The Phantoms of Google+

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Posted by timothy on Saturday March 31, 2012 @04:58AM from the you-who-are-not-are dept.

theodp writes "Engadget reports that Google wants a patent on its System and Method for Generating a Ghost Profile for a Social Network. The brainchild of five Googlers, the invention is designed to convert anti-social-networking types to the joys of Google+ and its ilk. From the patent: 'A problem arises when users of social networks are friends with people that are opposed to social networks. The second group misses out on an important social component. For example, many users only share their photos on a social networking site. As a result, users that do not want to join the social network are forced to either join with reservations or miss out on the social component, such as viewing pictures.' By generating an unsearchable 'ghost profile' when a member of the social network invites a Google+ adverse friend to join, Google explains, non-believers get to participate in social networking activities without providing user information."

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nope by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-31 05:01 · Score: 3, Insightful

Sounds like a grab to boost G+'s userbase beyond Wil Wheaton and Google engineers.
Not gonna touch Google+ until they get rid of their "real names" policy and I'm not inclined since I've invested so much of my online social life with Facebook.
1. Re:nope by Chrisq · 2012-03-31 05:06 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Sounds like a grab to boost G+'s userbase beyond Wil Wheaton and Google engineers.
  Not gonna touch Google+ until they get rid of their "real names" policy and I'm not inclined since I've invested so much of my online social life with Facebook.
  Do you use your real name on Facebook? Seriously a lot of people complain about the "real name" policy even though they use it openly on Facebook. This may or may not be hypocritical, I suppose if you keep your porn collection on Picasa....
2. Re:nope by cayenne8 · 2012-03-31 06:22 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  I don't get what people out there think.....somehow it must be groupthink that if you're not on FB and/or Google+ or twitter or xyz social network, that you are being left behind in the dark ages, alone in the cold with no contact with human life any longer.....that you have lost every friend you've gathered in life to this point.
  Seriously, I don't have any accounts on these networks, and I don't intend to, there is just too much trade of IMHO, for my privacy.....to join up on one of these. I mean, even with a fake name.....they've shown they can figure out who you are with who you associate...etc.
  Seriously, I've not missed an even with any of my friends...I've not missed a picture I'd want to see.....
  I stil do this weird thing, and see my close friends regularly in meatspace....I call them, I email directly with them, sometimes *gasp* with multiple of us on the same email thread?!?!
  This way...the conversation, pics and what-have-you...are just between us and not out for the rest of the world to gawk at, and have corporations (and governments) use all that info to advertise or worse at me.
  Seriously....it isn't painful.....I don't miss a thing.
  
  --
  Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
3. Re:nope by iamhassi · 2012-03-31 06:37 · Score: 1, Insightful
  
  Sounds like a grab to boost G+'s userbase beyond Wil Wheaton and Google engineers.
  no, it's far worse than that: Google is creating a "ghost" profile by mining your youtube, gmail, searches, android phone, etc, and they're going to tell you whenever your friends and family do something by emailing you, etc, to compel you to login to the ghost profile they created for you.
  
  So much for "don't be evil". This sounds about as evil as it gets, stealing your data and subscribing you up for a service you never wanted.
  
