Last week, there was an apparent contradiction in Google’s recently published policy in the use of pseudonyms for Google products versus its actual practice. After obtaining additional clarification, that contradiction has gotten far more pronounced.
That is, you must use the name in your wallet as opposed to any other for Google Profiles and Google Plus … except where Google decides for some reason that you don’t have to.
If you’re just after the short version, based on enquiries with a Google spokesperson it boils down to this: Google staff apparently guess whether a name on a Google profile is the name you “go by in daily life”, suspend the profile (and your associated Google Plus account) if they don’t think it is and then require you to somehow prove that that is what people routinely call you. There apparently isn’t any standard of proof available, other than sending them links to LinkedIn profiles or scans of photo ID.
This is apparently all in the name of “fighting spam” and “preventing fake profiles” (which is, presumably, another spam thing). There’s also the matter of impersonation, which has already caused trouble in the past for people over on Facebook who have lost their accounts because they coincidentally have the same names as celebrities.
“Google’s process in dealing with suspect names seems so arbitrary that it is functionally indistinguishable from capriciousness”
Google’s process in dealing with suspect names seems so arbitrary that it is functionally indistinguishable from capriciousness, especially in light of the fact that just weeks ago, Google seemed to be just fine with pseudonyms, but as Google profiles become increasingly pervasive and linked to other Google products, something has to give.
Further complicating matters are celebrities like Wil Wheaton, and Felicia Day, and people like me, none of whom are using their original names, but instead the public names that we’re routinely known by. Apparently that’s okay, but only if you’re well-known enough. Otherwise you’d be required to change to Richard Wheaton III or Kathryn Day. I doubt either of these two would have their names challenged.
The metric is a vague one: “the name that you commonly go by in daily life.” How much usage constitutes “commonly”. I use the name “Tateru Nino” more often than any other name, and it’s the only name I use online or for work. Is that “commonly” enough? Google seems to think that it is sufficient in my case, but frankly my personal confidence in that is at an ebb.
It feels like anyone with an unusual-sounding name could be suspended at any time, and that their activities and connections to other users through Google products are apparently not considered as a factor in determining the validity of their name. Hundreds of people might know you as (for example) Opensource Obscure, be having conversations with you and sharing links with you on Google Plus and so forth – but that sort of practical legitimacy doesn’t seem to count.
Speaking both personally and professionally, the safety (or lack thereof) of my own Google Account is of less concern to me than that of the people in my Google Plus circles. If they start taking a hit because some admin bod at Google thinks their names ‘sound a bit weird’, then Google Plus is devalued for me.
Almost (but not entirely) everyone in my Google Plus circles uses a pseudonym. It’s quite understandable, being that that pseudonym is the name they’re most likely to be known as to others online. Were they to expose their wallet-names, few would have any idea who they are. It’s also a smart way of reducing the risk of identity-related crimes and maintaining privacy. Many identity experts advocate the use of pseudonymity online for just such reasons.
Legally, in the USA and Australia [edit: and the UK], it’s shaky ground to discriminate on the basis of someone’s name, even if that name is a pseudonym, as a pseudonym has the same legal weight as any other name you might have, in those two countries. Both the USA and Australia [edit: and the UK] allow someone to select and use virtually any name ‘at will’ so long as it is not done with fraudulent intent. You can stick a pseudonym on your tax forms, file a lawsuit with it, register a copyright (although for reduced time-limits of 95/120 years) or trademark with one, or appear in court under one, so long as you’re not doing so in order to violate any law or regulation, or to evade any lawful obligation.
Quite why Google might have reversed course on pseudonymous use of their products is an open question. Google spokespersons would not be drawn out on the topic, and did not address the deep contradiction involved. Perhaps it is a sop held out to advertisers, or perhaps it is merely just an overzealous anti-spam policy. Google says that users may use the appeals process at sign-up (or later) to have the name on their Google account changed to their wallet-names, if they wish and they are able to prove the legitimacy of that name to Google (most likely by photo ID).
What Google has made clear is that for Profiles and Plus (and by extension, eventually for all of Google’s products), only the name in your wallet is ultimately going to suffice – unless you pass some nebulous standard for ‘well-knownness’.
I wonder if I can get a UK passport with my pseudonym…
Tateru, we ARE freakin famous as we have not been deleted YET hihihi….the name that i commonly go by in daily life is DADDY I AM TIRED AND WANT SOME ICE=CREAM!!!!
This is the Internet. It was built on pseudonyms. It’s not up to Google to change it, but to work with it.
For now though, checking with supervisor regarding the feasibility of having the name on my staff photo ID card & payslip changed, so in the event that Google decide to do such asshattery as suspending my account, I actually have ID/paperwork to get it unsuspended more easily than relying on my use of the names “signpost” and “marv” for a little over 10~ years, although “SignpostMarv” was only used in conjunction with each other for 6-8 years I think?
