Google+ To End Real Names Policy

bs0d3 writes "After months of Google+ being unsuccessful at taking the edge over Facebook, Google announces a new plan. Google executive Vic Gundotra announced yesterday that they will be 'adding features that will "support other forms of identity,"' a major victory for security and privacy advocates. If Google+ gets rid of their 'real names' policy, they will finally be the social networking site that people will flock to when running away from Facebook." JWZ is a skeptic; he describes as "premature victory" (and much harsher things, too) any rejoicing in the announced policy change, writing in part "My guess? I'll bet they still require you to register with your 'real' name, but then they'll graciously allow you to have a linked nickname or two, meaning they're still fully prepared to roll over on you to authoritarian governments or advertisers at the drop of a hat."

Comments

Finally..

[roscocoltran]

They understand the problem. But it might be too little too late.

Re:Finally..

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not convinced they "understand the problem", unless the problem you're referring to is that the initial wave of interest subsided and all their uses went back to their original Facebook accounts. Don't get me wrong: I think this is a good move, but the answer to the question of whether it's being motivated by a change of heart on the issue, or because they view it as a way to gain an edge over Facebook, is unclear.

Re:Finally..

[Desler]

Yeah because the only thing keeping people from dropping facebook to come to google+ was the names policy. Oh right, except that outside of nerd circles most people don't care and freely use their real name on facebook. Give it a couple more months and this will join buzz and wave on the trash heap.

Re:Finally..

[rudy_wayne]

No .... they are simply trying to disguise the problem in order to suck in more users. Contrary to whatever bullshit they try to spread, Google+, Facebook and all the rest will NEVER implement any policy that actually respects the privacy of users. It will never happen, because their business model depends on selling their users to advertisers.

Re:Finally..

[Desler]

The thing us that this policy wasn't why most people weren't leaving facebook to come to google+. In the privacy-nut nerd circles it might have been but most people using facebook are fine with giving out their real name.

Re:Finally..

[Ruke]

The "problem" is one of critical mass: there's no reason to use a social networking site unless your friends use the same social networking site. Hell, right now, my G+ pretty much acts as an RSS agregator, allowing me to read updates from nerd celebrities that they're also posting to their blogs, twitter, facebook, and probably two or three other places. My friends are on Facebook, so, if I want to talk to them, or organize an event, I have to be on facebook.

Re:Finally..

[RazorSharp]

I agree. They've just been trying to take away Facebook users since it went public. A better strategy would be to look at the market and go after those who don't use Facebook, for one reason or another. Build a solid user base of people who wouldn't consider the alternative, then worry about picking off the competitor's customers. I would guess that most of the current users also have Facebook pages, so they'll default to that since it's the de-facto standard. Having a strong user base that will say, "No, get ahold of me on G+ b/c I don't have a Facebook page" is a much better strategy for keeping the network active. But Google didn't really give many good reasons for non-Facebook users to consider their network other than "We're not Facebook" until now, out of desperation.

At least it's a step in the right direction, but I'm sure G+ would have been doing much better had they originally tried to allow some form of anonymity. Just look at how many Slashdotters they could have pulled in from the start. These are heavy internet users and clicks are what counts.

Re:Finally..

[Surt]

Google+ could possibly guarantee they would never sell you to advertisers. They could view it as a cost-saving measure against getting killed in the search space when facebook introduces peersearch next year.

Re:Finally..

[grcumb]

Don't say 'fake' - that's a misrepresentation. I've used a pseudonym online since 1997. It's no more fake than the names Mark Twain, George Orwell or George Eliot. It's simply a Japanese wall (I.e. paper thin) that allows people to judge the merits of what I write without judging the person who wrote them.

Re:Finally..

[PopeRatzo]

The "problem" is one of critical mass: there's no reason to use a social networking site unless your friends use the same social networking site. Hell, right now, my G+ pretty much acts as an RSS agregator, allowing me to read updates from nerd celebrities that they're also posting to their blogs, twitter, facebook, and probably two or three other places.

