
“Real Names” Policies Are an Abuse of Power - harryh
http://socialmediacollective.org/2011/08/04/real-names-policies-are-an-abuse-of-power/
======
tibbon
I didn't quite get the need for anonymity until I was at SXSW and watched
danah's opening talk (<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kl0VANhnvxk>) and talked
to her a bit more about it afterward.

I realized how incredibly privileged and rare my situation is that I can live
my life fairly openly online with little fear of repercussion.

\- As a heterosexual no one questions my sexual orientation online, or will
harass me for it. Photos of me with a significant other won't cause an issue
with anyone.

\- I don't have, nor have I ever had an abusive relationship in which I must
distance myself from someone.

\- I'm fortunate enough to live in a country that (generally) allows me to do
whatever online and I don't need to fear for my life. I am also a native born
citizen here and don't have any immigration issues to deal with.

\- I don't fear for my job because of what I say online (my work situation is
very understanding and isn't nosy). Of course, not everyone works in
technology.

\- I have no children to protect

\- I also feel that I understand the internet rather well and generally have a
feeling for the direct repercussions of something that I do.

These (and many other things) aren't true for everyone. I felt silly for not
realizing it beforehand, partially because danah had hung out at my house at
hackathons and such even, and I just didn't get it until her presentation.

~~~
Alex3917
A lot of these policies really strike me as White Supremacism 2.0. To quote
Wikipedia:

"White supremacy, as with racial supremacism in general, is rooted in
ethnocentrism and a desire for hegemony."

In other words, white supremacism isn't about white people per se. Rather,
it's about promoting one culture as the dominant one while trying to suppress
all other cultures. That's exactly what these policies are doing.

~~~
ender7
Hegemony is very distinct from the white supremacist movement. While white
supremacists probably promote hegemonic practices, this does not mean that
some engineer who didn't take the time to think about people in circumstances
very different from his/her own is a white supremacist. Sadly, dominant
members of a hegemonic culture (read: pretty much every culture) participate
subconsciously to reinforce the hegemony simply by not being aware of it.

I understand that you don't like the Real Name requirement, but pulling out
the Big Gun Labels like this is akin to calling Larry Page the New Hitler.
It's not accurate, and all you're going to do is make people angry.

~~~
Alex3917
So is your argument that the system does not promote cultural hegemony, or
that it is not intended to promote cultural hegemony? Because the latter,
while it may be true, is largely irrelevant. I think it's entirely possible
that you can get forces that promote hegemony as an unintended consequence of
seemingly innocuous design decisions, or else as an emergent phenomenon of
complex systems.

I'm not trying to call Larry Page the new Hitler, rather I'm just pointing out
that there is an existing word for what Danah Boyd and others are describing.

~~~
sliverstorm
ender7 (an ironic name) did not refute the idea that the system promotes
hegemony. His issue appears to be with your conflation of hegemony and white
supremacy.

Your argument is a classic logical fallacy- "white supremacists want hegemony.
We have a hegemony. Ergo, the system is run by white supremacists"

------
CapitalistCartr
The key to it all is this quote: “Real names” policies aren’t empowering;
they’re an authoritarian assertion of power over vulnerable people.

People who, like me, are privileged white Americans can easily afford to use
our real names, although I don't. What Google will get if they keep this
policy is only people who don't care. Blacks, Latinos, rape, abuse, and
stalking victims, people who have something controversial to say, gays, people
in repressive countries won't join. It'll be a nice Stepford village.

~~~
MatthewPhillips
The internet is a big place. There's room for all kinds of social networks.
You don't have to join every one of them.

~~~
darklajid
That's the default answer. While true, technically, it ignores that there are
no viable alternatives right now.

Facebook is worse in every way regarding privacy (although they don't actually
enforce their real name policy as far as I can tell/from the experiences in my
peer group).

Other networks don't exist (see below). Twitter is a different beast. Don't
start with LinkedIn or something or recommend niche products.

A social network, in my world, is a place where you can reach out to a lot of
(like-minded/known/interesting) people. The point for me is that you need to
have the critical mass so that the network works and is interesting in the
first place (I won't find my friends on identi.ca..). But this should allow a
lurking mode. A careful approach, picking friends by contacting them out of
band ("I'm Foobar on G+") should be a fine use case.

