Pseudonyms Now Allowed On Google+

An anonymous reader writes When Google+ launched, it received criticism across the internet for requiring that users register with their real names. Now, Google has finally relented and removed all restrictions on what usernames people are allowed to use. The company said, "We know you've been calling for this change for a while. We know that our names policy has been unclear, and this has led to some unnecessarily difficult experiences for some of our users. For this we apologize, and we hope that today's change is a step toward making Google+ the welcoming and inclusive place that we want it to be."

Comments

Youtube Comments

[exomondo]

I see the only major impact of this being that people can now leave pseudonymous comments on Youtube again.

Re:Youtube Comments

[Darinbob]

Google+ is not about a popularity contest. It's about being social without being on facebook, or keeping track of special interest groups (including celebreties). The only real problem with Google+ was that it wanted to tie you to other stupid services like youtube, without even letting you go slumming on a separate account. Google should have left it alone instead of trying to get a one-acount-fits-all login (trying too hard to be a facebook clone instead of being something better).

Re:Youtube Comments

[Glarimore]

There's no reason to be contributing to that pool of bile anyway. Youtube comments are notoriously atrocious.

Re:Youtube Comments

[fractoid]

I don't think that would have made that much difference to them, honestly. They already have pretty much all of your data.

My issue with it was that while I've come to terms with Google knowing everything about me, it doesn't follow that I'm OK with everyone else knowing everything about me.

Re:Youtube Comments

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no reason to be contributing to that pool of bile anyway. Youtube comments are notoriously atrocious.

They got worse with the redesign, though.

Old and busted: You could always look at page 1/2/3 of the comments or binary-search your way through the pages (pre-page-57 or post-page 57? pre-page 84 or post-page-84?) if a video that hadn't been relevant for ages became relevant. At 100 comments per page, all displayed in full, and popping tabs for each page with a bunch of middle-clicks, it was relatively easy to skim through the 99.99% of the shit to find the 0.01% you wanted
New hotness: Some fucking UXtard goes for infinite scroll, and you have to click to expand subthreads, and then click to expand any comment longer than three lines in any subthread.

Every time a UX designer fucks with something to make it more mobile-friendly, they make it less usable for both desktop and mobile users.

Re:Youtube Comments

[coastwalker]

The information on the web is steadily disappearing behind shit UI designs. So many information sites of one kind or another have gone all flash, all icons, all pictures, all randomly spread over the page like vomit and repeated at random intervals in random blocks of "stuff you must see".

Fortunately slidy tiles will be out of fashion eventually and we can all laugh at the people who think they are cool as we should be doing now.

Re:Youtube Comments

[Alioth]

The whole problem is UX designers exist. I don't want a user experience. If a user interface is giving me an experience, it's getting in the way of what I want to do. User interfaces should melt into the background and explicitly NOT give me an experience. I should barely notice the user interface.

We need to get rid of UX designers and replace them with competent UI designers instead.

Re:In other words

[osu-neko]

Yeah, I already figured Google knows who I am and what all my aliases are anyhow. It's not Google I'm trying to keep from putting the pieces together, it's J. Random HR twerp who doesn't need to know my hobbies and kinks to determine if I'm qualified for the job.

This is bad

[geekoid]

having to use real names has made it far less trollish then other places.

Re:Anonymity makes sense for special cases.

[jeIIomizer]

Whistleblowing, witness protection, for example. For most other cases anonymity degenerates into a cesspool of behavior that is not accepted in normal society.

People suppress their true nature in "normal society." "normal society" bores me to tears.

Overnoght the forum changed from endless spam and trolling to respectful discourse between actual people.

More like useless, non-controversial discourse. By tying everything to real names, you make it less likely that anyone will do anything controversial, even when it needs to be done. Who knows if a future employer will decide to not hire you because you said something they don't like, even if you thought it was completely innocuous?

I'd rather deal with trolls and spam than have "respectful discourse" between fake people.

Re:Anonymity makes sense for special cases.

[seebs]

You're failing to distinguish between anonymity and pseudonymity.

You could argue that "seebs" isn't my "real name", although it's the only name I reliably answer to. But I've got ~30 years of history using this name, and nowhere near as much visible history under the name on my government ID, so this is the one I care about.

Re:The Internet is meant to be anonymous

[jeIIomizer]

With "say controversial things" you mean trolling?

Is that seriously the only thing you can think of? Take controversial topics like child porn, pedophilia, etc. Get on the 'wrong' side of an argument and you may find yourself the target of an angry mob - perhaps literally.

Don't you think life would be better for you if you could assume who you are and what you think instead of having to hide and having to be a hypocrite?

Don't you think life would be better if the world was perfect? Well, it isn't. You risk not being hired, being fired, losing many opportunities, and being harassed by the government. You also chase away people who don't want any of the things I just listed to happen to them. Maybe you expect people to just ignore all that, but the fact is, people don't. Some people change and convince themselves that they're being themselves, even when they're not. I don't want to hang out with fake people.

Besides, I like my privacy. I like knowing that it's difficult to tie many things to me.

Do you like it when people lie to you in order to obtain some kind of friendship from you?

No, that's why I like anonymity.

But my guess is you never posted anything which could justify it.

You base this on nothing. And since when is this just about me? I'm more afraid of others ceasing to produce insightful and thought provoking content, all in the name of stopping "trolling," something that only thin-skinned people have trouble dealing with anyway.