

Eric Schmidt: If you can’t use your real name, don’t use Google+ - pier0
http://boingboing.net/2011/08/27/eric-schmidt-if-you-cant-use-your-real-name-dont-use-google.html

======
timsally
Schmidt gets lambasted by the media every time he says something pragmatic
about Google's services. I respect him for sticking to his guns. Here is a
quote from Schmidt about Google Search that he got crucified for two years
ago:

 _Judgement matters... If you have something that you don't want anyone to
know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place... If you really need
that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines - including Google -
do retain this information for some time and it's important, for example, that
we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act and it is possible
that all that information could be made available to the authorities._

What he said two years ago about Google Search, and what he is trying to say
now about Google+, is that these services are not for those with high security
and privacy needs. And he's right; they aren't. As a US company, Google must
conform to US law. This means Google must store certain information and under
various circumstances provide the police and the government with said
information. You really think Google+ allowing you to use a pseudonym would
then make it ok for use by those with strong anonymity requirements?
Absolutely not.

EDIT: Please see jrockway's comment for a correction. Google is not legally
required in the US to store information; still, they are in the EU. In any
case, they are legally required to provide information they _do_ have in many
situations. Google chooses to retain some information in order to produce a
more competitive product. This is how Google chooses to do business and it
would be silly for those with strong anonymity requirements to use Google's
services.

~~~
jrockway
What information does the US government require Google to store?

Google stores information because they think it's a useful service. That is,
of course, subject to search by the government. But it is possible to make a
search engine that didn't store anything; there is no law that requires
maintaining HTTP access logs or anything like that.

~~~
timsally
Ah, thanks for the correction. I've made a note at the end of my original
comment. Either way, storing some data is how Google chooses to do business.
Whether legally required or not, this fact should give pause to those who need
anonymity and are considering using Google's services. Google isn't trying to
capture the segment of the market that requires strong privacy and anonymity.
That's all Schmidt is saying.

------
llambda
Eric Schmidt has a way with words. And that way has made Google consistently
more and more off-putting from my perspective. The message seems clear: we
don't think you should have privacy. Disagree? No problem. Go somewhere else.
But that's a problem if there is nowhere else to go... True, I don't have to
use Google. But Google might offer the best search solution or the best social
network. I guess I'm just out of luck in that case. ;\

~~~
lallysingh
That wasn't the message I read from that.

It was that they can't provide you with real privacy (against, say,
governments), so they're not going to pretend like they do. If you want real
privacy, this isn't the social network for you (and personally, I don't think
there is one, but there's likely a market for it -- a tor-esque anonymizing
social network would be pretty awesome).

On top of that, that it's useful to know that everyone on G+ has passed some
minimum bar that they're who they say they are. A low minimum, but a minimum.

For the first part, there are some distinctions ignored, specifically
pseudonyms. I suspect the answer is "we don't really care about pseudonyms."
For the second, I can see it making sense the same way a financial exchange
does. You know there are crooks and ways to cheat, but you also know that even
the low degree of securities law enforcement is substantial enough to make
your transactions pretty safe.

~~~
icebraining
_> On top of that, that it's useful to know that everyone on G+ has passed
some minimum bar that they're who they say they are. A low minimum, but a
minimum._

Yes, because that's clearly working well:

<https://plus.google.com/111162891247384008048/posts>
<https://plus.google.com/118274397320135769169/posts>
<https://plus.google.com/104634693509905640224/posts>
<https://plus.google.com/106516586759796563790/posts>

------
michaelpinto
Google needs to stop allowing Eric Schmidt to speak for the company in any
public capacity: It's just bad for the company and the shareholders because
he's always off message and the worst guy to deliver any news. Yesterday I was
reading how he was dissing the English education system and today it's this. I
really wish that Larry Page would learn a lesson from Steve Jobs and step
front and center in terms of Google getting the word out there: There's just
too much at stake right now.