I think the major reason to complain about G+ now is, apart from issues with
the name verification process itself, that the offended community is just
disappointed. It could be a good alternative to FB for quite some people,
especially for those that didn't join FB in the first place. And Google failed
to deliver.

Is it their decision? Sure. Is it a right to be a G+ user? Certainly not. Are
there people that are unhappy about this situation and interested to voice
that opinion: Yep.

~~~
MatthewPhillips
We're both using a social community right now, of like minded people. I'm
using my real name, you're not. That's HN's decision and I respect it. In this
case I don't particularly care to know your real name. It doesn't add to or
detract from my interactions with you.

On a site like Google+ or Facebook it's more complicated. I interact with
people I know in real life, and with people I don't. I feel that if
"darklajid" commented on one of my posts there it might negatively influenced
a real life friends' decision to also participate. People who do not interact
with strangers on the internet find it easier to do so when the person they
are interacting with is using their real name. I think this is the right
decision for the target use-case of Google+ and Facebook.

On Google+ you have the right to post to specific people or specific groups of
people. People can, and I would wager actively _are_ , using this feature
right now to protect their privacy. They only thing they cannot protect is
their true identity (they cannot hide their existence entire).

For some that's still too much and I respect that. However these networks
should not cater to every niche need, and indeed there are plenty of
communities out there willing to fill the void.

I'm a fan of comic books but they don't sell them in grocery stores like they
used to. I have to drive a bit out of my way to pick them up (or wait on them
in the mail). I've chosen this niche hobby and accept that I have some slight
inconvenience because of it. That's life.

~~~
darklajid
Let me start with this: This post is (one of) the best contra pseudonyms posts
that I've read. Thank you.

The biggest point for me is your point about people with pseudonyms scaring
away people that you actually care more for, close friends/family. I never
thought of this point, but I do agree that my mum would be more hesitant to
post if l33tGuy and WhooItsMe have a conversation with me.

Your point is, therefor, in my opinion great, but I still don't think that
pseudonyms should be banned:

\- You didn't comment on the inconsistency (LadyAda? Lady Gaga? Ok. darklajid?
No) issue.

\- You are masking the issue that there's no way to verify names anyway (so
far. I hope it'll stay that way). So you're cheating yourself if you hope that
this strategy leads to everyone using his real name

\- I could take your argument further, to dangerous levels, by saying that a
lot of people in my offline social network would probably be uncomfortable
participating in discussions that are in English. Or with people that have
obviously 'foreign' names, the more different the scarier (Asian countries
come to mind, Israeli names could be good as well). My mum wouldn't comment if
WhooItsMe comments on my picture, but she also wouldn't comment if Yuval would
write something..

You cannot protect people from the world around them. You can try to find ways
to cater for everyone, but in my world the solution to your scenario is:

\- Allow people to choose their name

\- Give people a great deal of (simple/intuitive) control about visibility and
privacy. I'll help my mum set it up..

One last note: I'm 'darklajid' here, but I voluntarily give away my real name,
as email address in my profile. That's the _right_ way around for me: I chose
my name, lurked, participated - and _then_ decided to give away that
information here.

------
sp332
I think my favorite, horrible quote on this is from Facebook's marketing
directory, Randi Zuckerberg:

 _...People hide behind anonymity and they feel like they can say whatever
they want_

Well, how dare people say what they want.

~~~
ori_b
Yes, she (edit: fixed gender) phrased it badly. The sentiment I think he was
trying to convey is valid, though -- "People feel like they can create a
hostile environment because they are anonymous".

People seem to think that anonymity is a license to act like an asshole.
That's not conducive to producing a fairly pleasant, troll-free environment.

~~~
darklajid
If you look at a couple of posts there, you'll notice that name calling exists
nevertheless. I challenge you to read the discussion here [1] and check the
name calling and ad hominem attacks from (maybe) people with their real names.

