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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

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?
Thrymr 13y ago
> Cue the sardonic "don't be evil" scare-quotes that inevitably appear. Those aren't scare quotes. That is quoting an actual full heading from one of their founding documents [1]: "Don't be evil. We believe strongly that in the long term, we will be better served-as shareholders and in all other ways-by a company that does good things for the world even if we forgo some short term gains. This is an important aspect of our culture and is broadly shared within the company." as well as their internal code of conduct [2]. [1] http://investor.google.com/corporate/2004/ipo-founders-letter.html http://investor.google.com/corporate/2004/ipo-founders-lette... [2] http://investor.google.com/corporate/code-of-conduct.html http://investor.google.com/corporate/code-of-conduct.html
- corresation 13y ago
  A scare quote isn't a manufactured quote, but instead is taking something someone (or some thing like a corporation) said and making one's skepticism/doubt readily apparent. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scare_quotes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scare_quotes

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?

Thrymr 13y ago

> Cue the sardonic "don't be evil" scare-quotes that inevitably appear. Those aren't scare quotes. That is quoting an actual full heading from one of their founding documents [1]: "Don't be evil. We believe strongly that in the long term, we will be better served-as shareholders and in all other ways-by a company that does good things for the world even if we forgo some short term gains. This is an important aspect of our culture and is broadly shared within the company." as well as their internal code of conduct [2]. [1] http://investor.google.com/corporate/2004/ipo-founders-letter.html http://investor.google.com/corporate/2004/ipo-founders-lette... [2] http://investor.google.com/corporate/code-of-conduct.html http://investor.google.com/corporate/code-of-conduct.html

corresation 13y ago
A scare quote isn't a manufactured quote, but instead is taking something someone (or some thing like a corporation) said and making one's skepticism/doubt readily apparent. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scare_quotes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scare_quotes