A friend of mine reshared that post on G+ yesterday and I left this comment there:
"nymwars" is a big complicated thing that has far outgrown my ability to keep track of the nuances, so I don't understand what this means for my personal pet feature (showing different names to different people), but it's encouraging to hear that there is raucous debate inside Google.
I still think that the strongest argument for pseudonyms is that a system that doesn't handle them is Wrong, in the same way that "everything can be losslessly converted to ASCII" is wrong, or "an accurate map of a geographical area can be drawn on a flat surface" is wrong. Pseudonyms aren't a feature you can decide whether to support or not, they're part of the problem that you're trying to solve.
That's only part of the problem. The core problem is that google doesn't allow pseudonyms at all (even a single pseudonym across all circles) unless you happen to be famous enough, regardless of legal identity. It's a double standard.
You might claim that everything can be losslessly converted to ASCII by applying, say, base64, but I would claim what you lose in that situation is readability.
When I wrote that, I was mostly thinking about systems that assume it is always safe to replace "é" with "e", for example.
How is Google's policy different from Facebook's? Google is enforcing the policy more strictly? People are just complaining because it's new and they think they can change it?
I don't really get it. Host your own blog and you can be called whatever you want.
If you start a new product, label it 'Beta' and people use it, like it, but have a problem with it: Do you answer 'So - go away and build it yourself'?
I agree that there is a lot of whining involved. 'The right to use G+', 'Think of the children/lesbian/gays/victims of numerous crims' arguments that cannot really be countered in a productive way. But if you actually look into the debate you find lots of people that are merely asking Google to reconsider. These are people that started using the product in its early beginnings, care about it (otherwise it would be a non-issue and we could just host a blog as you suggest or go elsewhere with a shrug), but won't - for a multitude of reasons - support this 'community guidelines'.
Facebook? Really? Who cares about Facebook. Why is Facebook coming up in this discussion all the time? If G+ is ~like Facebook~, why do we need it in he first place? It's a competing product in the same market, granted. But arguing 'Facebook does X, why do you care that G+ does the same' is really weird in my world.
G+ is different from Facebook because Facebook's policies are already firmly set. G+ is still nominally in "limited field testing" and Google has shown a willingness to change the system based on feedback from their users.
Facebook doesn't go out and actively eliminate users they think have pseudonyms. Google+ does.
Facebook just reserves the right to ask you for your government ID, if there's a dispute or you need to reclaim an account. But in practice pseudonyms are tolerated unless you make a nuisance of yourself.
One significant difference is that loss of a G+ account can mean loss of access to other linked accounts, including use of your Google-linked Android phone.
And that this is a highly arbitrary process.
And that the process occurs on a stated 4-day grace basis (what happens, if, say, you're offline / disconnected for ... 5 days or more?).
And that in actuality, the 4-day grace period isn't respected.
This is a royal clusterfuck for Google. The only firm resolution I've made is to as rapidly as possible dissociate anything I value highly with the company. And they're one I've championed and respected for most of its life.
Is this really a huge deal? I haven't really been using Google+ (after I finally dropped Facebook, I guess I just... stopped caring about this sort of thing), but this topic keeps showing up everywhere.
I'm not sure why it's a problem. Google+ isn't that kind of website to me. Reddit, HN, etc. are really in a different class of websites and should be treated as such. Google+ is like my Address Book. I want real names, because they look nice. I should not that (in my mind) this doesn't make "JK Rowling", "Mark Twain", or "Jon Stewart" unacceptable. "rms" or "natesm", on the other hand, aren't the sort of thing that I'd want to see on Google+.
Similarly, I have Adium set up to display real names and real pictures instead of ugly AIM screen names. I don't talk to ladygagafan05, I talk to "John Smith".
"rms" or "natesm", on the other hand, aren't the sort of thing that I'd want to see on Google+.
You, as the recipient or the viewer, don't really get to decide how people would like themselves to be referred to. That doesn't really stop people from referring to others however they want to, which leads directly into...
Similarly, I have Adium set up to display real names and real pictures instead of ugly AIM screen names.
And that's most likely the best or real solution to all of this: allow people to change the labels they see for other people to something custom, which only they see. This actually mirrors how the real, non-Google+ world works.
This is part of the problem: what you want is nice-looking names, but what you're asking for is real names. Unfortunately, not everybody's real name matches your "niceness" rules, and even the people who have sensible "real names" don't always use those names in all their social contexts.
What I want is for Google+ to list my friends under names that I recognise. I don't care whether they happen to use that name when talking with their parents, their employer or their tax-office, I want to see the name they use when talking with me.
In the first real name discussion I had a lengthy debate about exactly this point. The issue I see here is that you argue for keeping the rules with 'I don't want THEM to show up as ...' while the other side argues 'I don't want ME to be listed as ...'.
One side of the argument wants to force their standard on others. The other side wants to be left alone and decide about their own account as they please.
It's a huge deal. I don't use Google+ either but a social network this big will set precedents for everything that comes after it. Every website that might allow you to sign in with g+ id will be affected.
That seems to be how they intended people to use it, but that doesn't seem to be how people are actually using it. From what I've it looks like people are using it much more like LJ (or a similar type of blogging network) rather than like Facebook. That is essentially what it does, after all!
Plus, who's actually taken it up? Looks like internet people mostly... who will want handles/pseudonyms. So they put out a service, but they misguessed who would use it and what for. :)
So sad that we are like sheep waiting to see what" Vic" and big G decide in regards to our (practically) our social identity and the nature of the social space as well.
One certainly can have the equivalent. Of real-life anonymity. The issue is institutional will.
The nymwars demonstrate that dictatorships in "the cloud" are not always benign ones. Why is Google trying to control the identities of its users, and why doesn't it seem to care about the legitimate needs of certain groups of people?
- "Women, LGBT, abuse victims, etc, will be disadvantaged"
Larry/Vic: "There are other places they can go to, we don't have to fight every ethical and social injustice every time in everything we do, G+ is one of the occasions when we don't seek to right the wrongs of the world, we just want to get the work done."
Yeah, I read it, and I keep hearing people saying it. I just don't know what it's supposed to mean. Are we saying gay people are going to be using pseudonyms on G+ to avoid harassment? I keep hearing this and I don't get the angle.
Gay kids who don't want to be outed to their parents.
Gay Ugandans who don't want to be shopped to the authorities for jail or worse.
Trans people, newly out to themselves, experimenting with a name that they have chosen, not the mistake foisted upon them by parents who thought they were cis.
Trans people asserting their real names, the ones they use in public every day, in the face of bigoted official refusal to change their paperwork.
And so on.
Edit to add: for what it's worth, playing cross-gender characters in WoW has been a common thread among my trans friends before they came out. So what looks like a playful profile of your elven mage or something, might actually be part of a disguised foray into publicly presenting as the other gender. This is an example of why it's a mistake to force either real names or single profiles per user (though I think it would be OK to internally cross-link all pseudonyms of a given user, so they all take the same hit if any of them goes trolling).
"nymwars" is a big complicated thing that has far outgrown my ability to keep track of the nuances, so I don't understand what this means for my personal pet feature (showing different names to different people), but it's encouraging to hear that there is raucous debate inside Google.
I still think that the strongest argument for pseudonyms is that a system that doesn't handle them is Wrong, in the same way that "everything can be losslessly converted to ASCII" is wrong, or "an accurate map of a geographical area can be drawn on a flat surface" is wrong. Pseudonyms aren't a feature you can decide whether to support or not, they're part of the problem that you're trying to solve.