Next problem: Asking for legal looking names doesn't solve the problem of
anonymity. If I am able to change my name to Bob Smith without hitting a
filter (at least for a while) I still can be an asshole without any connection
to my 'real name'. The _only_ thing the policy right now _can_ do is
prohibiting people from using an obvious pseudonym. I cannot be darklajid, but
I can be Bob Smith. Both are not my real names, the former is my handle
~everywhere~ online. One is me, one is crap.

No way around that unless you're going to verify papers/ids, and now feel free
to throw "Papiere bitte" references at me.

So the whole 'we need real names' and 'we hope that this improves our
community' is crap. But the most idiotic thing is to make exceptions. Forget
about the standard samples like 'Lady Gaga' and '50 Cent': We already hat a
couple of threads here about people that used their pseudonym, were suspended
and (by bullying, rounding up the media, having contacts inside of Google) got
an exception.

What? Why? They are allowed to be different, because...? Bottom line: The
current rule is

\- useless

\- arbitrary (I'd like to put this up as 'discriminating', but yeah.. G+ is
not a right, yadda yadda)

Ben, suspended on G+ ;)

1:
[https://plus.google.com/113116318008017777871/posts/VJoZMS8z...](https://plus.google.com/113116318008017777871/posts/VJoZMS8zVqU)

~~~
ori_b
You seem to be making a common mistake. The policy doesn't have to be bullet
proof to work -- it just has to establish cultural norms. If the vast majority
of people act like they're real people, then it has accomplished it's goals.

~~~
darklajid
If we're going down that route:

You're making an assumption without any proof: Pseudonyms lead to bad
behavior.

In my world that's not connected to the names used and is merely a function of
the 'quality' of the people in your community. Also - you don't solve issues
between people with rules about their 'alias', you have to invent/support/hand
out some decent tools to block idiots from your online life.

------
armandososa
First, most the comments say this is a white american (where american means
United States, sigh) policy, but as a tiny brown low-middle-class Mexican I
have no problem going with my real name.

Second, Is Facebook's 'No custom HTML/CSS on profiles' policy is an abuse of
power? How is that having a rule on a social network is an abuse of power? You
don't like FB's boring profiles? use MySpace. You don't like using your real
name? Go hangout on Twitter or 4Chan for that matter.

I can see why some people don;t like using their real names, but calling it an
abuse of power is such a ridiculous overstatement.

~~~
silverbax88
Yes, because the policy works for you, it should therefore work for everyone.

Also, according to you, a policy which prevents compromising a system is
exactly the same as forcing people to divulge information that could cause
them harm.

~~~
walexander
It doesn't matter who the policy works for.

The point is, it's a social network. Owned by Google. Who cares if you don't
like their TOS? Vote with your feet, don't make ridiculous claims like they're
abusing power and oppressing minorities.

~~~
sid0
_Who cares if you don't like their TOS?_

That is an unsatisfying way to look at it. I think a better way to look at it
is "it's public knowledge, therefore the public has the freedom to complain
about it and hope that Google will listen."

~~~
walexander
And that's fine. That's essentially the point I was making.

No one forces you to sign up for Google+. If you complain about the lack of
anonymity and refuse to sign up, maybe Google will budge. It will cost them to
block pseudonyms and I'm sure they'll weigh those costs.

What's ridiculous is acting like this is somehow a breach of human rights.

------
kkowalczyk
I'm kind of surprised that I haven't seen people stating the obvious: on a
practical level Google+ has (and will always have) anonymous accounts.

You can create G+ account under any random, but plausible looking name. You
can be 15 year French old girl and call yourself "George Bush" (there are
already 3 of those on G+). It's not like Google requires valid proof of
identity to sign up.

Do people, including Danah Boyd, do not realize that? Given that in practice
G+ has anonymous accounts, what is the fuss about?

I understand that Google officially won't acknowledge that but the "no
anonymity" is just posturing. They have no practical way and probably no
intention of making sure that people provide the real names.

