
Jwz: Google's pseudonym support "obvious bullshit" - Uhhrrr
http://www.jwz.org/blog/2011/10/eff-declares-premature-victory-in-nymwars/
======
mindstab
Everyone is also missing the bigger point that Google's idea of a valid real
name is incredibly north american and anglo centric. There are plenty of cases
of people using their real names, be in European, or African or what ever and
google still kicking them off.

Google's policies do not work, and are verging on racist.

I know some people who would be better off using a fake anglo name than their
real name to keep using google+. That is defective.

~~~
raldi
Do you have some examples of the cases you refer to?

~~~
rst
Ironically enough, Chinese residents in Hong Kong who do in fact go by Anglo
names (an expression of their mixed cultural heritage in a former British
colony) are getting systematically bounced:

[http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/gmail/thread?tid=40356...](http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/gmail/thread?tid=40356d87de8509c0&hl=en)

By some accounts, this is the reason for the odd "in one language"
qualification in the Google Plus notions of what a "real name" ought to be.
FWIW, there's at least one American-born Chinese who's gotten similar
treatment: Ping Yee, who got bounced because someone insisted that his only
Real Name (TM) was Ka-Ping Yee --- which is what it says on his birth
certificate, but which no one (even family) uses much.

<http://zestyping.livejournal.com/259131.html>

What makes this one particularly odd is that Ping is a Google employee (or at
least, he was at the time).

I suspect Anglosphere-born Chinese who go by "Alexa Chung", or whatever,
aren't getting this level of systematic grief, but that only makes things more
ridiculous: why should the acceptability of a name depend on where someone
lives?

~~~
kragen
To be totally nitpicky, while Canada is in America, a lot of people might
think that by "American-born Chinese" you mean "US-born Chinese", but Ping was
born in Canada.

------
kb101
Wow, what a blast of fresh air, reading this. I miss the old Internet, when
Aunt Sally still couldn't figure it out and certainly would be horrified to
find her birthday party photos posted on it, much less would she even conceive
of going and posting them herself _under her real name_.

Why does online marketing have to be built around maintenance of a database of
people's Real Identities® ? If it's a page full of comments about guitars,
stick a Stratocaster ad on it and be done. The Internet was supposed to be
about freedom and personal expression. I used to scoff at things like Second
Life and people on BBSes with ridiculously fake avatars, but now we have the
horrors of everyday life invading and taking over the "virtual" space, which
is less and less virtual every day. Even the visual and auditory carnage of
MySpace was preferable to the cookie-cutter sameness of Facebook, helpfully
tracking your every single move before you even think to make it, and
broadcasting the mundane minutiae of everyday existence to all your "friends".

I used to love Google when it first came out, it beat the pants off Alta Vista
and it was a fantastic way to extract cool links from the vastness of the
'net. Now people log on to +1 each other on all the right topics and say all
the right things and fit themselves into all the right pigeonholes. What if
you want to go online not to maintain your identity as it is now, but to
explore new ones? What if you need more than one identity? What if the whole
notion of "identity" is something you find burdensome and ultimately
repugnant? Well then, there must be something wrong with you and you must have
something ghastly and awful to hide.

So yeah, fuck those guys.

~~~
Tobu
Unfortunately they are going against the famously unethical and privacy-
eroding facebook, which has a real-names policy and the bans to show for it
(also, NSA alumni on the board). And besides “the competitor already does it”,
here is what Google's reasoning may be:

Requiring your real name makes it easier for people you know in real life to
find you.

Interactions with people who know you in real life will keep pulling you back
in, because these people are harder for you to ignore.

Once you give your real name and the rest of your identity (they have been
badgering for phone numbers for a while, to keep your youtube account, or open
a google account, or to avoid annoying security/recovery notices when logging
to gmail), you won't be asking yourself “should I be sharing this” questions,
because you'll be in the habit of trusting them. Other features, like
payments, deliveries and phone notifications, won't have to nag you for
explicit personal info anymore.