Google Plus has been really useful to me. Several of my friends were using it before me, and when I joined I just made sure people who were important to me signed up. Not a single person to whom I suggested Google+ rejected getting an account there. I teach private and group classes and asked all of my students to sign up, which allows me to send them material and alerts.

I don't have any interest in collecting an enormous number of social network "friends" so the few hundred people with whom I regularly interact and who joined Google+ made it very useful to me very quickly. I reached "critical mass" on Google+ in a very short time.

Long ago, one day when I noticed my inbox filled with trivial and annoying invites and updates and crap from Facebook, I just abandoned my accounts there. I had no interest in wasting another moment of my time with it. Seriously stupid stuff like hugs and idiotic games and "likes" and people from grade school that I didn't like that much to begin with. The people with whom I want to interact who are Facebook users were all perfectly willing to get a Google+ account. They already understand the purpose of social networks and how they work, so there wasn't any problem for them. They don't have to give up their trivial stuff on Facebook in order to join Google+. Anyway, I think a lot of people use their email inbox as a social network aggregator anyway, so it really doesn't matter how many social networks they belong to. It's not like there's some rule that you can only belong to one.

I see Facebook as being a place for people who want to create an online life - adding all sorts of people as friends with whom they've never interacted - filling out a virtual life. I see Google+ as a tool for communicating with people I actually know and with whom I have relationships of some kind.

I'll tell you how to get more users...

[Ectospheno]

If they really want more users then they should add profile support to Google Apps so the metric crap-ton of people who ALREADY PAY THEM MONEY can use Google+.

Re:I'll tell you how to get more users...

[doctormetal]

Just a little more patience: https://plus.google.com/u/1/100940716892313727285/posts/2J1KCf3vv6K
He should know as he is the Google Apps guy.

Still not what we need

[Anonymous Coward]

Communication should be open and federated, yet private and protected by strong cryptography.

Communication is a human right.

Social networking needs to be seen as something other than an "app" or a trendy buzzword. Why can't we call it communication? Why can't we standardize a protocol for more robust communication than is offered by email?

Under proprietary services, you'll never be anything more than an identified consumer (even by pseudonym) on the corporate feedlot, for sale to advertisers.

There will always be a primary key, even if it isn't the same one issued to you by the government (legal name). This is Google - they'll hoover up your phone number, email, address, from you and your contacts, and identify you anyway. Don't kid yourselves. Unless you're a hardcore privacy geek, your friends will leak info, even if you don't. Google is letting you use a pseudonym because they know their datamining is so powerful that they can identify you anyway.

I don't mind sharing my life, but I'm not going to share it with an advertising conglomerate and any marketroid willing to cough up the required price.

The things people share on proprietary networks are shared with more unknown third party marketers than with their real, actual friends and family.

Stop filling out your own marketing profiles. Revolt. You are a human being, not a datapoint.

Re:Still not what we need

[Desler]

Hey look some 12 year old just saw fight club for the first time.

Re:Still not what we need

[Jibekn]

Its funny, I'm 32 and still haven't seen that movie. I never will just for the sheer look on peoples faces when I tell them I haven't seen it.

Re:Still not what we need

[Desler]

You didn't miss much

Re:Still not what we need

[EdIII]

Hey look some 12 year old just saw fight club for the first time.

While that is funny.... he has made some quite excellent points:

1) Communication should be open and federated, yet private and protected by strong cryptography.

Wow. Kind of hard to disagree with that at all. Spot on so far....

2) Communication is a human right.

Is there anybody that is really going to fight this point at all?

3) Social networking needs to be seen as something other than an "app" or a trendy buzzword. Why can't we call it communication? Why can't we standardize a protocol for more robust communication than is offered by email?

No. Fucking. Shit.