So the issue here seems to be not about anonymity but about being obvious
about being anonymous and the many justifications given in favor of anonymity
do not carry over.

~~~
benatkin
You're describing Facebook. Google+ has a link for reporting people who are
using fake names. Someone who wasn't using Google+ much could probably slip
through the cracks, but someone using it a lot with a fake name? Good luck.

Edit: as tomkarlo points out, facebook has an option to report fake profiles,
too. Also I found this quote from Facebook's former Director of Marketing,
Randi Zuckerburg, troubling: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2847491>

~~~
VladRussian
>Google+ has a link for reporting people who are using fake names.

That's deep! That's what i call the real power of social. You can always trust
that your neighbor is watching you...

How could a sane supposedly normal person come up with an idea of such a link?
How could a group of such people to implement and release it to the public?
Did they suppress their vomiting reflex? Or may be they just don't have it at
all, like drones.

~~~
mechanical_fish
_How could a sane supposedly normal person come up with an idea of such a
link?_

It's all part of the magical thinking. If you know someone's True Name, you
have the power to require them to be polite. But if it turns out that you
_don't_ have their real True Name, your spells will fizzle!

Geez, the more you think about the "civility" rationale the harder your head
hurts. Let's go back to the simpler explanation: Google wants to require
everyone to use a canonical identifier to make it easier to perform the giant
JOIN across your entire life. Now the rationale of the "report your neighbor"
link becomes clear: People who don't use their True Names are committing the
mortal sin of... (shudder)... _denormalization_. Off with their heads!

~~~
bricestacey
First, there is not a link for reporting people with fake names. At best, you
can report people with "fake profiles" or "impersonation".

------
warmfuzzykitten
It's interesting to me that almost everyone here is using a pseudonym yet
discussion in Hacker News tends to be civil, constructive and informative.

The issue clearly isn't anonymity. Hacker News does several things to weed out
the trolls. First, user names are unique (which causes many to pick out a
pseudonym even if they don't want to), allowing comments to be tracked by
identity. Second, HN uses a reputation score to downgrade habitually
unconstructive commenters. As a result, people who would be rude on slashdot
are more restrained here because the culture doesn't reward name-calling or
opposition without reason.

Facebook achieves the same end by allowing its users to limit what they see
and from whom and not really caring much what they call themselves unless they
offend for another reason. Google has the same mechanism but has chosen to
concentrate on the least important aspect of social networking - the names
people use - forgetting the most important aspects: fostering a culture of
civility and allowing users to control what they see.

------
pbh
Since we are on the topic of names, Bringhurst notes:

"An increasing number of persons and institutions, from e.e. cummings to
WordPerfect, now come to the typographer in search of special treatment. In
earlier days, it was kings and deities whose agents demanded that their names
be written in a larger size or set in a specially ornate typeface; now it is
business firms and mass-market products demanding an extra helping of
capitals, or a proprietary face, and poets pleading, by contrast, to be left
entirely in the vernacular lower case. But type is visible speech, in which
gods and men, saints and sinners, poets and business executives are treated
fundamentally alike. Typographers, in keeping with the virtue of their trade,
honor the stewardship of _texts_ and implicitly oppose private ownership of
_words_."

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Bringhurst>

------
jdietrich
If you aren't happy giving out your real name, you shouldn't be using social
networking.

Anyone with a social graph of any size has already betrayed their identity,
whether they know it or not. When people are sharing large volumes of data
about themselves and their connections to others, they are a correlation
attack waiting to happen. Pseudonymity on the internet is largely a fool's
paradise - either you are fully anonymous, or you are using an identity which
is separated from your own by a brittle and invisible membrane.

You may be filtering out low-level annoyances, but you're also establishing a
false sense of security. If anon chooses to dox you, they'll do it and there's
not a damned thing you can do to stop them. Pseudonymity offers some degree of
protection for people with little to hide, but if for whatever reason you
sincerely believe yourself to be a target, you should act as if your pseudonym
has already been compromised.

~~~
danilocampos
> If you aren't happy giving out your real name, you shouldn't be using social
> networking.

The many dissidents who live in oppressive regimes and use these tools to
coordinate resistance and provide support for like-minded allies will care not
even a little bit about your guidance. The privilege implied by the bias in
your remark is exactly the trouble with these real name policies in the first
place.

Christians in China, gay kids in the Bible belt, women in Saudi Arabia,
they're all entitled to take measured risks to find fellowship in their
struggle. It's not for you or Google or Facebook to tell them what they should
or should not do with their identity on social tools. Assuming the social
platform operators provide reasonable disclosure about the risks, it's up to
these folks to assume those risks and try for anonymity if they want it.