So I think they will offer temporary or per-circle identities at most, while
people who want privacy from Google or the US and affiliates will have to fake
it while it remains possible, or be shown the door.

~~~
kb101
For what the future holds, we need look no further than the über-Netizens of
the world, the South Koreans. If you want to get on Cyworld (30% of the
population, 90% of the 20somethings according to Crunchbase), you send in a
copy of your national ID card, your home address, phone, etc. and wait to be
approved for an account, after which you may post on the site.

I still think there is a hugely underserved market in the social space,
comprised of people like me, who don't want an extension of their real life
identity to follow them around online. Hacker News is full of people I don't
know, but interactions with all these people I don't know are plenty effective
at pulling me back into the site.

------
luckydude
I was the 4th guy at Google and back then they were not evil (duh).

I left to do my own thing but I email Larry and Sergey from time to time and
so far they have been pretty cool about listening to me (they have a 747 or
whatever it is, I have a Dodge Sprinter, sort of establishes the pecking
order, I'm way way down on the list, so the fact that they sometimes listen is
cool)

I think that Google wants to not be evil but the whole money thing kinda
messes that up.

I also think that they listen. If you want Google to not be evil, it's a lot
like wanting our government to not be evil. If you sit back and complain when
they get evil, oh, well, that's what you might expect. If you apply pressure
that says "hey! don't be evil, we liked that part!" you might be pleasantly
surprised.

It's passive or not. If you are passive and unhappy with the results, try
being more noisy, I think there are a lot of people that want to do the right
thing but if the only noise they hear is from money people who want more
money, well, they take care of those people. Make some noise.

~~~
andrewljohnson
4th guy at Google eh? I'd love to see an Ask-Me-Anything post!

~~~
luckydude
I doubt you'd be that excited about the reality of that post. I was only there
a month before I moved on to do my own thing. It was a fun (and profitable for
me) month, but there isn't a lot of light I can shed on the workings of google
from such a short stay.

------
jdietrich
Hypothesis: Google data indicates that pseudonymous users make a net-negative
contribution to the quality of an online community (c.f. The WELL). They want
a real name not for any commercial reason, but to hold users accountable for
their behaviour. Google's real names policy for G+ isn't part of some complex
conspiracy, but in fact standard Google practice - following the data, even
when the data contradicts what users say they want.

Is it evil to put the interests of the entire network above the interests of a
small minority? If you can say for sure, you're either an ideologue or you've
solved the most fundamental problem of politics.

Personally, I think there's room on the spectrum for a variety of standards of
identity. At one end there's 4chan, at the other carefully-vetted private
communities. In the middle you've got sites that require a "real" e-mail
address, or Something Awful charging $10 to join. Google's real names policy
is distinctly flawed in execution, I think largely as a result of scale, but I
don't think it's a fundamentally bad idea and certainly not categorically
evil.

~~~
ethank
I think the biggest problem for me is the assumption that there needs to exist
a mapping between First/Last name and identity. Its the abutment of two
constructs made arbitrary by the media (names and physical self), with the
assumption that what emerges is more "real" and thus more consequential to the
agent driving it.

It's complete bullshit and flies in the face of history, not just what is
"right."

~~~
vidarh
To take an example from "history". Ask a random person on the street who Ioseb
Besarionis dze Jughashvili, and most of them will be completely clueless. Ask
them who Stalin was, and they'll at least have a rough idea...

~~~
nooneelse
Totally off topic, maybe. Examples like yours are used, I've noticed, a great
deal in the history lessons of James Burke
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Burke_%28science_historia...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Burke_%28science_historian%29)).
He regularly describes what someone did, using an uncommonly-known name. Then
uses the name everyone knows as a fun little reveal at the end of section.

Why not totally off-topic... Well, he also seems to use it so that he can
focus on the person's actions in the descriptive context of the person's
time/inventions which he has been using up to that point. See, if he brought
in the well-known name early, then he well effectively be changing the subject
from what he was talking about to what people know about the famous person.
And that harms his attempt to show a new angle on the well-known person. This
is Somewhat similar to a pseudonym allowing an position/argument to float free
from the particular individual stating it, and thus be judged on its own
merits.

------
TomOfTTB
I think he's missing a distinction here.

There's people's right not to have their name associated with stuff in public.
Either because they've established a pseudonym they want to be associated with
or they want to speak freely without risking harm to their career, family,
etc... That's what I consider pseudonymity and that might take a while to
implement.

Then there's straight up privacy. That's what he's talking about. The right
for you not to be forced to share your name with Google when using a Google
sponsored service.