  --
  my karma will be here long after I'm gone
4. Re:nope by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-31 07:33 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  How does wanting to have real and personal contact with people make them luddites? I didn't think forming and maintaining relationships was something that could become outdated.
  People like you are sad and self-centred. The fact that you think you're so important that people are going to be left out validates that. If a friend can't take a couple minutes out of their oh so busy day to contact me personally, then they are no friend at all and I would rather be "left out" of their dealings.
  This is the only redeeming value I place in social networks, their existence sometimes helps me to weed out the fake from the real. I haven't gotten to the point of outright rejecting people as friends because they want to use social networks but if someone ever pulled the crap you do, I remove them from my life.
  Relationships aren't something that automatically last. They require nurturing and care. If you're too busy to take care of them, they wither and die.
5. Re:nope by epyT-R · 2012-03-31 08:24 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  1. all your friends are clueless about the privacy concerns or just don't give a damn for consequences in general.
  2. you are the person everyone complains about because he's always too busy playing 'social' rather than BEING social, like actually doing things with his friends.
  If you want to bandwagon hop on to every new e-thingie churned out by corpgovX, it's not a huge deal. But please, don't complain if you are judged out of context on information you put up there 10 years ago under completely different life circumstances and cultural status quo. These include judgment by current/potential employers, law enforcement agents, banks, and insurance companies. Just because it's innocuous today does not mean it will always be. I know some people like you, and quite honestly, they're very cavalier about others' personal information, posting pics without permission (fb and google are doing automated face recog or will be soon) and talking about personal issues online for all to see. People like you trade their friends' privacy for personal convenience, and then justify it with little more than a flippant attitude and self-serving arrogance. It's not worth having such people as friends. Using strawman arguments to further your case when pressed does little to bolster the lack of respect you've already engendered.
  I'm sure there are lots of situations where personal information ends up public knowledge as a result of normal human interaction, but this is not the same as such data being stored and transmutated in corporate/government databases, accumulating over time, until used by someone who wants control over your behavior in some way, often by misrepresenting facts, much as you've done here.
  This G+ thing is a way of forcing those who have conciously opted out to join out of attrition, because now the data will be collected whether they put it there or not. The process will take longer and likely will not be as specific/useful as the accounts owned by morons who post their entire lives online, but the info could still end up damaging. This is true even if it is incorrect because it place the 'ghost' person in a reactionary position of having to fight with the provider to correct it and save face.
Go to hell, Borg overlords by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-31 05:03 · Score: 3, Insightful

Simple as that.
I'm not joining. You won't monetize or profile me. If that means I quit sharing certain things with social junkies, then so be it.
I'm not your datapoint and I never will be.
1. Re:Go to hell, Borg overlords by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-31 05:37 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  I'm not your datapoint and I never will be.
  Says who? You? Since when were you the law?
  You are valuable data whether you want to be or not.
  This includes mail records of you acceptability for certain mail by coalitions (such as vouchers, sports mailing list previews, spam and various other things), insurance, medical, hell, even in some cases "threat level" if you ever hit any flags.
  Somebody can sit there on the side of a road, recording you and thousands of others going past in cars, recording said information without your permission.
  Want to know why? Because you are on public property.
  Despite what you (and many others sadly) think, the internet is public property if it contains 3rd party access. Unless that site is fully-contained within its own domain, you are free to be recorded, marked and scrutinized by whatever, whenever.
  As long as that information isn't published to others directly, they are free to manipulate it for whatever nefarious purposes.
  Google, nor do most of the hundreds of other advertising agencies, directly identify people in ad networking systems.
  So, please, don't worry your head over it. Government-mandated records contain far more information on you than Google could ever hope to get from you.
  From your dental health to your shoe-buying habits.
  Everyone always calls Britain the Big Brother country, the Police-State. Most governments record these things. Some far more, some far less.
  The UK barely even has any CCTV, actually. And most of them in those stupid reports were PRIVATE cameras. The silly thing was making it out like there was a camera in every street corner or something... hilarious if you ask me.
  If you are really that paranoid over Google, god forbid you could get access to all your records. Stacks upon stacks of folders on everyone, still recorded on paper in the unlikely event that our entire electrical infrastructures fail and we lose everything. (not sure why "Steve McRobertson bought a candied Apple, milk and bacon in 1978" would be useful for any long-term reasons")
  You might as well just fake your death and go live in some random forest, the forests don't care about stalking you. Unless it is those damned forests in horror stories who want to gobble up little children. WHY
2. Re:Go to hell, Borg overlords by Goaway · 2012-03-31 06:00 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  And then you get angry at them when they provide you with a way to AVOID giving them information?
3. Re:Go to hell, Borg overlords by kent_eh · 2012-03-31 06:19 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  You are valuable data whether you want to be or not.
  I am intentionally an inaccurate datapoint.
  