~~~
gaius
Sure it is. On the kit that Company X owns, it gets to set whatever policies
it likes.

I think the word "social" is confusing people. These are not public utilities
like electricity or water.

~~~
danilocampos
> Sure it is. On the kit that Company X owns, it gets to set whatever policies
> it likes.

Not when Company X is bound by the edict "Don't be evil," as is the parent of
the product in question, here.

You have a fundamental right to represent your identity in whatever way is
necessary to protect yourself from harm or harassment. Any company that makes
money from codifying your identity but doesn't recognize that right is run by
assholes.

~~~
gaius
_You have a fundamental right_

That's exactly when I mean. Where is this "fundamental right" in UK, EU, US or
any law? These are not public utilities! Please don't confuse your personal
preferences with "the Constitution".

~~~
gte910h
It's a fundamental right to go by whatever name you want in Common Law
actually. You have to do it fairly consistently for entities to HAVE to
recognize it though, and it does a good fuckup of your credit reports when you
change, and is pretty hard to do pre-18 (and you have to tell lots of entities
when you have a felony record).

So yeah, fundamental right is accurate.

[http://www.washingtonlawhelp.org/documents/1488013400EN.pdf?...](http://www.washingtonlawhelp.org/documents/1488013400EN.pdf?stateabbrev=/wa/)

------
jstraszheim
I simply cannot understand how Google can be so short sighted about this. The
simple questions: _what about an in-the-closet gay teen?_ or _what about a
domestic violence survivor?_ should make their whole stack of cards fall down.

They should have thought these things themselves. In fact, they should have
been so obvious that this conversation would be unimaginable.

I don't get it.

~~~
sp332
Google has been claiming the pseudonyms are a feature that they haven't
implemented yet. It was just easier for them to avoid abuse in this early
stage by enforcing real names. <http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2011/07/google-plus-
pseudonyms.html>

~~~
Spyro7
Quote from the page you linked:

"He also says they are working on ways to handle pseudonyms, but that will be
a while before the team can turn on those features"

I don't understand. Wouldn't the implementation of this "feature" just boil
down to _not deleting or disabling people's accounts when they sign up with a
pseudonym?_

I just don't see why this would take so much effort to do. I really don't see
why implementing this particular feature would take all of the effort and
energy that they seem to be indicating.

~~~
lmkg
(tinfoil hat warning)

Google wants data. That's the main benefit that they get out of having a
social network, is getting access to a new data source with a different _type_
of data than what they currently have. They want your real name so they can
aggregate this data with other data sources, including external ones (think
CRM).

When they say they want to handle pseudonyms, they don't mean letting you put
a pseudonym into your name field. They still want your real name. What they
mean is, the system will require your real name but let you display one (or
more!) pseudonyms. In fact, advanced pseudonym management is probably on their
roadmap. By letting you display different aliases to different users or
circles, Google will be able to associate your various online identities.

~~~
warmfuzzykitten
Google is more sophisticated than that. They've been tracking your identity in
searches for years. They know what you search for, what you read and what you
buy. That's all the identity they need for their ad business. Name? Meh.

------
dan-k
To me this article sounds more like evidence of an unhealthy sense of
entitlement social media users are developing than a good argument against
Google's policy. Not that there's anything wrong with the points the author
makes about anonymity. I doubt anyone who's spent much time dealing with
social media, including the Google+ team, would question the fact that
anonymity provides a valuable service to society in many ways. However, that's
completely irrelevant when it comes to the decision of what a particular
social network (or any other kind of network, for that matter) should adopt as
its identification policy. That's an issue that's about the type of community
the team working on that particular product wants to have. Unless people were
somehow forced to sign up for a specific service, the argument has no legs to
stand on.

All it takes to see the problem with the author's logic is simple principles
of supply and demand. If there is actually a significant demand for anonymity
online that's not being met by the current services, another one will come
along to fill that gap. In that case, the needs of those people are met, and
they have no reason to be mad at Google. Otherwise, there wasn't significant
demand in the first place, which justifies Google's decision not to
accommodate it.

So, really what we see here is nothing more than someone whining because they
are discovering that they have to use Google's service on Google's terms,
rather than their own, which runs contrary to their sense of entitlement. In
fact, they are the ones acting like there's a universal context; it's just
that their universal context is one where they can be anonymous wherever they
want without worrying about the consequences.

