It all comes down to what is considered to be an ‘authentic’ name. If, for example, you’re a member of the Screen Actor’s Guild, you probably never use your given name – as the SAG requires names on its rolls to be unique, and never used before. Thus if you have the same name as anyone previously on its rolls, you’ve no recourse but to register with the SAG under another and use it for all related activities.
Names being what they are, virtually nobody you see in the cast, crew or credits of a film are using the names they were born with. Many people increasingly use public profiles online, never leaving online traces of or using their private identity at all.
However, using a nickname, nom de plume, stage-name, professional name, or performance name might not be good enough for Google+. Google+ really seems to want your original name. The one that maybe hardly anyone actually knows you by.
I keep my own name under my hat. Quite honestly, I don’t even really use it that often. It gets pretty dusty in the meantime. Tateru Nino is the name I’ve been known by to my clients, co-workers, and employers for some years now – and even around the house at times.
In actual fact, if I were faced with the names on the driving licenses of those co-workers, clients and employers, I probably would recognise very few of them. I didn’t know them by those names. Most people that I worked with went by some other name in the normal course of things, and some – well, I’m just not sure about…. because, you know… it doesn’t matter.
It really doesn’t, because I know everything about these people that I think is important to know.
Opensource Obscure is a familiar name to many of you. You’ve seen his comments here (or elsewhere), agreed with him, argued with him, maybe thought he was a good sort, or thought he was a bit of a dick. You might be a reader of his Italian Second Life blog. You may have done business with him. In your mind he has a reputation, for good or ill.
You likely don’t know him under any other name and you might not have any interest in any other name that he has. If he were to use it, you wouldn’t recognise it, because it has no association with the identity that you’ve come to know over the years.
In other words, if he has any other name, it has no social value to you.
Nevertheless, Google suspended Obscure’s Google+ account just a short time ago, under the Community Standards – the relevant section of which reads:
Display Name
To help fight spam and prevent fake profiles, use the name your friends, family, or co-workers usually call you. For example, if your full legal name is Charles Jones Jr. but you normally use Chuck Jones or Junior Jones, either of these would be acceptable.
(Emphasis mine)
Note that this appears to apply to Google profiles generally, and not just Google+.
This is troublesome. Of the 436 people that I currently have in my Google+ circles, fewer than ten of those use the name that they carry in their wallets. The funny thing is that that isn’t terribly new. My father, and his contemporaries rarely did either. In post-War Australia it seemed commonplace for use-names to diverge quite significantly from wallet names. I was probably fifteen before I found out that the name in my father’s wallet wasn’t the one that he used on a day-to-day basis, and then shortly after found out that very few people did.
My hair-dresser’s name wasn’t Sylvia. The notorious Granny Steele (whom some few thought to be a witch) – well, she wasn’t a Granny, and actually she wasn’t a ‘Steele’ either (I couldn’t tell you if she was a witch or not). The list goes on. Turns out that my uncle, a prominent QC, didn’t wear his wallet-name either. I used to know a guy called Toasted Cheese (after the famous poem, that even now you are struggling to identify) and another called Zaphod. Heaven knows what their wallet-names were. It didn’t matter.
As a society we acquired use-names and just used them, indifferent to getting a deed-poll done, since the government cheerfully allowed (and allows) us to use those alternates for both government and business usages. Some even simply put their wallet-names instead of their accreted ones in the “Are you known by any other names” section of the forms.
I asked my father back then, if he never used his wallet name, why not get if formally changed?
“If you never use it, why bother changing it?” he replied, and lectured me on the persistence of identity, and the application of labels and nomenclature. My dad rocked, by the way.
Officially as of 24 February, Google’s public policy position (“The freedom to be who you want to be”) was that pseudonymous use of a number of Google products was fine. Even to go so far as implicitly encouraging it.
Someone at Google clearly didn’t get that memo, or maybe it’s just that Google+ (or anything tied to a Google Profile) is exempt from that policy.
Google profiles are becoming somewhat pervasive, increasingly interconnecting the various Google products, and the pseudonymity that Google supports in some products is inherently undermined if it starts whacking connected profiles based on a suspicion that a name isn’t what people “usually call you”.
Pseudonymous usage is apparently just fine, until Google decides it wants you to pony up a photo ID. This isn’t about Opensource Obscure specifically, but his suspension devalues Google+ for me just a little bit. One down, four hundred and thirty-five to go. But as even Google will well tell you, it’s the network effects that matter. Each individual generates more value to the network than simple user numbers would suggest.
Obscure has submitted an appeal over the suspension, but since it is such a subjective matter, I find myself doubting that it will be successful.
I contacted Google for an official comment and an explanation of the seeming dichotomy, but Larry and Sergey’s corporate behemoth was slow in providing any official statement on the matter. Being Australian, I suspect my enquiry was routed to an Australian PR representative without anyone thinking for a moment, “Wait. It is after-hours on a Friday there, nobody will be there to answer for more than two days.” If I hear back from them, I’ll add in their comments.