  I know I can't control that a lot of information is being collected without my knowledge or consent.
  So whenever I do get a choice, I'll provide information that is either inaccurate, ambiguous, or flat out contradictory to what is already known about me.
  
  The more polluted their databases are, the less valuable it is to them, and thus the less influence they have over my life.
  At least that's my hypothesis.
  
  --
  
  ---
  "I can't complain, but sometimes still do..." Joe Walsh
Uh... by Black+Parrot · 2012-03-31 05:04 · Score: 4, Insightful

Remind me again why I want to participate in social networking?
This is the biggest / most ridiculous case of "because it's there" in the history of our species.

--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
1. Re:Uh... by MightyYar · 2012-03-31 05:23 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Remind me again why I want to participate in social networking?
  Convenience?
  It's much easier to just go to facebook when I need to contact someone rather than keep their information up-to-date in at least one address book.
  It's much easier to post a baby announcement on facebook than to send out individual emails.
  Casual multiplayer games are much more fun when your friends are the opponents (e.g. Words with Friends).
  
  --
  W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
2. Re:Uh... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-31 05:45 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  I've been (and deep-down still am) one of these anti-social-network types. Sadly, I felt that I had no other choice but to create a Facebook profile after friends and family started using it to discuss plans and all sorts of stuff, and I kept being the last person to find out about, well... everything. I still get a sickening feeling from how basically such a large part of my social life now takes place on a for-profit company's website whose apparent clients are advertisers and I am the product it is offering, but it was litterally becoming a choice between being a social outcast or joining Facebook.. sigh. :|
3. Re:Uh... by Oligonicella · 2012-03-31 08:03 · Score: 1, Insightful
  
  "It's much easier to just go to facebook when I need to contact someone..."
  
  Click email icon, click desired recipient, type email, click send. Rough stuff.
  
  "It's much easier to post a baby announcement on facebook than to send out individual emails."
  
  Group email. You know, take the time you did with FB and include those you want in the group. No difference.
  
  "Casual multiplayer games..."
  
  You have me there. No interest in Farmville whatsoever.
  
  Everyone keeps listing reasons *THEY* like FB and then projects those as reasons *OTHERS* should. Then they act as if it's somehow the others failure to desire the same trinkets.
  
  Erm, no. It's a personal thing. It's also a personal thing to drop a friendship because you can't click an alternate icon.
4. Re:Uh... by shutdown+-p+now · 2012-03-31 09:52 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  And if it was 100 years ago, you'd be forced to get a phone if you didn't want to become a social outcast, too. The reason for the uptake of all this tech is really simple: it makes communication more convenient. No, really, it does, and people who keep suggesting "group email" etc just don't get it - it's like saying that you shouldn't be using a text processor because doing so only indicates that you're too lazy to learn how to type with a typewriter.
  The problem with this round is that the tech comes with considerable strings attached. In theory, phone calls are also data-minable, it's just that we didn't have the capability to do so efficiently back then. Today, we have that, and we don't even need it that advanced any more because the (mostly text + some images) social networking communications are trivial to extract useful information from. So it gets done. Many geeks are rightly worried about that - but they make for an insignificant minority, and most people really don't care if their personal information ends up in a database somewhere; all they care is for that information to not come out and embarrass them (and they will be very mad if and when it does - but not until then).
Yes, please, force me to be social by Nyder · 2012-03-31 05:08 · Score: 3, Insightful

Yes, force people who do NOT want to be social to be social, that is a great way to get product support.
Stupid fucking gits.
If that shit worked, I'd be religious.

--
Be seeing you...
1. Re:Yes, please, force me to be social by TheRaven64 · 2012-03-31 07:23 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Yes, force people who do NOT want to be social to be social
  Please can we not conflate not wanting to be part of a massive centralised communications system controlled and monitored by a single unaccountable entity with not wanting to be social?
  