------
haberman
I can see both sides of the "real name" argument, but one thing I don't
understand is why Google is getting so much flak about this when Facebook has
basically the same policy AFAICT. Are Google's rules stricter somehow?

~~~
vaksel
Facebook is just facebook

Google+ is that and all other services

~~~
yanw
No it isn't: [http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20096313-264/what-
happens-...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20096313-264/what-happens-when-
google-cuts-you-off/)

~~~
anon1385
That article debunks the claims you were making on this site last week about
other services not being affected at all.

 _Google: If your profile is under review, you will not be able to make full
use of Google services that require an active profile such as Google+, Buzz,
and some social features of Reader and Picasa Web Albums. For example, on
Buzz, you can't create content, on Reader you can't share items with other
users or follow other users, and on Picasa Web Albums you can't comment on
photos._

Compared with: _"That is just a vicious rumor. They explicitly said the no
other service of theirs will be affected."_
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2907098>

_"Other services aren't affected. Period."_
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2907104>

Having core features of other services disabled is clearly an affect on those
services. So, my question to you is: when did they "explicitly" say no other
services were affected? And if they never did, why did you claim they did?

------
toddh
Imagine if newspapers in the time of the American revolution rejected all
articles and letters without real names? There would be no revolution as it
was largely argued and coordinated through the press. Even the Federalist
Papers was written pseudonymously. What Google is saying is nothing of import
should happen on G+.

~~~
hermannj314
I don't see how your conclusion follows: lots of important things happen
without anonymity. Most civils rights leaders demonstrated openly and without
the veil of anonymity. I'm not saying anonymity is never important, I'm just
saying it isn't necessary as a condition of importance.

And a site requiring real names for account can still be used to communicate
ideas anonymously. Similar to how money laundering works in US banks (which
must be tied to a real name! OMG! How will anyone ever be able to use cash!).
So on G+ you can have thought laundering!

Anyway, I just don't get why everyone is so anti-Google. Providing a service
that requires someone to use their real name doesn't hurt anonymity anymore
than putting a hamburger on the menu hurts vegetarians.

------
pnathan
What, exactly, is the moral issue associated with letting the vast majority of
nicks though?

I can understand banning obscenities for usernames; I can understand banning
fraudsters.

But if I show up as LispNerd3K on G+ and only G+... who gives a rip? I mean,
seriously.

I was going to put some serious effort into G+, kinda use it as a mini-
blogging platform, but I don't really care for the anti-hacker mindset that
appears to be driving policy there.

~~~
jsnell
Why does it need to be a moral issue? It should be easy to believe that people
will behave differently in an environment with "real" looking names than in
one with arbitrary gibberish pseudonyms. They then simply need to believe that
on aggregate a social network with the former environment will be more
successful than one with the latter.

As for who cares, at least I do. I can't think of anyone whom I care about
enough to follow on G+, but only know by a username or nick of some kind. In
all but a handful of cases the real name is the primary identifier I have for
those persons, the nick is just some added metadata. I find e.g. Twitter's
handling of names to be rather repulsive, and it's probably one minor reason
for why I repeatedly bounced off that platform.

Admittedly I'm nowhere near as passionate about this as people ranting about
how evil the Google+ name policy is, and how as a result they're going to
delete their Gmail account, switch to Bing, and block Googlebot. So maybe it
would have been more pragmatic to give into those people and turn Google+ into
a free for all wasteland. Depends totally on what the ratio of people who
strongly hate the policy is compared to the people who mildly like it.

(How is this supposed to be an anti-hacker mindset anyway?)

~~~
pnathan
There are different angles of thought regarding real names; moral/ethical,
advertising, identity service/trust, and likely others that I haven't decoded
yet.

I specifically said _moral_ , because I want to consider the matter in
isolation from the advertising and trust service question. It is
unquestionable that different angles on the problem will result in different
analysis with different final results. Most discussions don't clearly set out
what they are talking about, and conflate the different issues and angles.

------
SoftwareMaven
_the internet would be better if we knew you were a real person rather than a
dog or a fake person. Some people are just evil and we should be able to ID
them and rank them downward._

This is a ridiculous argument. How often have you wondered, "Is this person
I'm talking to really a dog?" Of course it's a real person, even if he goes by
a stupid name like me.

If Google is really trying to build an identity service rather than a social
network, they need to come up with better arguments than this as to why that's
a good idea.

~~~
w01fe
It's probably a reference to this famous comic:

<http://bit.ly/jb485V> (Wikipedia, shortened because HN breaks the real URL by
stripping out the apostrophe).

