
Google+ spamming people every 2 weeks to put up a profile photo - pieterhg
http://levels.io/google-plus-spam/
======
nmridul
It is even more irritating with Youtube. If I am logged in to any Google
account it pesters me to select my Real name every time I watch a video. And
every time I end up opening the video in another browser.

~~~
lostlogin
Twitter is far worse. I didn't use it except for maybe two or three times a
year when I want to check something someone has said and (has I have at least
5 times!) tweet someone. When I login briefly I then have several weeks of
crappy emails and badgering from twitter. It is incessant. X just retweeted a
message from Y! I have hit all the don't-email-me-ever buttons, but every damn
time they do it. I just accept it now as don't login ever.

~~~
ronaldx
Twitter respect their own rules but justify sending more e-mails by frequently
changing the rules.

If you opt-out of every e-mail type, they just add more e-mail types and
automatically opt you in - check the settings again.

I find this behaviour somehow more dishonest than the others.

------
bborud
Google seems to have started on a mission to annoy the fuck out of me the past
6 months or so. For instance through the neverending popups and dialogs that
enthusiastically tell me about some feature and require a response from me to
ask them to please fuck off.

Not to talk about the amazingly stupid animations on Google+ that makes it
impossible to scroll fast on an iPhone 4. I was making an effort to use
Google+ more ... and then Google gives me that shit.

Look Googlers, I know that you suffered under the reign of the Cupcake
Princess and were unable to release anything cool because dealing with her was
more painful than watching an entire episode of Sex and the City. I know that.
But that doesn't mean you have to go out of your fucking way to add frivolous,
pointless, wankery to your UIs.

If you want to do something productive: fix the Gmail UI.

~~~
pron
OK, I'm not usually like this -- perhaps this time is just because I didn't
know who the "cupcake princess" is and had to Google it out of curiosity, and
trust me, I think Google is the epitome of the power hungry, sinister,
duplicitous corporation, that makes the robber barons look like no more than
slightly annoyed kindergarten teachers -- but I think you're being sexist.

Anyway, I found this: "Mayer, a long-time Google executive dubbed the “cupcake
princess” after she constructed detailed spreadsheets weighing up the benefits
of various cupcake recipes". Now, compiling cupcake spreadsheets, is, uhhh,
frivolous maybe? But I wouldn't be surprised to learn that male executives at
software companies do the same for beer; or bikes; or Star Wars. I don't think
they get such nicknames.

Anyway, there's an unpleasant bro scent to your comment. If we care about our
freedom and independent agency, the Google corporation must be broken up, and
sooner rather than later. But even the largest heap of banal evil in the known
universe can be dealt with without unnecessary bigotry.

~~~
bborud
The remark was not intended to be sexist. It was intended to reflect that I
don't think Mayer was particularly easy to work with, that her elitist values
were contrary to much of the Google culture.

(That being said: I think she is good CEO material. In fact, when she took
over Yahoo! I bought stock in the company).

If you really can't imagine that it wasn't a sexist remark then I'm sorry for
you: it must be hard to be so easily offended.

~~~
pron
> If you really can't imagine that it wasn't a sexist remark then I'm sorry
> for you: it must be hard to be so easily offended.

You're right. It must be that time of the month...

~~~
bborud
[http://www.boreme.com/posting.php?id=29555](http://www.boreme.com/posting.php?id=29555)

~~~
ceol
Nonpology, followed by linking to a video of a straight, white, male comedian
telling people why being offended at something is stupid?

Please, go back to reddit.

~~~
flaktrak
I take it you were offended?

------
TeeWEE
Product people will think "once every 2 weeks is fine, since we really want to
get profile pictures for everyone". Dev guy implements it. Customer
complaints. Product people review it, and exponential backoff emailing is
implemented.