Funny, I was just pondering this earlier today – maybe if we need to officially recognise virtual identities as legitimate then we also need a generic term for them? We’ve already got eponym, synonym, antonym and acronym – why not add ‘virtuanym’ (or something better?) as the term to describe a virtual and alternate identity?
LOL draxtor! The name I’m most frequently called is “So Sweetheart.”
“So Sweetheart, what are we gonna have for dinner?”
“So Sweetheart, what time are you working today?”
“So Sweetheart, I’m tired, how about you?”
Well, it looks like I’ll be copying my contact list out of gmail, moving my reading list out of google reader, closing my youtube account and… once my mobile phone subscription is up, move away from android…
If my account is suspended, I will never touch another google product again.
There ARE alternatives!
Well I didnt get around to starting Google+ yet tho I have an invite. Funny thing with me is my sl name became my “real” name in almost everything I do online. It’s true what Tipa says but as Microsoft at one time ‘owned’ the operating system either Google or Facebook are on the verge of owning the internet. Time will tell who wins in the end.
Wonder if having my CC informationn in Google data basis to pay for the Picnik pro account will turn me into a real person…
Was hoping that this would be an alternative to facebook (that cancelled my account for fake ID, in spite of having my real data there hidden under alternate indentity and having sent scanning of my ID) but with all this mess I start wondering
@Eris Polynym?
re: android, what about compiling binaries from the public sources ?
summary of reply from supervisor: not feasible unless I get married or have my name changed by deed poll.
In any case, Siobhan Taylor has been my online ID since 2003-2004. And all of that time on google. The amount of hassle involved in changing all the places it’s recorded as my email address could be huge. Fortunately, I am still there (for now), but I am kinda afraid to even use my email for fear of being shut down.
Facebook began culling avatars a while back, but then allowed a PR group to create fake IDs to promote the US Census.
I wonder how long it will be before Google does the same thing.
All about the cash.
-ls/cm
In that case, I see no point in investing much time in Google+. For me it can be a nice sharing tool (one of the too many) but not a real social network.
I wonder (perhaps smugly) if Google search hits can count as evidence of the significance of one’s pseudonym when it becomes necessary to show some.
I wouldn’t call it an airtight idea. There are plenty of holes in it too obvious to bother noting.
But if it’s truly about how you’re best known, then it stands to reason that for online social networking, how you’re best known *online* would be particularly relevant. And what more obvious way is there to get a sense of that than with the monarch of search engines?
I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that Google is receiving pressure from lawmakers and/or homeland security on the matter. There is certainly a lot of cultural FUD out there about pseudonyms on the Internet, and lawmakers are great about buying into cultural FUD.
In any event, there’s a business opportunity here. Somebody with the resources to back it up could set up a Diaspora server and reach out hugely to the pseudonym-using community seeking to build social networks. (Just as after Linden removed the educational discount, OpenSim-based grids started reaching out to edu folks; I think it remains to be seen how much *that* diaspora paid off.)
@Crap, you are as cynical as I am about this. I enjoy Google’s services, but let’s never forget what Lawrence Lessig predicted for the Internet: that in a decade, it may be the most tightly regulated space imaginable. All it would take would be the collusion of the service providers and governments.
And unless you are a mondo-brilliant hacker, that would be your world: rather like AT&T in the 1960s in the USA. Dependable and boring as heck.
We might look back to experiments like SL with a lot more nostalgia than we can currently imagine. Maybe we are seeing a final flourishing of open online communities before the Corporate Big Boyz and their bought-and-sold politicians shut it down…
So many people I know call me Chaffro on a day-to-day basis. If I’d have known this turn of events was coming, I wouldn’t have signed up for Google+ using my real name.
Without knowledge/history/reputation, all names are anonymous. A rose by any other name might smell as sweet, but if you don’t know what a rose is, the name is just so much noise in an already noisy world.
Until you know of its sweet scent or fierce thorns or colourful petals, the word ‘rose’ is less than even fiction.
thanks for the analysis and the link on the pseudonym dealio =)
Madonna and Lady Gaga will be relieved to see that their pseudonym’s have legal standing!
i did G+ for the first time the other day and have one friend or whatever Google calls it, but i doubt’ i’ll use it at all – twitter works the absolute best for me, well that’s not entirely true, blogging works the best for me and is really all i care about
funny, the internet itself is a social network – it’s just that blogs take more effort than facebook and the other “non-creative” type outlets (ooh, french canadian snobbism rising to the sujrface) =)
thanks again, it’s a subjetc i enjoy
Another way to put it is that Google is saying Google Profile sorting is going to be handled like an argument between Wikipedia editors… only behind closed doors, where nobody who could provide simple references for the validity of a fact is allowed to contribute.