I can understand why a person would be concerned with both but I consider both
to be different things

~~~
blahedo
> _That's what I consider pseudonymity_

But that's not what pretty much everyone pushing pseudonymity in this fight
considers pseudonymity, so your distinction is not very helpful.

~~~
TomOfTTB
Was there a vote I was unaware of?

(Sorry, the unflinching confidence in your statement made the snarkyness
irresistible to me)

I realize there's a spectrum to every debate and it's sometimes hard to know
where the fringe is. But I have to assume most people realize Google has the
right to know who they are providing a service to.

Again, I see the distinction here between Google knowing your name (which I
think they have the right to do) and Google using your name to build a whole
database on you (which I don't support). But these are all privacy issues.

Pseudonymity is about how you present yourself to the community at large and
to the best of my knowledge it always has been. For example, Samuel Clemens
published under Mark Twain but his publisher paid Samuel Clemens.

~~~
pessimizer
Are you sure that the publisher paid Samuel Clemens, or are you just assuming
that? Things like that are often directed through lawyers in order to maintain
the pseudonym. Writers often take pseudonyms seriously, one reason being
because what you write could have consequences in your real life.

------
joshma
I'm sick of these posts. What I got out of the article was "I think I know how
Google should design its product, and thus I deem decisions not in agreement
to be total bullshit."

Personally, I prefer to respect the work they've put into the product and to
accept that they may have insights deeper than mine. It's evident from
Google's announcement that they see more complex issues around pseudonyms, and
I will form an opinion after I see their changes. I do not understand this
attitude of "Fuck those guys" - so much anger over a social network!

~~~
rhizome
Why do you think they're hiding these "deeper insights," do they think we're
too stupid to understand?

~~~
tedunangst
Hiding one's deeper insights into a market's dynamics is frequently a
competitive advantage.

~~~
rhizome
If these Google insights into the undesirability of anonymity are so hidden,
can they even be said to exist? As the poster asserts?

~~~
tedunangst
Asking if a hidden insight can exist is a peculiar phrasing, but anyway, one
example I can think of is some study that demonstrated people using their real
names were 50% more likely to remain active users two years after
registration. Or "abuse", however defined, was reduced by 40%. Whatever. The
point is that if Google keeps such knowledge secret, other networks that allow
anonymous users will be at a competitive disadvantage.

I have no idea what such effects may be, I only allow for the possibility they
exist.

~~~
rhizome
Seems like pretty thin reasoning to hang the (great-) grandparent's assertion.

------
natrius
Solution: Don't use Google+ to speak out against your authoritarian
government. "Fuck those guys" is a pretty strong response to people who've
decided their product isn't for you.

~~~
jxi
I agree. Also, why is this kind of post even on the front page? There was just
a short speculative paragraph ended by an expletive.

Google releases one product you don't like and people are "deserting" all
their products. How childish can you get?

------
joebadmo
_I'll bet they still require you to register with your "real" name, but then
they'll graciously allow you to have a linked nickname or two,_

I agree, and I think this is probably the right thing for them to do. (Well,
probably stop kicking people off, too.) And I think they're probably doing
this in an attempt to allow people to better represent themselves in the ways
that they choose, and more in line with how they can offline. I just wrote
this today: [http://blog.byjoemoon.com/post/11670022371/intimacy-is-
perfo...](http://blog.byjoemoon.com/post/11670022371/intimacy-is-performance)

 _meaning they're still fully prepared to roll over on you to authoritarian
governments or advertisers at the drop of a hat._

I'm not sure what the suggestion is here. They should be prepared to flout the
law? Or just not gather any of the information in the first place? What
purpose would this have for them, in that case?

Seems fairly obvious that anyone who's really worried about authoritarian
governments or advertisers shouldn't be using google products.

~~~
blahedo
> > _meaning they're still fully prepared to roll over on you_

> _I'm not sure what the suggestion is here. They should be prepared to flout
> the law?_

Why would you draw that inference? JWZ seems to be presuming the opposite,
i.e. that Google plans to comply with the law---and since they will have
carefully collected legal names to go with every account, they can be
maximally helpful to the authoritarian governments who want to track users
down.