~~~
gte910h
I don't care so much about going by gte910h, I care that there aren't
exceptions.

People put your information on social networks without your consent. If you're
a battered ex-wife for instance, you have to participate to make sure your
location isn't being giving way unawares (pictures with you in them with Exif
data, "harmless" photo album tagging, etc).

Additionally, anonymity is important to many people in disliked groups
(homosexuals, political dissidents), but the common law right (and it very
much is a _Right_ to change your name) to go by whatever name you want is very
hard to exercise while under the purvey of your family. Many people are very
much under the purvey of their family while in college.

So while you're of the age to be of formative years in the social networks,
where you make contacts that help the start of your career, you literally have
to piss off the family which is ostensibly offering some support and formally
change your name from a non-European name to a European name if you want the
best success when searching for a job (where it's shown non-european sounding
names who are otherwise identical get fewer callbacks).

------
Ronkdar
Abuse of power? What power? You don't have to use Google+ or Facebook. They're
convenient, sure, but you'll do just fine without them.

They only have as much power over you as you think they do.

~~~
scott_s
There are many things that one does not _have_ to use, but are big parts of
our culture. I think that social networking is becoming such a thing. As such,
I think the "you don't have to use it" argument rings false. It means either
using it in a way that you are not comfortable with, or not using it and being
left out.

~~~
philwelch
I think if the internet has done anything for our society, it's taught us that
we don't all have to live in a huge monoculture where everyone watches the
same three TV networks.

~~~
scott_s
And if it works for television, it works for social networks? I find that
unconvincing. There probably will be niche social networks, but I suspect most
people will belong to at least one of the big ones.

~~~
philwelch
Well, I know a fair number of people who don't use Facebook, for whatever
that's worth.

------
tzs
On the one hand, using your real identity online opens you up to abuse,
danger, and invasion of privacy. On the other hand, anonymity brings out the
scumbag side of way too many people.

I'd like to see "semi-real" identities. What I mean by that is that they could
be mostly anonymous, but it would take some work to create them, and it should
get harder to create them the more you have created.

The idea is that you can have an online presence separate from your real
identity, which you can use for forums, games, social networks that go beyond
your actual friends, and such. However, because you can't just trivially
abandon a semi-real identity for a new one there would be some incentive to
treat it with care similar to that you would use with your real identity. You
wouldn't want to be an ass online and get your semi-real identity widely
banned.

~~~
zmmmmm
You're basically describing Hacker News, Reddit, even Slashdot - any system
with a concept of karma and established identity over time. It is hardly a new
idea, and certainly not the rocket science that everyone is pretending it is.

~~~
icebraining
In any of them it's extremely easy to create fake accounts and troll, while
keeping your main account safe. I don't see how they've solved the problem at
all.

Not to mention that a social network like G+, where people have personal
profiles and posts, attacks can be much more personal.

------
gojomo
Pseudonymity is important, but cheap disposable identities lead to lots of
community-destroying mischief.

What's the best practice for enabling pseudonyms but curtailing throwaway
spam/harassment/sockpuppet account-creation?

For my next project I'm considering offering two registration options:

(1) Use Facebook, which is close enough to 'real names' for most purposes –
while still having some room, as Boyd notes, for many users of persistent
pseudonyms.

(2) Buy a pseudonym with a nonrefundable Bitcoin payment. If you're serious
about pseudonymity, why not go all the way? This is a variant on the
'Metafilter $5 one-time fee' model, but as Matt Haughey has noted that still
occasionally suffers from chargebacks by dedicated vandals. Bitcoin solves
that.