  --
  I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Re:centralization by Anonymous Coward · 2012-03-31 05:10 · Score: 4, Insightful

Its part of the urge to centralise.
When we are presented with more distributed services such as email, setting up your own wordpress installation, or IRC server, everyone gives there entire online existence to google, twitter & facebook.
This is better because we are putting more, bigger eggs in the worlds largest basket, which doesn't have keep eggs safe on its agenda
Social Networking in General ... by jabberwock · 2012-03-31 05:19 · Score: 5, Insightful

... has done just an excellent job in separating out, among all my friends and acquaintances, those who want me to spend my life looking at their photographs or mouse-clicking through Zynga games. And it largely segregates them.

Works for me.
It's only a problem because Google makes it one by 93+Escort+Wagon · 2012-03-31 05:35 · Score: 4, Insightful

As a result, users that do not want to join the social network are forced to either join with reservations or miss out on the social component, such as viewing pictures.
Why should anyone have to join a social network to view a friend's pictures? The only way this "problem" can exist is when the owners of the social network try to force artificial restrictions on the network.
If I post anything on Facebook - text, pictures, whatever - I can flag it as public, or I can limit access to some arbitrary group. If I want to share photos with someone who's not on Facebook, I will just mark them "public" (in practice, I tend to post my photos elsewhere; but that's beside the point). I can't imagine Google+ doesn't allow this as well - so either their network is artificially restricted in an attempt to force people into some affiliation, or else they are being disingenuous in this patent defense.

--
#DeleteChrome
Hehe by Barny · 2012-03-31 06:03 · Score: 5, Insightful

/me checks the date
Sunday April 01, @02:58AM
Yeah, it's already begun.

--
...
/me sighs
Re:Marketers by Ash-Fox · 2012-03-31 06:27 · Score: 4, Insightful

As soon as the marketers get bored of abusing G+ for SEO purposes, it's going to die a quick death.
Can you give us a prediction when MySpace is going to die a quick death?

--
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Stupid, stupid, stupid. by shiftless · 2012-03-31 10:52 · Score: 1, Insightful

Do you use your real name on Facebook?
Yes I do! So do all my friends...except for one or two. So?
One thing that non-clueless people who've actually been paying attention have noticed is that there's a lot of people on FB who DO NOT choose to use their real name. Not all, or even most of them are paranoid Ted Kaczynski types hiding out in log cabins. I've noticed a lot of young black men especially tend to change their FB name to something creative or different.
It's just another form of self expression. Why the fuck would you prevent your users from expressing themselves?
Ooh, ooh! I know this one. Because Google would have a slightly diminished capacity to track every single of its users' every move, know every single thing there is to know about that person, and sell that information at great profit for its own benefit!
So to avoid a 2% negative hit, they turn away 20% of their potential users. Real brilliant strategy you got there Google.
How do you know when a company is evil? One big sign is when it starts ignoring its customers and pressing ahead with what it wants, regardless of what its customers desire. Doesn't that description fit Google pretty aptly?
I mean, just read the description in the summary. I just love how they word things. You can just tell that these propellerheads are all totally convinced that Google+ is the best fucking thing ever. In their minds, G+ makes whoever invented sliced bread or the wheel look like a fucking chump next to their glorious creation. Listen to how goddamned concerned they are about how the "non-believers" and "anti-social-networking types" might be "missing out" on the "joys" of their platform! Oh my. Why the hell won't they just use our service, damnit? Why, if only we could grab hold of these stupid ignorant pricks and bolt them down in chairs, and make the stubborn fuckers see just how amazing our shit is! They would emerge into the world amazed, squinting at the sudden brightness and warmth of the sun, minds still reeling in incredulity from the wonders just experienced!
I'm telling you--this company is fucking evil. Yes, stupidity is evil, when it's attached to as much power as Google possesses!