In the absence of an official response, I suppose it comes down to whether some administrative bod – in their limited experience – thinks that the name you’re using is the name people know you by … or not.
I wonder what Mark Twain would have had to say. I’m guessing he wouldn’t have bothered to have Samuel Clemens sign up to a Google Profile to say it.
Thanks for the persistence and updates, Tateru.
“I’m not giving my name to a machine!”
Bender Bending Rodriguez:- Futurama, My Three Suns, 1ACV07
After a review, Google has rejected Opensource Obscure’s appeal. His Google profile will remain suspended.
If someone feels the need to tell you they are not evil, they usually are. Google has always been evil and all about collecting information about us. I believe in the near future, anonymity will be illegal. Governments are already shooting for it. Corporations are clamoring for it too.
Earlier today, I received an email from a reputation protector service. They told me where I lived, with a google streetview photo of my home. My birthdate, names of a number of people I know, my unlisted phone number, the last five online purchases I made (from different companies), five of the email addresses I use most, a speeding ticket I got two years ago and a number of other facts. They offered to show me my full report and show which places were storing this information for the low price of 29.99!
I’m very careful with my information. I don’t use any social collect-all-my-data sites. And still they have all this information. Even if it’s a scam, I don’t want even this much stuff being available to the world. But maybe it’s not even worth the fight. The government and corporations will win this battle, not me. I’m seriously thinking about just getting off the internet altogether. It’s been fun, but it’s stealing our souls.
Lili. that’s the sort of thing which makes me very glad that I live in the EU, where it would be a crime to share personal data such as that without permission.
The problem with pseudonyms and advertising is that, even if the pseudonym is a significant, consistent, trackable, presence, it’s not the name/identity that gets put on an actual order/payment. They don’t know which advert brought that transaction to them.
In the past, they hardly ever did. So what’s new. But the appeal of internet adverts is that they can make a connection, quite easily. In the end, they think their knowledge gives them power, and, as Lord Acton said, power tends to corrupt.
Doing no evil is useless if it is just a slogan. It needs a continuing effort, a repeated active choice. If you’re familiar with the Gospels, you’ll know what’s in Matthew 25, and you will have to be ready to make the right choice when it comes.
Your religion, or whatever the basis for your morality is, doesn’t have to be Christian. You don’t have to believe in any supernatural entity. But words without action, they’ll break you soon enough.
This blog post is really interesting, it strongly implies that Google+ may very well be breaking Federal law by removing avatar accounts. Hmmmm….
http://cityofnidus.blogspot.com/2011/07/google-and-future-of-avatar-identity.html?utm_source=Andromeda+Blog
Very interesting discussion there, too.
If it is done on the basis of name alone it can certainly be considered discriminatory.
Well I see all the usual suspects are all present and accounted for on google+. Except Opensource Obscure. I spent some time following circle links of well known SL avatars and there was only one link that returned a 404. Opensource Obscure. Perhaps one of the former Lindens that went to Google is behind the removal of Opensource Obscure. I don’t see google wiping out hordes of avatar accounts. From what I see only one of 100,000 got whacked. Tempest in a teacup?
It all hinges on what Google’s policy is – I should have more back from Google about it in a few hours.
“@openspaceobscure before my suspension I contacted Google asking for clearer name policy, so they may have focused on me.”
so he stirred up the issue by inquiring. i tried to tell him to keep his head down.
It would have happened sooner or later. Better now than suddenly in six months time, right?
My alter-ego (under which I am posting) is more real than me. I have avoided Facebook because they explicitly disallow pseudonymous accounts. I’lll happily dump google if they turn out to also be so shortsighted.
I’m wondering if the reason I can not push a Googe+ invite to my other gmail account – the one for the completely separate other part of my life, not a sockpuppet account – after days of trying, is that both are linked on my android phone (the only place they are linked – I normally use them in different browsers etc, but it was just too convenient to have both right there on Android – bad mistake).
But it could as easily have been a business account and a personal one, a parent monitoring their teenagers email from their phone (ew), a couple putting both emails on one smartphone while travelling. People have multiple account for multiple reasons. Stop inconveniencing them for not using things the way you would, google. And pseudonymous is not anonymous.
@NotMyNormalName: “…pseudonymous is not anonymous.”
This sums it up, doesn’t it? When I first put up my Facebook profile under my real name, people had trouble finding me, because they mostly know me by my DJ name. One can find me all over the web under my DJ name. That’s not anonymity.
Sort it out, Google.
[...] reading about Opensource Obscure’s run-in with Google+ (also covered here), I was pondering the following question: As (presumably) authors writing under pen names and SAG [...]