Right now, Social Networking is derided by quite a few of us here on Slashdot because we don't see it as useful communication. I still see it's use as nothing more than sharing of worthless information and tweets about stuff I don't really want to know. Signal to Noise ratio is not good. Other than some funny pictures and a quips about your daily life, it is just a gaming portal.... Farmville... need I say more?

It should be communication. Email needs to die, it has served its purpose. Right now, it is just a huge drain on resources since 90% of resources used are to fight SPAM. Sending data through it requires Base 64 encoding, which is the most hilariously inefficient form of data transfer on the planet. I find it useful because it can change any data to be "safe" for transfer between processes mainly because none of the characters inside it are picked up by compilers, interpreters, etc. XML fields wrapped in CDATA can still fail.

4) Under proprietary services, you'll never be anything more than an identified consumer (even by pseudonym) on the corporate feedlot, for sale to advertisers.

Is anyone disagreeing with that? It's true. Whether or not you care about is a different argument.

5) There will always be a primary key, even if it isn't the same one issued to you by the government (legal name). This is Google - they'll hoover up your phone number, email, address, from you and your contacts, and identify you anyway. Don't kid yourselves. Unless you're a hardcore privacy geek, your friends will leak info, even if you don't. Google is letting you use a pseudonym because they know their datamining is so powerful that they can identify you anyway.

Also true. Data mining has become a new field and a new market. Even if you don't participate, what you are is extrapolated from information provided by people you know. Almost impossible to fight.... unless you don't want to have any life at all.

6) I don't mind sharing my life, but I'm not going to share it with an advertising conglomerate and any marketroid willing to cough up the required price.

Sounds perfectly reasonable to me. You want to control who knows what about you. It's called privacy, and deriding the ability to share information with a friend without having it spread across the whole world, intelligence communities, and marketing groups is not fair, and wanting it is not indicative of a tin foil hatter.

7) Stop filling out your own marketing profiles. Revolt. You are a human being, not a datapoint.

Why not? Why should you be penalized for having a life by constant bombardment by advertisers and governments profiling you?

I don't think you should.

The day I join Social Networking is when I can host my own personal P2P SNS that does not allow any huge corporation like Google to analyze my personal data and relationships.

It's not easy. It will take time, development, and testing. We can get there and take true control over our communications and turn ISPs into what they were always intended to be... common carriers.

Re:Still not what we need

[EdIII]

It has held up very well. In fact, it is more relevant now than it was when it came out in theaters.

Excellent movie.

Hard to explain without giving out spoilers, all I can say is that I disagree and it has help up very well. I watched it recently and it was as good as seeing it the first time again.

Re:Still not what we need

[chrismcb]

It should be communication.

it IS communication. It is the #1 reason I use facebook, to communicate with people I know around the world.

Email needs to die, it has served its purpose. Right now, it is just a huge drain on resources since 90% of resources used are to fight SPAM.

No, No it doesn't need to die. Email is still useful For one thing I don't want every want my messages with one person be all merged into one long stream every every communication I've had with that one person. But you claim that Email needs to die because A) it is a drain on resources. (whose?) and B) it is inefficient (as if HTML is more efficient) You do realize that if email dies, then that spam content will move to facebook. Replace "email" with "stream of messages." Pretty much any issue you have with email, can also be applied to facebook's messaging system

7) Stop filling out your own marketing profiles. Revolt. You are a human being, not a datapoint.

But you ARE a datapoint. Get over it, and move on with life.

The day I join Social Networking is when I can host my own personal P2P SNS that does not allow any huge corporation like Google to analyze my personal data and relationships.

So you are planning on dropping off the grid, living off the land, and not having contact with anyone?

I'm a fake and proud of it

[phoncible]

Not sure what the big deal is, my G+ account name is a false name; not even a semblance of a real name in fact. Of course, I'm sure google has my real name in their system somewhere, and I'm sure it's tied to this G+ account in some way shape or form.