And you thought Wikipedia could be pointless sometimes! Holy cow.
@Tateru – How about ‘imaginym’?
Having been the victim of identity fraud, I don’t use my real name online unless it’s necessary. For example Amazon.com gets it so they can charge my credit card and deliver to my home address, but Google does not need it since they do neither. Other people would have safety issues using their real name from stalkers and other nasty people. Like if you have your real name and home town on your profile, and you post a photo you just took while on vacation, that is just asking for burglars to come visit your home.
Will Google’s profile police have expertise in every naming system on the planet, and in every alphabet? How will they detect well constructed but fake profiles? That is what I do for annoying websites that require filling in real life details to register. My fake profile has gotten credit card offers by mail, it’s been used so often.
Damn. I often accuse Miso of being paranoid, but maybe she’s on to something.
I would not mind giving my real name for Googles database, as long as it is not visible or is not used in a way that links my RL self to my Alt self. By the way… Both ARE the same person, I have only 1 keyboard to connect to my small world outside my computer.
I see a lucrative and probably legal new trade looming…fake ID for Google+.
I don’t think the Feds would prosecute.
What is interesting is they have an “alternate names” and a “nicknames” field. I think that alleviates the issue to some degree, no?
Quick! Everyone sign up for Google+ as “John Smith”. It’s real enough looking, and heaven knows there’s a lot of them. Oh, it’s a pseudonym? Darn.
For the past three years, I’ve been Darrius Gothly. Before that I was Darrius Greydon, the Gothly coming about because of the crazy “you can have any last name you want, as long as it’s one of …” rules on Second Life. It literally took me two years to finally find and rename/retarget the important things in my Internet Life from Greydon to Gothly .. and there’s still a number of things that just cannot be changed.
For some time now I’ve been putting more and more of my online duties onto Google’s shoulders, primarily because I saw them taking steps that made sense and helped me maximize my efforts while easing the confusion and hassle too.
And then we come to this. To find out that all of my effort and the years of growing trust could suddenly be wiped out because someone doesn’t think I’m well known enough to deserve the name I have? The name I’ve spent three long years building up and promoting?
Yup, that is a level of uncertainty in business that not even the U.S. Congress can muster.
Is Google’s motto now “Don’t be very evil?”
http://gridwidenews.yolasite.com/activism/censorship-runs-under-a-new-flag-of-spam-blockers#/
Perhaps choosing a SL name that looks “real” was a good move on my part. I have Google accounts for both my RL and SL/OSim identities, and once I finally manage to get on G+, had intended to use it with both accounts. If Google is just eyeballing names, Marcus Llewellyn should pass muster. But if it gets removed from G+, that’ll suck, but I s’pose I can just fall back to my RL one.
Like most of us, I consider my VW pseudonym to be a very valid identity. I use it consistently across all of the VWs I visit, and probably as many people on the planet know me as Marcus as they do by Mike. It’s a shame that you’ll pretty much need to have a legally trademarked identity such as those celebrities use, when for many of us our SL monikers are just as valid an identity in a de facto, if not de jure sense.
On a related note, I don’t actually even use the name that’s on my birth certificate IRL. I changed my first name when I was a child, and have used it consistently on everything from my drivers license to book club memberships. There’s no legal requirement for me to legally change my name to make this valid, only that I stick with the name I have chosen, with no intent of misrepresentation or fraud.
Ha! all You are spammers here.
Its easy to see, as google+ learned us right, all this ‘SignpostMarv’, ‘draxtor’, ‘Tipa’, … wait! that is suspiciously ‘Dil Spitz’?
Dil Spitz?!? pah, surely a spammer or something even more terrible!
“This is the Internet. It was built on pseudonyms. It’s not up to Google to change it, but to work with it.”
This. THIS. *headdesk*
My Google name is not my current SL name, because my Google account predates both my SL accounts by many, many years. I’d love to have a Google+ name under my current SL name, tho, so long as it was handled in a way that only those who NEEDED to know what my regular Google account name was could see it. Someone I know well from SL and several OpenSim grids DID recently offer me a Google+ account, and I took it… but I appear as my RL name there. And so does she. Mind you, she DOES know me by my real name, too… but, yeah, most of the time in cyberspace she sees me as Nathan. But I’m guessing she appears by her real name on Google+ for the same reason I do, that her Google account existed well before she was on SL.
On the other hand, she already knew my RL name, and I knew hers, because one particular opensim grid we were both on, she was on staff there, and I was being prepared to possibly go on staff there, and that grid had a policy that all those on staff had to be known by their real name internally. Unfortunately, that grid has since folded, due to some other… really unfortunate and totally unfair legal matter.