Back in the days when I joined the internet, using your real name was very uncommon. Nowadays using a pseudonym seems to be a breach of most service’s TOS. Times they are a-changin.
As I’ve pointed out elsewhere, Google – like Facebook — is totally missing the point here.
One thing is, of course, identity theft. I’m sure that everybody would want Google to deal with that swiftly. Lady Gaga wouldn’t be happy if a thousand people joined Google Plus claiming to be Lady Gaga. That’s one side of the story which I believe everybody would agree with. And I would also agree that it’s different to use ladygaga@gmail.com as an email address and having a fake profile with lots of pictures of Lady Gaga.
The other thing is pseudonymity, and that has a wide range of possibilities. For example, what would be so wrong about having J. K. Rowling creating a Google Plus account under “Harry Potter”? (which is not even a pseudonym but a fictional character, trademarked by Rowling’s estate). People are more likely to know who “Harry Potter” is than “J. K. Rowling”. They would love to befriend “Harry Potter” and stay in touch with what “Harry Potter” says — announcements about the books and movies and so forth. Now, this is “hot” data. Millions might follow “Harry Potter” (but not J. K. Rowling), and that profiling data will tell advertisers a lot about common interests and allow them to tailor ads to pop up every time someone manifests a desire to be part of a Circle including “Harry Potter”. Bookstores, DVD stores, and so forth would immensely benefit from knowing that there is a specific hangout (pun intended) where Harry Potter fans usually exchange information, and be able to target it with their ads.
So-called “avatar names” — an expression which I personally dislike; it’s discriminatory because it implies that “avatars” somehow are second-class citizens — are not different. In fact, they’re nothing more and nothing less than “handles” (more than merely nicknames) associated with a wealth of data. SL residents, of course, share SL as a common passion — but SL is not all what they share. They share fashion experiences; techie experiences; common tastes; artistic values and discussions; a certain attitude towards online immersion; and so forth. All this is raw data worth millions to be mined and profiled in order to present to potential ad buyers.
But it goes even deeper than that. SL residents with their pseudonyms are eager online shoppers — of course, a few rely on freebies, but the majority is already willing to spend money on online products, goods, and services. Specially digital goods and digitally-produced services (like, say, DJ’ing or machinima production). Compared to the average Internet user, SL residents are far more willing to shop online (because that’s what they do in SL) and buy digital goods without physical counterparts — be they music, video, software, or any other thing. They’re used to subscription services (Premium accounts, tier). And it should be very easy for a data mining expert to prove the huge difference, on average, between the SL population and the non-SL population in all those areas. So, in effect, SL residents are above-the-average online consumers. What kind of company scorns that type of market? If they just had access to a list of SL residents’ email addresses (something that LL will never volunteer — they might get hacked, but that’s not the same thing as volunteering that data), it would be way, way more valuable than a random sample of email addresses from so-called “real name” Google Profiles.
So someone is utterly missing the point at Google and not even understanding what business model Google operates under. They’re a mass-data-mining operation which sells targeted ads. Pseudonyms of SL residents are way more valuable than “real names” because all these residents are way more prone to shop online and click on online ads for products and services, specially digital (non-physical) ones. That kind of information is valuable to advertisers. If I worked at Google, I would not only embrace SL pseudonyms eagerly and work together with LL to get an arrangement to extract as much data from SL residents as possible, but I would actually sell that information more expensively than a batch of random “real names” which might or not might shop online at all, no matter how persuasive the ads targeted for them might be.
So they’re also shutting down the opportunity to sell ads to roughly 20 million SL residents. Of course I know not all are active; but the same can be said from any sample of 20 million “real names” that Google might have on their database. All they can say is, “here is a group of 20 million users that have far higher probability of shopping online. All of them have one thing in common: they love Second Life”. As a placer of ads myself, I’m interested that my ads only target Second Life residents (because none of the things I sell are targeted to anyone else but SL residents). Google is simply closing a market of 20 million potential users. It would be as silly as to exclude Australians from Google Plus (also a market of roughly 20 million people), because, well, Australians might have “funny names” or look strange on pictures.
Nevermind justice, fairness, discriminative policies, and so forth; Google, like any other corporation, mostly listens to their wallet and their clients. And in this case what they’re just saying is that a half-a-billion US$ market with 20 million users “doesn’t interest Google and their advertisers”. I find that simply stupid in the business sense of the word; no self-styled CEO would throw that opportunity out of the window and remain in office after making such a stupid decision…
But then again, fanaticism — and ostracising pseudonyms is really nothing more than a form of fanaticism tied to discriminatory procedures — is hardly ever rational…
[...] see why. Pseudonymous identities can be every bit as authentic as real ones. (Google+ has already run into a dilemma on this issue.) Moreover, each identity actually has to be accepted into your chosen cliques, so behavioral norms [...]