Re:I'm a fake and proud of it

[JohnFen]

They don't have my legal name. They do have the name that I usually go by online, though. It's the name that I've been using online from before the internet was open to the public, and at this point it's no less my "real" name than my legal name is. I don't use Google+, however, were I to, doing so under my legal name would make it essentially impossible for my online friends to find me. Few of them know my legal name and even those that do would have problems -- it's a very, very common one. My pseudonym IS my "real" name, or one of them, and especially online.

It's all academic, though, as I will never use Google+ even if they were to actually allow pseudonyms for real (i.e., without giving Google itself my legal name). Google's public statements over this issue have been very clear and very insulting. I can do without them. They've burnt that bridge.

Re:jwz

[LoudNoiseElitist]

Diaspora would be cool and all, you know, if it would ever launch. I swear I signed up for that site like 2 years ago, and all I ever get are emails wanting me to donate.

Re:I'm okay with that

[DanAnderson26]

Yeah, me neither. It's not like Facebook is some bastion of discretion and privacy.

I'd use Google+ more if it was better integrated into my other Google tools (i.e., Google reader)

Too Late

[bky1701]

They already squandered the publicity and marketing that existed around the launch. In the process, they pissed off many users and made even more suspicious. There is no chance to recover after the major blunders they have made. Google+ is dead now, just like wave, and Google will admit it eventually. The best thing they can do is try to contain that failure so it doesn't spill over into their other, successful services, especially Gmail.

Re:Too Late

[MattskEE]

You are jumping the gun quite a bit with your proclamation I think. Google+ is still a very new product, Google is doing fine as a company and will not dump this attempt because they got scared after less than 6 months of operation. Plenty of people, including myself, use it in addition to Facebook, and some people I know use it instead of Facebook. Maybe your social group doesn't use it, but that's their choice. It makes a lot of sense for Google to have a social media platform at their disposal as people spend so much time on social media sites, and they need eyeballs to sell ads. I have never been pissed off or suspicious about Google's intentions with Google+. So no, Google+ is not a failure and we won't be able to say it is for some time.

Side note: I don't understand why you think a Google+ failure would leak over into other services like Gmail. Gmail is still a very distinct service from Google+.

I just don't trust them

[Kunedog]

Until I've seen how the policy is written (and enforced), I have to proceed with caution and assume this is just another trick they've copied from Facebook (i.e. the trick where they announce theoretically improved privacy to the public, but maintain the status quo in practice (and in the fine print)).

Re:G+ Aliases

[spire3661]

I hear what you are saying, but I have Cardinal Richelieu on the other line and he says "LOL"

Re:Sign up for an invite!

[m.ducharme]

As far as I know they haven't started sending out invites, other than to people who donated on Kickstarter.

Never really enforced anyway

[blind biker]

At least 20% of the people in my circles have faux names, especially in the brony circle (yeah, yeah, I do have brony friends). I don't think Google really gives a shit.

Re:Never really enforced anyway

[EdIII]

I was rather intrigued, so I looked up the term "brony":

The term brony, meaning a male, older viewer of the tv programme “my little pony” and “my little pony – friendship is magic” who is generally either embarrased by his affections toward the pregramme, or openly flaunts it.
Can be used as an insult for a gay or overly effeminate boy/man..

Thank You. That made my day.

Re:"unsuccessful at taking the edge over Facebook.

[Desler]

" And we already decided that it was unsuccessful?"

Did you miss the link to the story about the 60% drop on active users that was posted 10 days ago? That is probably why they made that statement.

The enforcement mechanism was dumb, too.

[MAXOMENOS]

It's not just that the policy was wrong (it is); it's that the way it was enforced was error-prone. If you happen to have a weird name (like Violet Blue) then the enforcement mechanisms would assume that you were using a pseudonym and ask you to provide a "real" name. There was never any mechanism to convince Google that the weird name was, in fact, your real name.