> _Or just not gather any of the information in the first place?_

This one. Or at least, if not "any of the information", maybe not gather _all_
of the information. Permit users to associate their account with their
established pseudonym and provide exactly as many RL details as they feel
comfortable providing.

~~~
fpgeek
The idea that Google having your Real Name via Google+ helps them be helpful
to governments (authoritarian or otherwise) is... odd.

If a government wants to tie a Google account to a Real Name, they have plenty
of options:

\- get a history of IP addresses that accessed the account and contact the
relevant ISPs

\- track other Google accounts logged into from a similar pattern of IP
addresses and see if there's a Real Name for any of them

\- look at the content associated with the account (e.g. email), which may
reveal the Real Name and/or give pointers to other services (e.g. Paypal) that
might well have it

\- if you use an Android phone with the Google account in question, Google can
tie the account to a SIM and an IMEI. If the SIM is postpaid (or even prepaid
in many countries), that will directly lead to a Real Name (note:
authoritarian governments are very likely to require all SIMs be associated
with a Real Name). Even if a prepaid SIM isn't directly associated with a Real
Name, there still could be a payment trail for the SIM and/or top-ups ...

\- probably other angles I haven't thought of yet

These are additional steps, but many of them are easy because they involve
actors (e.g. ISPs, carriers, credit card processors) that are known for
cooperating with governments (and sometimes even private actors like the MPAA
& RIAA). Beyond that, anyone trying to tie a Google account to a Real Name is
likely to do some or all of these things anyway to check whether or not you
lied to Google.

Giving Google your Real Name for Google+ affects whether or not they can use
it. If you're not happy with how Google is going to use your Real Name,
Google+ isn't for you (and probably wasn't even without the pseudonym issue,
since you have concerns about Google's business practices). Giving your Real
Name to Google for Google+ doesn't meaningfully change whether or not a
government (or other entity in a position to legally compel Google) can tie
your Google account to a Real Name.

~~~
epistasis
All of those methods are very easily avoidable by somebody who wants to remain
anonymous. And Google complying with a subpeona or National Security Letter is
certainly not odd, and should be expected since Google is law-abiding.

If you have not heard of National Security Letters,

>between 2003 and 2005 the FBI issued more than 140,000 specific demands under
this provision -- demands issued without a showing of probable cause or prior
judicial approval -- to obtain potentially sensitive information about U.S.
citizens and residents.

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2007/03...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2007/03/22/AR2007032201882.html)

------
tlrobinson
While I don't know what their plans are, I think it's reasonable to require
you declare whether your the name you use is your real name or a pseudonym,
which is a non trivial change.

------
loopdoend
If Google still requires you to use your real name to register but allows you
to show only a pseudonym, the problem ceases to exist because there is no one
able to rat you out.

That is, unless they write an algorithm that checks for "Dear realname" in
your emails and compares it to your purported name & pseudonym. Yuck.

~~~
mladenkovacevic
the point is that Google is still able to rat you out (on a warrant or a
subpoena)

If you wanted to use the platform to protest against the government, or if you
fucked the head of CIA's wife and he found out your g-mail address on her
phone, you might be in deep shit.

------
methodin
Great. Another opinionated post with no substance that reaches number one.
What is this garbage? It's not like this person even has any first-hand
knowledge of anything with regards to the cited excerpt. Why would anyone
upvote such a short, speculative rant?

~~~
msbarnett
Because:

1) The short, speculative rant is well-reasoned. If you disagree with his
reasoning that Google saying it will take "months" to implement pseudonyms
implies that their solution is significantly more complicated than simply
"stop deleting accounts with names we don't like", it would be conducive to
discussion if you explained _your_ reasoning.

2) This short, speculative, well-reasoned rant is written by JWZ, whose
insight and wisdom is held in wide regard by many, many people. He's earned
the right to have his speculations taken seriously many, many times over.

~~~
rryan
I'm afraid I'm spitting into the wind here, but..

Let's say there is a right way and a wrong way to do pseudonyms (empirical
evidence: YouTube, HN).

You think Google would haphazardly enable them as JWZ proposes without making
damn sure they had the best chances of it turning out the right way rather
than the wrong way?

Larry Page thinks without Google+, Google is doomed in 10 years (I believe he
said that in an interview recently). I think JWZ is vastly oversimplifying the
careful testing that Vic and co. are putting into this. If you believed the
company's livelihood depended on it, wouldn't you?

