hangouts carefully considered the ramifications of a male versus female name and decided to "out" the user maliciously. Cue the sardonic "don't be evil" scare-quotes that inevitably appear. Though I don't know if I'd go as far as blaming the user -- it is possible the system had two or more identifiers and confused them. Indeed, the core purpose of Google+ is as a simple aggregation of disparate identity systems across Google's properties and apps, so such conflicts are a virtual inevitability. Hangouts was upgraded, to much cheering, specifically to aggregate SMS and IM functionality, so if you were living a different life on both things might get complicated. It's extremely hard to hide or change the past. It was hard before the internet, and has become effectively impossible now. It is almost irrational to expect to transition to a new life and an entire legacy of breadcrumbs will disappear, especially while trying to hold onto some parts of that prior life.
- rmc 13y ago
  It's extremely hard to hide or change the past. It was hard before the internet, and has become effectively impossible now. It is almost irrational to expect to transition to a new life and an entire legacy of breadcrumbs will disappear, especially while trying to hold onto some parts of that prior life. Well it might soon be legally required in the EU. Wanna do business here? Make it possible.
- genericuser 13y ago
  I don't see the google plus issue as one of hiding her past as it was her 'new' name which was leaked to the co-workers not her old one which she had been using at work. I see it as an issue of trying to maintain two identities at the same time on the same hardware. This was no easy task before different accounts all got tied together. Now I will agree it is much harder. While using different sets of hardware is how drug dealers accomplish this task in TV and movies a person doing so for non criminal purposes should not be required to go through this, however I don't know how and I won't speculate on how such users can or should be able to do this, as that is a complex problem. I do not use my legal name on things online but I am fairly consistent with my name use, as such I am privileged enough to have google+ using the name I would like it to display. As such I am also unable to identify all the sources google+ uses to determine ones name. Would I be correct in assuming it is only things in the google ecosystem, or does google somehow scrape name data from other sources such as Twitter?

by ritikk 13y ago

darklajid 13y ago

I tried following your arguments, but failed. The woman in question flashed CM11 and (official, unchanged, albeit unsupported/in a grey area if you grab them yourself?) GApps. G+ etc. is part of that and as far as I can tell and that is what the person in question states in the discussion you link. How do you know that 'The ROM'(?) 'skipped all disclaimer and notice about which identity will be used'? The Twitter link at least doesn't say that at all. Obviously you might have a point, but you didn't present it well/the facts given don't match what you claim to know.

ritikk 13y ago
Because I got the disclaimer: http://www.groovypost.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Hangouts-SMS-turn-on.png http://www.groovypost.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Hangout... And another screen after it notifying me.
- pilif 13y ago
  That screenshot doesn't seem to indicate to me that any change to any outgoing identity is to happen. The only thing it tells me is that I can use Hangouts to send SMS. I haven't used android in a while, so you still might very well be right, but the screenshot you've posted as an example doesn't tell us anything.
  - ritikk2 13y ago
    Once SMS is turned on you get a message on top of the screen informing you what identity will be used, can't seem to find a screen shot of that (probably since people don ' way to publicise that info).
    - DanBC 13y ago
      You appear to be extrapolationg your experience of an OS on a device with a bunch of accounts to her experience of a differently installed OS on a different device with different accounts. Then you appear to be saying that she is wrong and that it's her fault. Part of the problem is the lousy quality of journalism. From reading TFA we can't know what actually happened. But if you know what happens on simillarly installed OSs and accounts it'd be great if you could present a clear wallthrough. At the moment you seem to be making irrelevant points.
      - FireBeyond 13y ago
        It's certainly not Google's fault, either, if someone flashes a third party "mod" ROM to their device that may or may not have had disclaimers and EULAs removed, any more than it's Adobe's fault that I didn't see a claus in the EULA claiming my firstborn because I didn't buy Photoshop but instead pirated it, and the pirates replaced the EULA with an ad for their 0-day warez site.

blumkvist 13y ago

Google creates a real identity for you, without you explicitly asking them to, based on the information they already have about you, like your interests(google now), gmail account (and its contents!!!), youtube, blogger, author profile, G maps, waze, android (photos, who you call, who calls you) GPS (where you go, with whom, how much you stay there), your friends, coleagues, acquaintances and possibly indexed 3rd party web pages. And they buried what they are doing and the privacy controls through dark patterns, so most of the people aren't even aware of that. Not only they are forcing the majority of the internet population to have an account pulling information from different parts of their lives, they are forcing them to use that account publicly and start identifying with it - youtube, sms, email, blogger (soon waze?). Tell me how dystopian this is? Now consider that the same company knows all the sites you visit and how you got there.

ritikk2 13y ago
Except that isn’t true! your G+ account is only created by you and only shows what you want it to. That is just another one of the inaccuracies in that post that are stated as fact.
- blueskin_ 13y ago
  Nice try, google employee. Even if people don't have a google+ account (even if they don't have a gmail account), do you really think google aren't building a profile with as much personal data as they can collect?
  - ritikk2 13y ago
    That is not the same thing. An ad targeting secret profile is different form a public G+ profile.
    - dredmorbius 13y ago
      So you're not denying the Google employee charge?

corresation 13y ago

This article is riding the anti-Google+ bandwagon, as you mentioned exploiting a very complex, highly nuanced tragedy to try to bolster page views. It's just as unfortunate to blame complex societal issues (like the acceptance of transgenders, criminal backgrounds, educational history, etc.) on a technology or software product, as if Google Hangouts carefully considered the ramifications of a male versus female name and decided to "out" the user maliciously. Cue the sardonic "don't be evil" scare-quotes that inevitably appear. Though I don't know if I'd go as far as blaming the user -- it is possible the system had two or more identifiers and confused them. Indeed, the core purpose of Google+ is as a simple aggregation of disparate identity systems across Google's properties and apps, so such conflicts are a virtual inevitability. Hangouts was upgraded, to much cheering, specifically to aggregate SMS and IM functionality, so if you were living a different life on both things might get complicated. It's extremely hard to hide or change the past. It was hard before the internet, and has become effectively impossible now. It is almost irrational to expect to transition to a new life and an entire legacy of breadcrumbs will disappear, especially while trying to hold onto some parts of that prior life.

rmc 13y ago
It's extremely hard to hide or change the past. It was hard before the internet, and has become effectively impossible now. It is almost irrational to expect to transition to a new life and an entire legacy of breadcrumbs will disappear, especially while trying to hold onto some parts of that prior life. Well it might soon be legally required in the EU. Wanna do business here? Make it possible.
genericuser 13y ago
I don't see the google plus issue as one of hiding her past as it was her 'new' name which was leaked to the co-workers not her old one which she had been using at work. I see it as an issue of trying to maintain two identities at the same time on the same hardware. This was no easy task before different accounts all got tied together. Now I will agree it is much harder. While using different sets of hardware is how drug dealers accomplish this task in TV and movies a person doing so for non criminal purposes should not be required to go through this, however I don't know how and I won't speculate on how such users can or should be able to do this, as that is a complex problem. I do not use my legal name on things online but I am fairly consistent with my name use, as such I am privileged enough to have google+ using the name I would like it to display. As such I am also unable to identify all the sources google+ uses to determine ones name. Would I be correct in assuming it is only things in the google ecosystem, or does google somehow scrape name data from other sources such as Twitter?