Slashdot Mirror
Google Launches Identity Verification Badge Scheme
theodp writes "CNET reports that rather than backing down after complaints about its insistence that Google+ user accounts be opened under a real name, Google has upped the ante and will pin 'verification badges' on users in an effort to assure people that 'the person you're adding to a circle is really who they claim to be.' In a Friday night post, Google employee Wen-Ai Yu explained that the Google+ team is initially 'focused on verifying public figures, celebrities, and people who have been added to a large number of Circles, but we're working on expanding this to more folks.'"
I'm getting to the point where I no longer like Google, nor it's products. Verify this, Google+ that, really now.
Custom hosting is on the cheap (for email), you can use something like DuckDuckGo for searches (not quite as good as some of the others I guess, but still not that bad), and Diaspora (if it ever really gets out) for your social networking goodness (goes with the custom hosting)...
Ultimately, the largest schlep is the migration from everything-gmail-oriented to everything @domain.name oriented (forums etc).
Consider someone saying "I demand the right to determine my own Real Name. It's mine after all and I reserve the right to change it. Not that I will, but I don't want some busybody in Google telling me I can't." How do you tell them that they don't determine their real name, and have no choice in the matter, save for deed poll.
John_Chalisque
If, at the same time, they limit or stop disabling accounts that don't use a real name. Having a verification badge as "proof of real name" while allowing the use of unverified, pseudonymous identities (without the badge) is a perfectly fine idea.
Of course, if they're going to keep up the nonsense of entirely forbidding pseudonymous accounts, this means nothing.
This sounds basically the same as the "Verified Account" badge on Twitter that's used to identify high-profile celebrities as not being impostors.
I guess the only real alternative for the future is insist on complete transparency from all authorities. Because they are going to have increasing "transparency", or rather, espionage, on everything the entire population does, whether or not we like it, approve of it, or legalize it. We can't really control the authorities, they simply state they don't collect any data on our activities, only on crime, but it is just not believable. Technology simply makes it possible and ever easier to collect, sort, exchange, etc, vast amounts of data. And we know well that data tends to go free all over the place, with little control. Our only alternative is to increasingly see more of what they are doing, too.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
I know some thing for sure, I won't be signing up for google plus. You know damn well they aren't concerned with your privacy or protecting you, they just want to use the info you put on google plus to market to you. The more info, the better the marketing. never ever ever.
Mean what you say...say what you mean.
Where does Google draw the line? Do they allow "vanity" pages like is common for bands, non-profit organizations, and small businesses? What about celebrities who don't use their own name. Ex: Can Miley Cyrus create a "Hannah Montana" page? How about "Hulk Hogan" or various rappers?
We will 'purchase' an identity from a low jurisdiction country, like the Cayman Islands for a small price. The privacy package will come with artificial DNA linked to a new persona, a physical identity realistically rendered with the latest human image algorithms, and a voice-box culled from a combination of our favorite movie stars. Using such an Alias will be most beneficial to individual privacy, but won't help Google's bottom line. Increasingly, those who care about the integrity of their identity will have to be social by proxy!
While I deeply dislike the increasing trend(among Google, facebook, et. al.) to try to pin real IDs to users for fun and profit, I do think that there is one upside:
Historically, people have vastly overestimated the degree of anonymity they enjoy on the internet. IPs are pretty readily geolocated(and ISPs certainly don't have any trouble correlating them with CC details...), correlation of snippets of social networking information can be quite powerful, persistent tracking cookies and similar trickery do their job, and so forth.
In a way, then, the more visible, public, deployments of real-name requirements, automated facial recognition, etc. are really a public debut of what the pros have already had on virtually everybody who isn't a cypherpunk or a hermit for some time now. Hopefully public squeamishness will prove useful...
From whois.net:
Registrant:
Dns Admin
Google Inc.
Please contact contact-admin@google.com 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View CA 94043
US
dns-admin@google.com +1.6502530000 Fax: +1.6506188571
What they want is to have as much data linked to as many people as possible. If it is verifiable to a person then that data is easier to use and make money from.