------
gibbitz
I dropped Google+ for this exact reason. I refuse to support a platform that I
didn't use when the parent company shuts down the platforms I do. My next
phone will likely be Firefox os. I've started using duck duck go. Funny how
this obvious information gathering and shameless promotion of what they're
clearly no good at has ccompletely soured me to their brand.

~~~
teaneedz
I wonder if this trend will increase. Moving from Chrome to Firefox and Google
to DuckDuckGo for me was first about a bad taste left by a brand. That led me
to alternatives that are more user focused and actually listening to users. I
think Google kind of lost its way. I doubt if a majority of users though even
care or value the issues which cause some of us to jump ship. The identity
service of G+ was the first straw for me. I'm sure others are accumulating
their own straws. I guess it shows that any company can jump in and fill a
niche offered by bigger players. DDG is getting well deserved publicity. It's
also nice to see Mozilla in the news again. I'm quite happy making the product
switches I have and will put up with any perceived reduction of features for
products that are improving and really listening to their users.

------
ucho
Do you want to use your real name for YouTube:

\- Yes

\- Remind me in a week

How about: don't bug me ever?

~~~
frou_dh
IIRC YouTube has presented me with 3 completely different iterations of that
dialog, all trying to bamboozle me in to G+ing it up.

The latest one was in fact blatantly wrong because the two answer choices
began with "Yes, do ..." and "No, do ...", which didn't make sense because the
question was posed in the opposite way.

~~~
the_rosentotter
"No, I don't want to not link my Google+ account to YouTube"

------
ensmotko
And they keep telling me to update my cover photo (not via email though), but
the new cover photos are so big that most of the users need to scroll down to
see my name. A horrible user experience.

~~~
Subuatai
Why do you think Google has bad so much trouble delivering a product that is
enjoyable to use in Google+? I understand the market saturation from Facebook,
but something about Google+ is off. It should be a much better user
experience.

~~~
Steko
You can't beat an entrenched incumbent with a +1 product (lol). You need a
+100 product.

------
megfitz
It'd also be really nice if, every time I logged in, I wasn't prompted to tell
them if there is "someone special in my life." Really? Is relationship status
that critical?

~~~
rwg
For targeting advertisements? Absolutely.

------
spindritf
I know that those notifications are annoying, especially when they get mixed
up with important e-mail and send you scrambling for your phone, however...

How 'bout you just set a profile photo? It doesn't need to be your face,
doesn't even need to be photo. Actually, a distinct avatar would probably work
better than a photo.

But put something there. It's tiresome to try to follow a conversation without
an easy way to distinguish participants.

So fire up GIMP, put your initials over your favourite shade of pink and
upload it to Twitter/Google+/GitHub/Gravatar/whatever. Or pick a picture from
Flickr with a permissive license.

Don't punish others with a generic icon.

/PSA

~~~
pieterhg
"favourite shade of pink"

Completely unnecessary ad hominem here.

~~~
frou_dh
Haha. HN is truly the home of dubious calls of "ad hominem".

(Really. Use HNSærch to take a look)

~~~
pieterhg
Haha, you mean I used "ad hominem" in the wrong way?

~~~
frou_dh
I'd be more concerned about the clear attempt to discredit you by implying
that you'd configure your phone to buzz when an email comes in.

------
jacques_chester
I uploaded a white square.

~~~
hannibal5
I took the default profile picture and uploaded it.

------
lazyjones
Social networks suck like that - FB still sends me spammy e-mails about
invitations and "people from ... you might know" even though I've turned off
all mail notifications.

It's a good indication that you are serving their purpose and not the other
way round, though.

~~~
prawn
Signed up for FB with a fake account to do a client job. No friends or
anything. Every couple of days, they send an email with random people I might
know. Never heard of any of them. Got sick of it, so I signed in to cancel the
notifications I'd missed. They sent me a "welcome back" notification because
I'd signed in. Deleted the account.

~~~
lazyjones
I'm in a similar situation - 0 friends because I just follow some NGOs and use
the API to provide FB login for some pages. I get notifications almost every
day and the "unsubscribe" link leads to a page that lets me opt out of the
notification type: "Updates about your friends since you logged in", while my
notification settings show that I get no Email notifications at all.

So that's the price I pay for allowing FB login on some of our pages.

------
m_ram
Every social network opts you in to a long list of email subscriptions. You
have to uncheck a bunch of boxes in the settings if you don't want them.

G+:
[https://www.google.com/settings/plus](https://www.google.com/settings/plus)

Twitter:
[https://twitter.com/settings/notifications](https://twitter.com/settings/notifications)

Facebook:
[https://www.facebook.com/settings?tab=notifications§ion=thro...](https://www.facebook.com/settings?tab=notifications§ion=through_email&view)

Update: It looks like Facebook switched from a long list of checkboxes to an
all-or-nothing system.

