Slashdot Mirror
Apple's Game Center Shares Your Real Name
dotarray writes "Apple's Game Center has just made itself a few enemies through a simple change to their Terms of Service. Now, whenever you send a friend invitation, your real name will be attached as well as your Apple ID."
Apparently they didn't learn from the poor reaction to Blizzard's similar idea.
First thought which came to my mind:
1. Apple has a game center?
2. This will have 0 negative reaction whatsoever. This is Apple people. If apple forced you to sign your name in blood to buy an iPhone, you would.
As far as Apple is aware, I'm Steve Jobs.
I figured Apple's intention is to thwart spammers; if you were able to recognize the real name of your buddy you were more likely accept the invitation rather than someone with a username like "THISISNOTVIAGRASPAM." Playing the whole social angle.
What Blizzard was intending was different. They wanted to put paper trail on all users on a publicly viewable form, in the interest of minimizing trolls and thus improving the quality of posts on their forums - to 'shame' the trolls from posting mindless drivel. Yeah, that didn't work out too well.
Apple is great at many things. They're just excellent in their core competencies. No debate about it.
But they absolutely suck at social media on a grand scale. Hard to believe how tone-deaf they are when it comes to stuff like Ping and Gamecenter. Does it come from the leadership? Maybe. The company is run by old guys in their 40's and up. Maybe they just don't get it.
Perhaps they can hire back Guy Kawasaki to spearhead their social media wing. He saved Apple's bacon once. Perhaps he'll do it again if they asked him nicely.
I'm surprised they didn't require blood.
Apple needs livers! Soylent iPhones are made of human livers!
I finally bought my girlfriend an iPhone 4, because I could buy it officially unlocked. It did annoy me that I had to install iTunes to get it activated, though.
On the positive side it is a very impressive chunk of technology, and it is fun to play with. Both of us are left handed, and we have not experienced any problems with dropped calls, which are apparently more common with left handers.
Although I am not an Apple fanboy, I can understand how the Apple Inquisition's three main weapons, are: fear, surprise and ruthless efficiency...and an almost fanatical devotion to the Jobs . . . their *four*...no... *Amongst* their weapons . . .
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
I don't share my last name with people I game with. Actually I don't even share my 1st name with them, they just call me by my avatar's name. Having my real name + an e-mail address for a guild forum where some one can log my ip address is just asking for trouble.
Beware of those who profit off the docile and persecute the unbelievers.
The thing is that-
1. If your friend already knows your first and last name, you probably know him enough to be able to talk to him about it on another communication channel ("Hey, I'm adding you to my apple game list")
2. If you don't know your friend personally, because you met him in another game, or another community - then you probably don't want him knowing details like that. I play a lot with the same community. In this case they will know me enough to recognise my nickname, but giving them my name and surname will not help them identify me any more than I would want them to.
Actually, BS. While the trolls were the first excuse Blizzard thought of, they also gave interviews in which they explicitly stated that they want to get more users out of it. They were hoping you'd basically advertise their cash cow for them, either directly or via the human tendency for mindless conformism. Think, "ooh, Jack and Jill from work and 10 of their facebook 'friends' are playing WoW, let's join them."
Heck, they even tried to spin it as a positive thing that they want your "friends of friends" (read, and anyone from the list of 2000 names someone can't even remember without the list, of someone you added just because there was no other global friend option) to keep messaging you they want you to return and tank for their preciousss epics. That's their #1 way to retain players long past the point where they've seen all quests and got bored with the repetitive raid grind. There must be a million people just in Blizzard's player base who are there just because of some delusion that if they quit a game they got bored with, or even if they skip one raid, they'll be somehow failing their guild and their "friends" who need them. Blizard just wanted to take that to the next level: let those people know who you are, where you are and what are they doing, and basically just help create more peer pressure to keep paying.
Heck, for their own BattleNet the above _still_ is listed as an advantage. That you can see if someone is playing Diablo or StarCraft instead of coming help get your epics, and you can message them to come back.
Basically I doubt that trolls were even a factor there, except as a more palatable excuse.
And in that aspect, I don't think Apple's move is any different. They too hope to use people's names to get more business, and probably give just as little about your privacy if it helps make a quick buck.
And frankly, how is it different from spam anyway? Anyone who knows me well enough to be called a friend, already knows how to contact me and ask me if I want to join in anything. Like, you know, send an email first, or give a call, or even an SMS, or whatever. If an invitation comes out of the blue actually needs something -- name or otherwise -- to convince me it's not random spam, then it _is_ spam. The only difference is that instead of being a batch run, it gives idiots a button to spam all their contacts for Apple's benefit.
And really, how's plastering someone's name on it going to help anyway? If I see my buddy's John Doe' name on an unsolicited email trying to sell me Viagra or wanting me to open a "taxes.xls.exe" file, I will think "Joe Job", not "ooh, it must be genuine". Why would I think if it's an other kind unsolicited ad, and John never bothered telling me about it before, it's any better? And yes, there will be smacktards who fall for it anyway, but then you could give most of those an email from "login.scam@i-pwn-u.ru" and they'd follow it anyway.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
My apple ID is some random rubbish and I can just make up something stupid for my real name! Now no-one will know who I really am!
Summation 2
I believe the Blizzard reaction was justified because RealID was going to be used in their forums. You know... where everyone in the world with a Blizzard forum account will be able to see it. Dumb idea.
This on the other hand, is very different. I didn't RTFA, but from the information in the news post, only friends to whom you send invitations will be sent your real name.
Entertain me here, but I would guess that if you are sending an invitation to someone specifically, you already know them and they probably know your real name anyway. If you are the sort of person who sends invites to people you don't know, then you deserve what you get if unknown_person_a gets your real name along with the invitation and does something bad with it. That's just being Darwin stupid.
At least on the surface, this is FAR different than Blizzard's RealID fiasco.
Blizzard tried to introduce this feature to an already existing community of anonymous people. Apple introduced the Game Center and Ping services as a way to interact with your family and friends. It was never intended to be a free-for-all, anonymous community and lots of people accept this.
Never intended? Maybe some should tell Apple that, they seem to think otherwise:
Game Center lets friends — and soon-to-be-friends — in on the action. Invite someone to join, then get a game going. Or go up against people you don’t know, from anywhere in the world, in a multiplayer game.
Emphasis mine, wording very much Apple's.