If doing this (for now) for well known people then this will most likely increase the number of followers. This then creates more usable data that can be cross referenced. and soled again.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
If people were known by their real identity then suddenly one part of the greater internet fuckwad theory falls away. Suddenly everyone can see just what a pimple on the ass of humanity you really are when you troll a forum.
Unfortunately, if online anonymity goes away, free speech will suffer. You may not agree with his views, but Ward Churchill had every right to publish those views -- and then lost his job when the article was dug up years later.
Unfortunately, a large number of people are relying on online services to communicate, which has undermined many of the anonymity technologies that were developed in the 90s. The network effects of systems like Facebook and Google+ should not be ignored -- people who want to stay off of those systems may be forced to use those systems just to stay in touch with their friends.
Palm trees and 8
Google's right to set the terms under which it provides its services is not in dispute, but the fact that Google has the right to do what it's doing doesn't mean its actions are therefore beyond legitimate criticism. In a world increasingly dominated by corporate interests, having corporations behave in a manner consistent with the ideals of a free society is far better than the alternative.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
Do I remember the GNAA? Sure I do. I read slashdot at -1 at all times, simply because the moderation here is unbelievably wrongheaded. So I see every troll post. And they don't bother me one bit -- I would much rather see what an Anonymous Coward has to say than subject myself to Slashdot's rather pitiful offering of preemptively devaluing the anonymous remarks. Quite often, the anonymous remarks contain more valuable content than the "highly rated" remarks. Part of that is that moderation here is so badly broken, but part of it stems directly from the fact that as an anonymous speaker, people do indeed have wider latitude in what they can say. I'm not only interested in the things we're allowed, or supposed, to say. I want to hear what people think as they actually choose to express it in the most unfettered manner possible. GNAA? That stuff is utterly pitiful, and takes just about zero effort to recognize and skip over. An anonymous post containing material unsanctioned at the source from someone in Washington, from within congress (yeah, we have posts like that here), or Iraq, or Google, for that matter... now *that's* something I'm interested in reading. And those posts would not exist in the same form if they were signed by Real Name.
The thing about slashdot is that although the corporate culture leans strongly towards the muzzling of the anonymous, it does NOT enforce this -- it leaves that up to the individual user. So I see everyone. Others choose, that is CHOOSE, to stick with the results of moderation and the default low ranking of anonymous posts.
Google's corporate culture path here is, apparently, not going to allow the users any choice about how they manage their circles. It would be as simple as Slashdot's "browse at -1" option; "only let people into my particular circle(s) if they have the "real name" thing in their profile, and then allow individual lockouts on top of that. Control it at circle granularity, and it's workable. I could have circles that were unrepressed, and others could bask in the knowledge that so-and-so is using their "Real Name."
But Google, as you point out, isn't in this for the users. That whole "do no evil" thing? Utter nonsense. As these policies show, when it comes to a choice between money and not doing people harm, money wins. And that *is* a choice they can make. And we can just look at "do no evil" as just another marketing slogan. Which I guess is exactly what it is.
The one thing consumers -- which is what we are with relation to Google -- have as our little bit of leverage is that we can vote with our value to the company; That's why you won't find me on Google+ (or Facebook.) I've never opted into either one. I always found Facebook's TOS to be odious (yeah, I actually read site TOS declarations) and Google's whole "we must know who everyone is" simply makes me want to be somewhere else where I can interact with the people they leave out.
When you opt into this real name thing, you're leaving behind those who have been stalked, those who are political rebels or pariahs,
those who the state (or the feds) have declared outcasts, those on "lists", justifiably or not, people in countries where free speech is a free ticket to a machete party... me, I have no interest in this sanitized "we know who you are" world. That's a very bad, even immoral, choice for me. But I won't say you're bad because you want to go there. I'll just view it as a place containing the people I *don't* need to be listening to. The sheep. The ones who all say the same thing, think the same thing, and are happy to have the ostracized folks living under bridges -- and would just as soon forget they exist.