~~~
monsterix
Fun begins when someone signs up on Facebook using a gmail id
'firstlast@gmail.com' and your gmail is 'first.last@gmail.com'.

Facebook doesn't stop sending notifications, and Gmail is blind to the dot ...
:-) It's like two beautiful girls talking to each other and not listening to
any body who is around trying to interrupt their loud gossip.

------
znowi
What if you upload a blank image? Will they recognize it's not a person and
keep bugging you anyway? :)

~~~
puzzlingcaptcha
I did just that as Google kept replacing my youtube profile image with a
random snapshot from a video I once uploaded. A blank white .png did the job.

~~~
ralmeida
I wrote for a music ezine sometimes, and once I interviewed a artist and asked
him to say hello to our readers on camera. Since the ezine had no YouTube
channel back then, and we were in a hurry, I uploaded the video to my own
channel.

YouTube must have thought that, since it was a short (~20sec) video with a
person's face depicted prominently, the person had to be me and updated my
profile image with a snapshot of this video that actually looked like an
intentional profile image. Maybe it was just random, maybe they actually tried
to select a fitting image.

------
andrewhillman
...and youtube is annoying the fuck out of me, asking me to change account to
real name. If you don't they try to trick you with a follow-up question. My
username is my real name. Amazing that the tech powerhouse can't write a
simple script that sees my username matches my real name. Google, cut the BS
and spend your time making search better. Not my fault youtube comments are
out of control and add NO value to your platform.

------
vuldin
Add this to the same list as the 'Install Google Chrome' message the appears
every time I have to go to google.com.

------
zapov
I was in another country recently and Google decided that because I've used
laptop on an airport that two of my accounts must have been hacked.

I have Thunderbird running on another computer and Claws tried to download my
mail while on airport.

So thanks Google, I guess I will have to stop using those accounts, because I
don't like sharing my phone number ;(

------
dannyr
We see a lot of these posts on HN complaining about companies particularly
Google asking you to do some things (register, upload photos, add your name,
etc.)

Have we actually asked ourselves what value are we giving to these companies
in return to using their service?

------
thomaslangston
The article complains that they don't want to upload a profile picture because
it is a business account.

Why wouldn't you upload your company's logo as the profile picture?

~~~
mjs7231
The reason behind not wanting to upload a photo is irrelevant to the main
conversation.

------
csense
Google used to be awesome. Ever since they went public, they've slowly but
surely started sliding down the path to sucking.

They're probably too strong in search to be dislodged right now, and will
probably remain so in the short-to-medium term, but some of their non-core
services are ripe for disruption by startups.

------
drunkenmasta
I wanted to review something using Google and they prompted me to make a
Google + account with my real name etc. I think reviews can be more useful
when there is not the pressure to be overly optimistic about everything,
calling everything "great" for the sake of seeming like a cheery kind of
person

------
kzrdude
You mentioned leaving facebook. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice,
shame on me.

------
pasbesoin
People are already using you, Google. What do you gain by being obnoxious
about it?

------
oakaz
Somebody please create a good Gmail alternative and save us from this shit.

------
nfoz
Which makes them no different than their competitors

which is exactly the problem

------
diminoten
One email every two weeks counts as spam now? Alrighty then.

------
ryanmcbride
RIP in Peace Google.

------
Mitchella
To be honest... just upload any image and move on. If you need help I can
provide detailed instructions about using a "file upload" system.

