If you think it's a first-world problem, ask yourself what the situation in a third-world or repressive government would be where all search and email traffic would be individually assignable and identifiable as it passed through the national firewall and surveillance systems.
What? It's the same sodding data, passed to the same company, how does merging two accounts that they already know are linked change anything?
Also, you can search without logging in, and sign up for as many different email accounts as you want. Are you honestly saying that google asking you to make a G+ account is a serious problem for activists?
I'm entirely confused by this. I have my G+ account linked with youtube. Just now I unlinked them, and changed the visible name from one that was obviously mine to a more anonymous name and posted a comment with absolutely no issue.
No picture, no name, no link to me. And this is from after linking the accounts and then unlinking them (which took under a minute to do and was pretty easy to find).
I changed from my real name to somenamefortestingpurposes, and seem to be able to change this to anything else. I've also tested posting comments with this, and they don't appear with my real name.
I also have the option of deleting my "channel" which I think is pretty much the same as deleting my youtube presence.
What works for Youtube is to create another channel and use that channel and the created page to post comments via pseudonym. I can switch between my original Google Account and the newly created channel. I don't have an option for my primary account through. For this does not matter but if you had personal data in your old Youtube account there is no easy way to hide this information without loosing Google+ as far I understood that problem now.
So I guess you also missed the part where her comment showed up on her real name and it surprised her?
(and let me ask in advance not to give me that "she may have accidentally clicked some button on one of those popups and given permission" crap. That's like seeing the vampire's fangs in someone's neck and saying "But you invited him over for dinner!")
I actually have two Google accounts, my "real" one and the one I use to joke around on video game clips on YouTube. When Google strongarmed the second one into g+, I knew that even if I decided I wanted g+ for some reason, I would never, ever, ever want a g+ page on that YouTube account.
So imagine my surprise when I received an email beginning:
"This email was sent to you because you indicated that you'd like to receive Google+ Pages performance suggestions and updates"
Go to Hell, Google. I asked for no such thing, and if you somehow tricked me into accidentally not opting out of any such thing, you can still go to Hell. So if anyone says g+ tricked them into something, I'm going to believe them barring hard evidence to the contrary.
The accounts weren't "already linked". They shared some metadata. I was asked if I wanted to link them. I responded "no". Multiple times.
Persisting when someone says "no" is at best, disrespect, at worst abuse and, in the right contexts, rape.
Oh, did I mention I'd organized an ad-hoc anti-harassment policy discussion on G+ at the suggestion of Yonatan Zunger? Irony, it's got an enduring entertainment value.
Oddly enough, I was fine with a G+ account, in fact, that's pretty much the only part of Google I'd been using any more. The YouTube account was just to access videos, and I'd pretty much gotten used to purging its history regularly.
The actual harm to me? Pretty little. Both accounts were pseudonymous. For other people, not nearly so little.
And the message on Google's respect for its users and trustworthiness? Loud and clear: nil and nil.
> Persisting when someone says "no" is at best, disrespect, at worst abuse and, in the right contexts, rape.
I'm not sure I can continue to debate the problems of linking multiple google products together when a comparison is rape. Instead I'm simply going to repeat my original statement
> I genuinely find the level of complaints embarrassing.
Calling the other names for making a (non offensive to anyone in particular) remark, just because he used a notion your particular culture finds "taboo"?
Not to mention the irony of being offended by the mere use of the word "rape" (to correctly describe the feeling of being continuously probed after repeteadly saying "no", without trying to offend anyone), while in the same time you find it acceptable to comment on his mental state ("crazy idiot", "deranged" etc), as if mental health issues are funny.
Is that what you consider responsible behavior?
Or were you just conditioned to think people using the "r" word are to be prosecuted, however innocent and justified their use?
