

Google Plus to relax the "real names only" restriction? - thristian
https://plus.google.com/111091089527727420853/posts/Fddn6rV8mBX

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saturdaysaint
I think Google's on the right track - they're just optimizing for friends and
families instead of brands. It's defensible to posit that the relatively high
quality of Facebook's social graph is due in part to how strongly they
validated identity in the early days (by requiring e-mail addresses from
reputable universities). Further, it might not be realistic for a social
network to pursue both the highly validated identity model (i.e. Facebook) and
the wide-open, syndication-friendly route of Twitter simultaneously in the
early stage.

There's room for improvement, but this has some of the air of the usual end-
user indignation that a product doesn't have a comprehensive feature-set at
launch.

------
mfringel
I'm somewhat concerned that "find a way to use pseudonyms" is some
implementation of "multiple pseudonyms, as long as you have your real name on
an umbrella account", which completely misses the point.

~~~
thristian
Well, maybe.

Different people want pseudonyms for different reasons. Some people want to be
able to completely divorce content created under one name from content created
under another: for example, a well-known public figure might choose to
interact with close friends and family under a pseudonym so that those people
aren't dragged into the public spotlight. Other people are just known by
different names in different social circles — perhaps the people you play
tennis with gave you a nickname, or you have friends in another country who
find your given name awkward and hard to pronounce. For those people, an
absolute water-tight division between pseudonyms is not necessary.

Personally, I'd be happy with settings of the form "To contacts in circle X,
display the name Y", and "To strangers, display the name Z". I don't _mind_ my
friends knowing my real name, I just don't want friends blocking me because
they don't recognise the value I've put in the only name field Google
displays.

~~~
sorbus
> Personally, I'd be happy with settings of the form "To contacts in circle X,
> display the name Y", and "To strangers, display the name Z".

Most of my friends are in multiple circles (a "friends" circle and a circle
based on why I know them). If I set different display names for two circles,
what does it display to someone in both of them?

~~~
thristian
That's why I'm just some schmuck posting on HN, and Google are the ones with
the globe-spanning enterprise - because they're better at finding answers to
tricky questions like that than I am.

If I had to guess, I'd say "use the name attached to the circle with fewer
members", because I imagine a lot of people will have a few big circles for
reading by content, and a number of small circles that represent their actual
social circles.

------
hammock
Sounds like they are trying to keep it from becoming another MySpace full of
shit names and people being silly.

My intuition tells me a top-down approach isn't the best route, though.

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bad_user
I'm seeing more and more issues on G+ that annoy me about Facebook.

They got some things right, but I'm afraid the core is the same old revenue-
oriented and privacy-invading crap.

Not-Facebook is not good enough and looking at the end-result it is kind of
disappointing.

~~~
bad_user
I'm getting a lot of down-votes, which is cool but maybe I haven't explained
my reasons for thinking like this:

I love email mostly because it is not controlled by a single provider; I can
always run my own email servers (and I do). I also love email because you can
be anonymous - you can use a pseudonym - heck, you can fake the headers to
make it look like you're bill-gates@microsoft.com, although smart email
clients will figure it out. I also love email because it doesn't have a single
point of failure -- if one email provider goes down, that won't block the
Internet. I also love email because if you have your own domain, no email
provider can freeze you from sending or receiving emails, although they can
try to do that.

Google+ does fix some of the annoyances of Facebook, but it fixes none of the
more hard-pressing problems and still has many problems that Facebook has.

Google+ / Facebook are nothing like email.

------
tty
Wait, was it ever a "real name only" restriction? Didn't it always say that
you should use the name that you "commonly use"?

~~~
thristian
Well, the instructions said "commonly use", but then Google started
kickbanning people whose "commonly used" name didn't fit the fairly narrow
parameters of Anglo-Saxon real names.

------
iwwr
Is there some credence to the rumor that having a g+ account could shut you
out of other google services, like gmail?

~~~
est
My profile was suspended on Google Plus, then I can no longer share any Google
Reader items.

Chrome Inspector network requests shows that it's a server 500 error, and it
tries to call the Multi Sign-on URI even I didn't enable Multi Sign-on.

When I tried to delete my Google Plus service, the page[1] is just 404.

Looks like G+ isn't really a finished or proper tested product.

[1]: <https://plus.google.com/settings/plus>

~~~
JeremyBanks
_Looks like G+ isn't really a finished or proper tested product._

It's currently in a "field trial"[1]. If you're using it now then you are a
tester, so complaining about a lack of testing a little nonsensical.

[1] [https://sites.google.com/a/pressatgoogle.com/google-
plus/fie...](https://sites.google.com/a/pressatgoogle.com/google-plus/field-
trial)

------
keeperofdakeys
"or who are using obviously fake names, like "god" or worse."

There will be someone with crazy enough parents for this to be possible, and
for the child not to want to change it. For something like this, there isn't
really many crieteria you can use, just on the off chance you get something
authentic.

~~~
eftpotrm
It's not an unheard of abbreviation for Godfrey. Jack Bruce, formerly of
Cream, named an album that way:

[http://www.jackbruce.com/2008/Music/Albums/more_jack_than_go...](http://www.jackbruce.com/2008/Music/Albums/more_jack_than_god.htm)

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Hyena
I guess the obvious question not asked is whether Google set the "real name"
bar artificially high in order to slowly work out where the edges of the issue
are. It might simply have been more efficient to wear down a draconian rule
than to build up from none.

------
ChrisArchitect
never saw anything about using a real name, don't have my proper name on my
gAccount, so it doesn't matter -- gPlus working fine, identity working fine.

~~~
mtogo
Yes, you are indeed the only person that matters.

------
bh42222
_removing people who spell their names in weird ways, like using upside-down
characters, or who are using obviously fake names, like "god" or worse._

Yes, because fake names and personalities have worked so badly for twitter!
Well good to know G+ is safe from people like Fake Steve Jobs.