~~~
SoftwareMaven
Oh, yeah, I bet you are right. Thanks for the reminder. I had forgotten about
that one.

------
Kilimanjaro
Time is ripe for an anonymous social platform worth billions of dollars. One
with email, chat, voice, video, pics, blogs, circles, groups, followers and
games. Preferable from the open source community. Two names come to mind as
possible candidates for developing such worldwide platforms: Canonical and
Mozilla.

I'd slit my wrists to have a name@firefox.com email.

------
Tharkun
I call bullshit. The only reason why Google has an interest in verifying your
identity is advertising money. They don't care about these allegedly "evil"
people out there, nor do they really care about talking dogs.

"Don't use Google+" is the only sensible thing I see here.

~~~
patrickaljord
Don't use Facebook either then.

------
buff-a
Given the number of different ways that this policy can be used for "evil",
Google's motto is beginning to sound religious and righteous rather than
moral. That is, the decision is not justifiable. Its just dogma. Rather like a
Christian Crusader saying "Don't be Evil" just before murdering a town of
Muslims because, after all, if you aren't Christian, then by definition, you
are evil, and eradicating evil is what we do. This is how Schmidt's "sticking
to his guns" comes across to me. When "Good" means "What we think Good is",
then "Don't be Evil" is the epitome of evil.

------
chc
You know, I don't necessarily agree 100% with Schmidt's conclusions, but I
wouldn't mind so much if he were advocating something he sincerely believed.

But the fact that Lawrence Page and Vivek Gundotra are allowed to keep their
pseudonymous "Larry" and "Vic" accounts makes it clear that Schmidt is lying
through his teeth about real names being essential to identity. (I agree that
these nicknames are better choices for the account than their real names — but
that fact runs contrary to Schmidt's position, so either he's unaware of his
CEO's real name or he's being disingenuous.)

------
robyates
This is not really related. But has anyone seen the video of Eric Schmidt
practicing public speaking: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bA1I6MUOKkU> Found
it just yesterday and it's amazing to see how he used to be.

------
joshfraser
I know there are exceptions, but most of the time I find myself wanting to
post something anonymously it's because I'm saying or doing something I
shouldn't. I appreciate Google's stand. All you need to do is look at 4chan to
see what happens when anonymity reigns.

~~~
davedx
Anonymous != pseudonymous. An account with a pseudonym is still accountable
within the limits chosen by its owner. 4chan is completely different.

~~~
joshfraser
I agree. The problem is the line between them is so thin that from a
rules/enforcement perspective they may as well be the same thing. How are they
to tell the difference between a long-used pseudonym and a throw-away account?

------
nhangen
It's their product, why not let them decide what they do and do not allow?

~~~
icebraining
I don't see anyone claiming for a law forcing G+ to accept pseudonymous. They
have all the right to decide. And we have all the right to criticize them for
that decision.

------
jkuria
This is the same guy who said that if you are doing something and you don't
want Google to know about it, then you should probably not be doing it in the
first place! He clearly does not get privacy!

~~~
slig
No, he said that if you're looking to do something that you shouldn't, i.e
something illegal, you shouldn't type that on Google, as they can be sued and
forced to reveal what you searched.

~~~
prodigal_erik
"If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't
be doing it in the first place." Not merely talking about it, but even doing
it at all. That is quite literally what he said, and it's perilously close to
asserting that those who've done nothing wrong have nothing to hide.

------
yanw
To add some context: he was asked by a war reporter (Andy Carvin) about people
living under totalitarian regimes and their correlation with the G+ real name
policy.

So basically the answer is that if you are endangered by reveling your real
name, you shouldn't use it, at least not at this stage which is prudent
advice.

