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The Google+ Name Game Continues
theodp writes "'Sticks and stones will break my bones,' the old nursery rhyme goes, 'but names will never hurt me.' Unless, of course, you're on Google+. While touting what it calls a move toward a more inclusive naming policy for Google+, the search giant's Name Policy would still make Sister Aloysius Beauvier smile. Names like 'Doctor Stan Livingston,' 'Bill Smithwick DDS,' and 'Rev. Jim Copley, S. P.' are cited as examples of violations that could cost you your Google+ privileges. And since new Google account users are reportedly now forced to join Google+, one wonders if the Name Policy might even preclude one from establishing one of those adorable dear.sophie.lee or dear.hollie accounts."
Alright, well who cares? If Google shoots itself in the butt by destroying / tying in social with its search, a new search contender will most likely step up and fill the 2nd place void. Maybe it'll be Bing.
Just let the market correct itself.
I think we're jumping the gun here if we assume Google is going to count all users as active users, especially since they haven't actually done this yet. If they do do this that's another story, but they could just as easily use a more fair criteria for counting users, such as perhaps only counting users who have visited Google+ specifically N times over the past month or have shared content over Google+, etc.
Other than that issue anyway there really is no big deal about forcing Gmail and Google+ account creations. If the new user never uses them they won't even know they exist (though the public profile bit does trouble me some), so it seems to me Google is just trying to streamline the account creation process.
no, it isn't. although I've been using Skarecrow/skarecrow77 for so long, about 18 years now, that it is essentially an extra name so associated with me that you can identify things I wrote on the web ages ago using it. it's me.
That aside, in insecure settings where you can't control who sees things you post, and you risk running afoul of juvenile (or juvenile-minded) internet delinquents who want nothing more than to fuck up your day, there is a need for some middle-layer of semi-anonymity. With Google+, on the other hand, so far as I know you have the ability to decide -exactly- who can see anything you post, so presumably you can limit your exposure to the internet delinquents to virtually nil.
There are any number of internet forums where fake people can talk to fake people. Google+ appears to be a place where real people talk to real people. I kind of like having at least one or two outlets like that. People are much more civilized. I can (and do) visit the less restrained corners of the internet when I want to witness the John Gabrial greater internet fuckwad theory at work, but the entire internet doesn't necessarily have to be like that.
The thing I don't understand is, if Google has set the ground rules saying "this is what Google+ is going to be like", why are the people who dislike what google+ is about so eager to join with their fake names?
It's like going to an NRA meeting when you hate guns, and being upset that people there are packing. Why did you want to go in the first place? And if you're really that set on going for some reason, you should at least realize you have to play by their ground rules while at their party.
Sigh, I wish this meme would die. They don't sell people, they sell ad space. I realize that all the cool kids are into accusing Google of slavery, but let's at least try to maintain one tiny iota of accuracy.
I don't believe in your psychic powers to know what user account is a puppet of another user.
Fuck, even if it is a shill, it could be a different shill. It's not just you, lately I have seen lots of these post claiming to know the original account of another account, mostly (defending Google products incidentally, but I'm not about accusing them of astroturfing).
Bullshit I don't believe in the supernatural.
But... the future refused to change.
All of which is moot - I just tried the same thing, and in order to create the gmail account, it wanted a real-world phone number.
As a practical matter, that means that all gmail accounts you create are still tied to your real-world identity (or that of one of your friends or cow orkers, and it should be pretty easy to figure out who you are by seeing where your social graph intersects with the social graphs of others who signed up with that phone number.)
No, it's not a strawman. The claim that the GGP made was that Google was selling people. Reductio ad Absurdem is hardly a logical fallacy in this case. Slavery is a binary operation either one is a slave or one isn't a slave and if Google is selling people and slaves are defined as people who are owned by other people then the logical conclusion is that the GGP is claiming that Google is engaging in slavery.
Now, if you take a more reasonable position than people being Google's product then it doesn't apply at all.
Don't whine to me because the original description is horribly inept and poorly considered.
Till they stop acting like Schmidt-heads. Really, this grudging half-assed crap is hardly better than the Real Name Policy, it just makes it easier policy-wise for them to make exceptions for celebrities.
You're entirely missing the point. New users of Google's services are know forced to sign up for Google+ -- and profitable or not, YouTube is one of their most popular services. The GP is trying to make the argument that by tying Google+ to other services (for some reason he used search, which is actually completely irrelevant since pretty much nobody gets a Google account in order to use their search service!) they'll drive customers to competing services. For Gmail, that's at least potentially possible. For YouTube its practically impossible, for the very reason you cited (it's not a money maker). Competitors are not going to magically spring up to rescue YouTube users from forced Google+ accounts.
There is a difference between "New Google account users forced to join Google+" and "New users tricked into joining Google+ but they can leave immediately if they want to". It's not a big difference; in a sense it's a totally stupid thing to be arguing about and you could easily have spun it for your side (try "the delete account option is hidden behind one mouse click and might be confusing to my cat"). It ends up, though, giving away the game. This is not about some people coming to tell us the news that Google has gone evil. This is about desperate people who are trying to make it seem as if Google is as evil as they are.
The thing about this is, that any serious news organisation would have contacted Google and got someone there to explain this. There explanation would have been lax; even pathetic, but it would have meant that instead of publishing a lie, you could publish a misrepresentation which could never be proven as a lie. What is with the mad rush to be evil? Even Satan knows that by holding off a bit you can get more evil for your money.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
Just let the market correct itself.
No.
No.
No.
I'm sick of hearing this idiotic philosophy. The market does not correct itself. If 1% of your faith in 'the market' were of any merit, then people would have been leaving Facebook in droves due to all the privacy gaffes they've had. Let's face it - people are stupid, nobody cares about their own privacy, and living by some stupid appeal to the majority will only make that the de facto standard.
Why is this a problem? Because if everyone uses Facebook/G+/whatever, then everybody else has to start abiding by their idiotic terms, because eventually, all the employers/social groups/universities/etc. start using these abusive services too and make it so that you have no choice. Some groups choose to conduct all their business on Facebook - to me, they might as well not exist as nothing will ever make me sign up for that piece of shit. So don't talk about letting the market correct itself - the market is pretty much always wrong, and it has terrible consequences.
I have left slashdot and am now on Soylent News. FUCK YOU DICE.
Even if the market did work, it would do so by:
Telling people not to complain as the market will take care of it, basically advocates skipping the step which would make the market take care of it. It really makes no sense.