Any thoughts?

~~~
icebraining
Having to buy Bitcoins just for registering seems cumbersome. Why not use the
services of one of the payment-by-sms providers?

~~~
gojomo
That's an interesting idea, but I'm not familiar with its mechanics/limits.
Who would be a representative provider?

Now, for this goal, cumbersome and/or irreversible is somewhat the point, to
prevent throwaway accounts. But an occasional SMS-chargeback would be OK, as
long as the source phone number can be blacklisted against reuse in the
future, forcing mischief-makers to burn one phone number each registration.

~~~
icebraining
The problem with the Bitcoin approach is not so much the money, but the time
and knowledge needed to set up a wallet, buy BTCs and then perform the
payment. And as long as it costs money it would still hopefully stop trolls.

The only provider I know is Fortumo[1], but I'm sure there are others. It
seems pretty easy to integrate with a website[2] and as far as I know there is
no way for the client to issue a chargeback.

[1]: <http://fortumo.com/> [2]: <http://fortumo.com/api>

------
newman314
I think those proposing a "Real Name" policy seem to be confused that having
such a policy confers trust. Similarly, being anonymous does not automatically
mean trolls everywhere. The fact is that even for sites with no RealName(tm)
policy today, most of them have a ratio where normal conversation greatly
outweighs trolls. So for the most part, the current model works.

I think we need to disassociate name => trust as a start and really start
exploring how to cultivate a culture of expression without trying to force the
whole name thing as a solution.

As a small example, given the recent storm around Airbnb and "EJ", can anyone
(including Randi Zuckerberg) really advocate that EJ absolutely had to be
using a real name in order to gain credibility?

~~~
philwelch
I think it's more to the point that the existence of Facebook and Google+
didn't stop EJ from telling her story. You have the whole rest of the internet
to be pseudonymous.

------
nl
I'm not sure if most people are aware, but Google has a blog post that covers
most of this quite well:
[http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2011/02/freedom-to-
be...](http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2011/02/freedom-to-be-who-you-
want-to-be.html)

 _Peter Steiner’s iconic “on the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog” cartoon
may have been drawn in jest--but his point was deadly serious, as recent
events in the Middle East and North Africa have shown_ ..

.. _Attribution can be very important, but pseudonyms and anonymity are also
an established part of many cultures -- for good reason._ ..

.. _When it comes to Google services, we support three types of use:
unidentified, pseudonymous and identified. And each mode has its own
particular user benefits._ ..

.. _While some of our products will be better suited to just one or two of
those modes, depending on what they’re designed to do, we believe all three
modes have a home at Google._

------
mmphosis
"The problem with screen names or handles deserves some amplification.
Concealing your identity behind a handle is a juvenile and silly behavior
characteristic of crackers, warez d00dz, and other lower life forms. Hackers
don't do this; they're proud of what they do and want it associated with their
real names. So if you have a handle, drop it. In the hacker culture it will
only mark you as a loser."

\- Eric Steven Raymond <http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#style>

------
gegegege
Unless they start requiring ID be presented every time the Internet is used,
while big brother is watching over your shoulder, the whole argument is moot.

There is no way to enforce people using their real name online and such
policies will only hurt the reputations of companies that try to enforce them.

If I really wanted to bully someone online, I could sign up for an account
using a fake name and a proxy/VPN. Nobody would be able to stop me. Requiring
people to use their real name, as if by magic, is not going to stop anything.

------
zmmmmm
When I think through all the different conversations I've had online that I
almost certainly would have chosen not to have were they directly traceable to
my real name it becomes brain dead obvious to me that a "Real Name" policy is
going to strangle the life out of G+ as a medium for interesting
conversations. Sure I'll be on there ... but what you will see will be
strictly my professional persona - the lowest common denominator of what I can
afford to expose publicly across all aspects of my life without offending
anyone I know.

It's weird to me that Google can't see that the answer to the problems they
are trying to solve can be solved equally well with pseudonymous identities as
they can with real identities. Hacker News and Reddit both implement systems
that encourage respectful conversation through karma type systems which allow
anyone to speak but everyone to easily see and understand the context of that
speaker. That's all you need.