I lean strongly libertarian; I think Google should be able to do what they want. But when they do things I consider odious, then *I* get to do what I want, too, and that is to not engage the company in what I consider to be less than good practices. Google+ is odious, as I presently understand it. As long as that is the case, "teh social" is "teh worthless."
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
show us your badge!
We don't need no stinking badgers.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
If people were known by their real identity then suddenly one part of the greater internet fuckwad theory falls away. Suddenly everyone can see just what a pimple on the ass of humanity you really are when you troll a forum.
A part that shows that the 'theory' is bunk. It's not anonymity that allows and encourages people to be assholes on-line. People are assholes to each other on the highway, on the sidewalk, in the schoolyard and in the home. The only difference that the Internet makes is that it's harder to get back at them. You can't take a swing at someone over TCP/IP. If they're being an asshole from across state lines, or even from across the city, are you really likely to track them down and confront them about what they said about your daughter?
As for being banned from services, forums and the like-- come on. Most of the time it's not a matter of repeat offenders sneaking back in, it's the insane ratio of users to admins, complicated by huge numbers of users and the often spurious complaints they generate per day. Look at Facebook: the amount of TOS-violating shit (including illegalities, sexism, racism and other things we pretend don't happen in polite society) that slurps through their pipes on a daily basis is virtually incalculable. Does Jimmy Crackerfuck really care that somebody is offended by how much he hates Latinos and East Indians? No. Hell, he may even get off on the attention.
In the words of my ex (and also by use of, extending the amount of information you can track down about me) "Guard your innards!"
I've been lurking on this interwebs thing since the very late 80s, and I rarely leave a trail wider than I intended. Everything I do and say is effectively done through an alias, and I have one of those for each way I want to be perceived.
e.g. My most open information is tied to one of two IDs, "blackhawk-666" (and variants), and "ivan.hawkes@gmail.com", and yet a google of either will bring you up 54 pages or 397 pages - mostly programming related information. Anything you find on these two searches is likely to be true, and that includes my address, which lately I've not been so concerned about hiding. You ruffling through any mail I was too careless to shred, soak and then burn on an open fire is not my concern.
I hold other aliases which I use for when I don't want to be associated with the main branch of information kruft I leave in my wake. These are usually provided for me by hotmail aliases or one of about 50 user account variants ("Passwords are hard!").
I don't encrypt my conversations or go to great lengths to try and hide because I prefer to hide in plain sight...rig
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
Yeah...nice try with the Orwell hyperbole, but until we're voluntarily installing always-on public webcams in our homes and sending our parents to reeducation camps underneath the Department of Justice building I think we're a little short.
I know what you mean, but think about what they have instead. With the Orwell version, someone had to constantly monitor those screens and listen-in on people. Today, a computer program can scan conversations everywhere automatically because those conversations are already transcribed into text. There could be a program scanning Slashdot right now looking for keywords. In some ways, a telescreen is more acceptable because then someone had to decide they had a reason to monitor someone, then assign someone the full-time 24-hour-a-day job of doing it.
And yes, I read the book. Four times
That's a good example. Somewhere, somehow, a computer can now figure that out. But to determine that via a telescreen would require someone to spend years reviewing tapes, tracking your every move.
I think that the Internet has worked and evolved quite fine without a Fascist governor screening, tagging and branding you.
-- no sig today
This needs to be said over and over:
As bad as the name idea was in the US, Canada and Europe, it's an absolute disaster for some other countries.
Some people can create engaging content that many people want to interact with, but would in this country put their job or reputation at stake.
Some people can create engaging content that many people want to interact with, but in some countries will get them killed.
Please explain to me why a women's rights advocate in Saudi Arabia should have to give up her privacy to a state which considers her activity to be treasonous.
Please explain to me why a political dissident in a dictatorship should have to give up their privacy to a state which is known to imprison people for publicly advocating incorrect political ideologies.
Please explain to me why someone who disagrees with the anti-public-domain intellectual property dogma of the US and other countries should have to risk his freedom in order to discuss ways to subvert that system.
Please explain to me why I cannot decide who I, as a person, am, and what my "real" identity is. I'm much better qualified to do this than you are, Google.