I think we are right to be concerned that the next policy and set of enforcement mechanisms will be just as silly, stupid and wrong as the present one is.

Google+ screwed the pooch

[tesdalld]

How many users are on facebook with their real names? The problem was not that they wouldn't let people use faux names but that they waited when they should have pounded. When facebook was issues with their chat software and google+ didn't push for people to join. I have never been to google+ and i don't see a need to go to it. All of my friends (wife) use facebook, why go?

Re:Google+ screwed the pooch

[Xemu]

I have never been to google+ and i don't see a need to go to it. All of my friends (wife) use facebook, why go?

Facebook CEO calling users 'dumb fucks' is a compelling reason.

Why I don't use Google+

[PCM2]

I'm actually pretty baffled that people are still pissed about this "real name policy." Even more confused that people think this is really the reason people aren't flocking from Facebook to Google+.

I might use Google+ if it offered me something Facebook didn't, full stop.

As it stands, why switch? That's sort of like saying, "Why don't you change phone numbers? The 241 prefix is so much better than the 547 prefix you have now."

If all my friends were on Google+, I might use Google+ more than I use Facebook. They're not. In fact, the ones who have Google+ accounts don't do anything there. So there's not much reason for me to waste any time on it, either. I don't know what makes this so hard to understand. It kind of feels like Google is ashamed to admit it's not offering anything compelling with Google+. In this scenario, Facebook is Google and Google+ is Bing, it's just that simple.

Re:Why I don't use Google+

[daver!west!fmc]

As it stands, why switch? That's sort of like saying, "Why don't you change phone numbers? The 241 prefix is so much better than the 547 prefix you have now."

But the 241 prefix is better: you don't need to pull the dial as far to dial 241.

Anonymous still isn't anonymous

[markdavis]

>"I'll bet they still require you to register with your 'real' name, but then they'll graciously allow you to have a linked nickname or two, meaning they're still fully prepared to roll over on you to authoritarian governments or advertisers at the drop of a hat."

And even if they didn't, it still wouldn't matter. Google can and would likely use its massive infrastructure to track down who each "unnamed" user is and place an identity on each "in the background". It has been proven over and over again that it can be done. Photo recognition, IP addresses, browser cookies, access behavior, linked accounts, phone numbers, etc, etc, etc. With enough CPU power and data (both of which Google has) it won't take them long to correctly identify many such pseudo-anonymous users.

Still, it is a huge victory if they would at least let people use screen names.

Re:So what?

[EdZ]

Exactly. I'm perfectly happy using my real name of Google+, and communicating with a few friends that way. If I want to communicate anonymously the last fucking place I'd do so would be any sort of 'social networking' site. To do so would be, not to put too fine a point on it, really fucking stupid. If you want anonymous communication, you do not do so on a website designed entirely to form and record a network between you and other people.

Re:jwz

[Scrameustache]

Google Plus is exceeding expectations of both its creators and its user base

That's some potent marketspeak you're astroturfing there.

Re:jwz

[bill_mcgonigle]

In any case, you also have the option to host your own Diaspora website.

I tried doing this on a Fedora 14 machine and the docs were all wrong and nothing worked right. I got stuck in gem hell. You know why Disaspora* has failed? Rails.

It would have been done last year if it were written in PHP or Perl. There, I've said it. I hate PHP, but Rails is worse, unless you're a full-time Rails shop. Ruby doesn't make up for Rails, and Ruby's VM has historically sucked (it seems to be OK now as long as you run it under Java).

Rails might be fine for the developers, but the point of Disapora* is that it's decentralized. If it's a pain in the ass for a sysadmin to deploy, it's a complete failure. If I can't 'yum install disapora-server' at some point, the network effect will never happen.

I now prepare for the onslaught of downmods from guys with thick-rimmed glasses who somehow figured out how to read Slashdot in TextMate on their MacBook Pros.