------
yock
Privacy is great, no doubt about it, but a company has a right to offer
services under their own terms. They constructed their business model with a
profit goal in mind, and they determined what it would take to reach that
profit. Now, I'm not saying it's particularly fair to those who want to
participate but feel they cannot due to the limitations placed on their
privacy, but that's life. Sometimes it's unfair. If it makes you feel better
to complain about it on the Internet then go right ahead. In the meantime
there are many other who simply _didn't sign up for the service_.

------
saraid216
She posted this on G+ itself, too, and there's an actual conversation there:

[https://plus.google.com/115565811010545226083/posts/bPqUZYGj...](https://plus.google.com/115565811010545226083/posts/bPqUZYGjdVL)

~~~
darklajid
Reaction to the post, not you:

And the comments, while using 'real names' mostly, show that this policy
cannot protect against ignorance and miscommunication. I read it, about half
the comments, and had to facepalm when several people (Hey, are you really
'Scott Wakeman' or 'Brian Dayhoff'? Because.. That would suck) went down that
sorry 'Google's service, Google's rules' route. One even using a lawn as an
analogy. I'd applaud to that, but given the ignorance of the statements within
I doubt that the irony was intended.

Yes, Google can ban everyone from their service as they please. No, that is
not a valid argument in this discussion.

I left my 'I'm taking my ball home and don't play with you anymore' or
alternatively 'We don't like you, you cannot join our game' attitude in
preschool. Please. Stop that. Assume that people have a brain and use it. Use
yours _more_.

~~~
saraid216
> Hey, are you really 'Scott Wakeman' or 'Brian Dayhoff'? Because.. That would
> suck

My real name is available on my HN profile, heh. I am neither of those two
persons.

~~~
darklajid
Ah - but what I tried to say with my first line was:

The following is not directed at you, the poster of the comment on HN/the
link, but instead a reaction reading the post on G+.

In other words: Nothing against you, sorry if it seemed that way/if I've been
unclear. The .. rant was entirely related to the content on G+ and my problems
with certain statements there.

~~~
saraid216
No problem. It was clear to me. :)

------
fredBuddemeyer
our site littlebiggy.org lets people talk about people so the potential for
abuse made us insist on real names. people are used to this for facebook so it
wasnt a problem until important posts about corruption were missed. so we've
made pseudonyms a manual exception. if you need the protection of a pseudonym
you request it from a littleBiggy editor. a hassle but the best balance we've
found so far.

------
icarus_drowning
Not allowing pseudonyms on G+ is obviously a tremendous and awful mistake, and
I think most (not all, obviously), of the people here on HN agree with that
statement because of the obvious cases that boyd mentions. However, I think
that _huge mistake_ is different than "an authoritarian assertion of power
over vulnerable people". The latter requires intent, and neither I nor danah
boyd can know if this is Google's intent. Indeed, I suspect that Google's
intent isn't even known to most of the people working on G+, or even the
"upper ups". The marketing people probably want better data for AdSense, and
the Engineers are probably viewing the problem from the perspective of
simplifying the site's infrastructure, etc. etc... I sincerely doubt that
anyone is attempting for some sort of authoritarian power grab.

What they are doing, however, is making a really big mistake.

~~~
rimantas
I don't agree that it is a mistake, and I like that feature very much. There
are some people on Facebook which I know pretty well personally and they are
using fake names. That annoys me a lot.

~~~
icarus_drowning
Regardless, it isn't some sort of oppressive scheme designed to further the
marginalization of certain groups.

~~~
throwaway32
most oppressive thing are not specifically designed to marginalize people...

~~~
icarus_drowning
Again, My issue is that Boyd asserts intent, which I don't think she has the
grounds to do.

------
alextingle
Furthermore, Google+ requires that new sign-ups provide a real phone number,
and they phone you up to check you are for real. That's massively intrusive,
far worse than anything Facebook ever did.

------
technomancy
Tempted to use the name Roger Pollack if I do end up back on G+.

------
petegrif
Great piece Danah.