------
davedx
What a wanker.

~~~
mindcrime
Agreed. I've lost a lot of respect for Eric Schmidt since reading this.

That said, all this proves is this: No matter what you think of Google and G+,
vis-a-vis Facebook - or what you think of any other centralized social-network
that's controlled by some central authority - the bottom line is that they all
suffer from the same problem: autocratic, dictatorial control by a cabal of
leaders who aren't accountable to the users.

This whole debate should serve to remind all of us of the importance of
research, development, and standards work around decentralized, federated,
distributed social-networks where the user maintains control of their
information. Whether it's Appleseed, Diaspora, OneSocialWeb or something that
hasn't even come along yet, we need the ability to walk away from the
Facebooks and G+s off the world, while not giving up on this form of
communication.

------
olalonde
I fail to see why people make such a big fuss about Google's real name policy.
If using your real name online puts your life at stake, use a damn fake name.
I'm pretty sure Google won't ask for a scan of your ID card. Edit: Apparently
Google can ask for your ID card (under exceptional circumstances)

~~~
mechanical_fish
_I'm pretty sure Google won't ask for a scan of your ID card._

I'm pretty sure you're wrong, based on the work of Gary Walker:

[http://gewalker.blogspot.com/2011/08/firsthand-
examination-o...](http://gewalker.blogspot.com/2011/08/firsthand-examination-
of-google-profile.html)

as reported by Charlie Stross:

[http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2011/08/why-
im-n...](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2011/08/why-im-not-on-
google-plus.html)

"Send a poison pen email and you can get an account suspended until the owner
verifies their identity by _sending a scan of some ID._ "

~~~
a3_nm
Of course, someone could just forge such an ID scan, which is far easier than
forging the ID itself.

[Things could get harder the day governments start issuing cryptographic IDs
(like, say, a smartcard which Google can query remotely).]

~~~
jrockway
No, it's easy to get a valid "fake" ID. All you need is a birth certificate,
which is a paper document with no authentication features, and a utility bill,
which is a paper document with no authentication features. Government-issued
IDs are as worthless as anything else the government produces. The only value
they have is that you'll have to pay a fine if they catch you with the fake
birth certificate. Which is highly unlikely.

~~~
nitrogen
These days you'll probably need a valid SSN that maps to the name you want to
use as well. Good luck accomplishing that without ripping off someone else's
identity.

~~~
jrockway
You can get a new SSN with the following documents, according to the SSA's
website:

    
    
        Employee ID card;
        School ID card;
        Health insurance card (not a Medicare card);
        U.S. military ID card;
        Adoption decree;
        Life insurance policy; or
        Marriage document (only in name change situations).

------
patrickaljord
I'm personally not a fan of anonymity on the web, most people are using it to
insult others, being racists, bigoted and cowardly telling you things they
wouldn't tell you to your face. If you live under a repressive government or
need to whistle-blow, then sure, post your critics on an anonymous blog or to
wikileaks, but apart from these rare cases, people should take responsibility
for what they say and stop the annoying coward attacks. This is how it works
in real life, when you have a comment or critic to do, you show your face and
who you are before talking.

~~~
prof_hobart
I really don't get this "don't say it online unless you'd be prepared to say
it to their face".

Does this mean that I shouldn't be prepared to express opinions unless I'm
prepared to defend myself physically for holding those opinions?

As I've mentioned elsewhere in this thread, I argue regularly (using a
pseudonym) on one of my local football team's forums against a group of
racists. Those racists are people who I'm pretty certain have used violence in
the past, and I'm pretty certain would be more than happy to use violence in
the future. I'm personally not a violent person, so should I simply keep quiet
and let the voices of those prepared to use violence be the only ones that are
heard?

~~~
patrickaljord
These racists probably wouldn't post their racist coward attacks if they
couldn't post them anonymously. Whether you argue with them using your real
name or not won't change their opinion and won't change the fact that
anonymity allowed them to spew their racists comments in the first place,
you're wasting your time. Oh, and if you know who they are and know they
attack people violently, you should call the police.

~~~
icebraining
_> These racists probably wouldn't post their racist coward attacks if they
couldn't post them anonymously._

You don't get out much, do you?

~~~
patrickaljord
I was born in Paris, France. Lived in Syria for 5 years then I got back to
Paris and now I live in Arequipa, Peru. How about you dear?

~~~
prof_hobart
And you still think that violent racist football fans all hide behind
anonymous names on the internet? How sweet.

~~~
patrickaljord
I've never been to an internet forum dedicated to football fans, it sounds
like the most terrible way to waste time. But if that's your thing, how sweet.

~~~
prof_hobart
Unlike commenting on this forum of course.

And I notice that your lack of knowledge of the subject didn't stop you
commenting on it.