~~~
buff-a
Lets say that in a system where you go to this huge effort to develop and then
advertise a self-selection system (circles) that there is no wrong way to do
pseudonyms.

 _Larry Page thinks without Google+, Google is doomed in 10 years_

I'm a google fan boy. I use apps, gmail, gae. Today I deleted my google+
account. So if Page thinks that without Google+, Google is doomed, why (to
paraphrase Vilos Cohaagen) is he fucking making it happen?

------
buff-a
Yeah, I killed my Google+ account today.

------
kbanman
How did this post get so popular? Google isn't doing any of this behind your
back. If you don't want to share your identity with Google, don't use their
services. Simple as that.

It is no secret that Google is a corporation. The only thing that matters to a
corporation is to make money. Google doesn't spend millions on improving their
search engine and developing a fantastic social networking service because of
some altruistic motive. Don't be so naive as to expect companies like Google
and Facebook to adhere to your idealistic views of privacy and anonymity if
that means a reduction in profit.

Direct your energy to keeping the internet free. As long as we have that, we
can represent ourselves however we like by being able to choose which services
we use.

~~~
DanBC
but what about people who do want to share their real identity with Google but
who are banned from google?

------
Tyrannosaurs
I'm shocked that they haven't come down on William James Adams, who seems to
have managed to set up a profile under the name "will.i.am".

<https://plus.google.com/109351399938437494273/posts>

------
nirvana
I've been using Google pretty regularly for the past 11 years, and have had a
gmail account since soon after it was announced. However with the release of
Plus and the revelation of their policies on "real names", I've come to
realize that I no longer trust google.

Gmail accounts can be effectively anonymous. Yet plus accounts cannot be?

Google does not need anyone's real name in order to track and advertise to
them. I'm fine with google tracking and advertising to me. Assign me some
arbitrary UID and give me a 20 year cookie you refresh whenever I load a page
with adwords or visit plus or login to gmail. I've been fine with that, all
along.

But requiring a real name, tells me that google doesn't just want to track me
to advertise to me. They want to correlate my online activities with my
offline identity.

I consider that a violation of my privacy.

And so, I'm removing myself from google. I'm setting up mail services
elsewhere, I'm migrating my Google Apps and App Engine accounts to other
services. I've stopped using Plus, and as I move things elsewhere I'm deleting
them from google.

For me, they've gone too far, and I no longer trust them.

Hell, even their search results have been in steep decline lately, so
DuckDuckGo, here I come!

PS-- I agree with jwz. The only reason that it would take months to implement
is because they're using some authoritative method - maybe ISP customer info,
or government supplied info- to correlate users to reveal real identity. I
don't see this recent change as google actually relenting on the issue.

~~~
thwest
What are the best alternatives for email?

~~~
kb101
Don't know about best, but www.fastmail.fm/help/overview_features.html is
pretty cool. It is what it says, fast. No graphics, clean web interface, runs
quick on anything, including crappy old hardware or phones. Opera recently
bought them so if you run Opera on your phone it is especially nice. Very
reliable, hardly ever down and on the rare occasions it goes down it's usually
back up within minutes. You can hook up pretty much any client you like, of
course. And they don't read your mail to serve you ads.

~~~
mikescar
I recently converted to Fastmail. $20/year for spam protection and a 1GB
inbox. For my personal mail on my Android phone it's gold.

They have a lot of nice features for configurability too.

------
ThaddeusQuay2
One of the commenters on that article says: "The idea that anyone should ever
need to show ID to use a social network is so fucked up that I find it
astonishing that it is a point of discussion." Not really. I recall, in 199x,
that a BBS required me to physically mail a copy of my driver's license, along
with my payment, before they would give me access. It wasn't an "adult" BBS. I
think that the requirement was that I was at least 18, just so that they
wouldn't get into trouble over anything that might happen with regard to age
minimums. Rather than the exception, the idea of showing ID, to use a social
network, used to be considered a normal part of doing business.

------
omnibot
Does anyone else find it silly that Jamie Zawinski uses his real name on
Facebook?

~~~
omnibot
lol, great responses.