But, to be honest, most of the people I know on SL and opensim do NOT know me by my real name, and I’d rather it stayed that way, if only because Drama with a Capital D sometimes gets the better of people in VR worlds… and I don’t want someone who mistakenly thinks I wronged them cyberstalking me! OO
I’m not into facebook, I log into it once or twice a week for five minutes, but this Google+ is already sorta shooting itself in the foot for people that…want to have fun. No unique/custom names, possibility to not be signed in on an alternate email address using a fake name to avoid having your real name spammed…etc.
From discussions on SLU, let me add another reason to not use your real name on Google+, that being if you are under 18. Their terms of service say you need to be of legal age, but I don’t remember being presented with their TOS when accepting the invite for the service, and most people don’t read TOS pages even when presented with them.
The previous reasons were identity theft, stalking, and real life theft if your profile says you are out of town.
Upon further consideration I do wonder how this will shake out for Google since “their crowd” dips far more into the pools of culture already apt to use avatars on the internet. The techies, serious geeks, and people who make the Internet their business.
Facebook never raised a collective eyebrow at “REAL NAMES ONLY, PAPERS, PLEASE.” because its target audience was largely people who only wanted to use the Internet to advertise their real life identity and locate others based on real life identity. Facebook as a whole even developed a strong cultural bias against pseudonyms; to a lot of Facebook users, “what you can do on the internet” is more limited in scope than it is for many net savvy individuals. It never even occurs to many people why anyone would use a “fake name” instead of being “real and accountable”.
The thing is, Google isn’t going to suck away those 700 million Facebook users. They don’t have Farmville! The people who they’re annoying with this identity business are, I’m willing to bet, a very large minority of the same people they hope will populate G+ and help it achieve critical mass.
Online “handles” go all the way back to the days of ham radio. I suspect with that level of enculturation, and the usage of online nicknames and email addresses, that attempting to force a change to “birthnames only” is a losing proposition. Being Susan49325 has much less appeal than being Fogwoman. Creating a name that describes you has been part of signing up for online services for years.
The changes in those names, as time and technology has evolved, represents our personal history. I believe the majority of women will still change names at least once in their lives, just by virtue of marrying. Some of us more often than others
So what name do “most who know me” call me by? When? In what context?
I have MANY names
Based on what Kai just said, I have a feeling Google may have to learn the hard way on this. They can’t be exactly like Facebook, but here they are adopting the same rules as Facebook… without factoring in why Facebook has the rules they do, for if they did, they’d realize some of those rules ONLY make sense for Facebook, and not for Google+.
It brings to mind an old illustration I heard. This housewife, when she cooked a roast, she would always cut off the ends and throw them away before cooking it in the oven. She did that for years and years. One day her son asked her why, and she said, “Well, that’s the way my mom always did it.”
The son went and visited his grandma, and saw she did, indeed cut off the ends of the roast before cooking it in the oven. He asked her why, and she said, “Well, that’s the way my mom always did it.”
The son went and visited his great grandma, and asked her why she always cut off the ends of the roast.
“Well, I don’t do that anymore.”
“Well, why did you used to do that?”
“Well, here, let me show you my OLD oven,” and she took her to the old oven, now dumped out in the barn, and it turns out the oven was too small for the roast, so she’d always cut off the ends to make it fit. BUT, when she got a newer, more modern oven in recent years… it no longer had that problem, so she stopped cutting off and throwing away the ends of the roast!
Well, Google+ are cutting off the ends of the roast, because that’s what Facebook are doing. But, Google+ have got a different sized oven, so it’s pointless!
Google has not yet demonstrated an inability to “see clearly” in matters like this. I would suspect this is not the time when they are suddenly myopic either. Their business path has been to “do what others have done, but do it better” .. of that there is no disagreement. But Google+ isn’t “The Social Network for the Rest Of Us”, it’s the “Outdo Facebook at their own game” invention.
Facebook has stumbled some in recent past, and Google smells blood. Google+ isn’t the game playing land that Facebook is because that’s not the core of Facebook; social connection between RL people is the bedrock platform of FB and apparently also Google+.
We Netizens that insist on our fakeonyms because of all our various reasons, we already socialize in 100′s of other ways that are friendly to our identity, but Google+ isn’t friendly to us and won’t be because we aren’t their target.
It’s a shame though because it’s going to pull the rug out from underneath many of us that are dependent on Google .. unless of course they somehow manage to brand their various products that are “RL Only” separate from those that are indifferent to the name attached to the app.
Anti-pseudonym bingo
http://geekfeminism.org/2011/07/08/anti-pseudonym-bingo/
The status of pseudonymity and privacy on Google+
http://geekfeminism.org/2011/07/10/the-status-of-pseudonymity-and-privacy-on-google/
Is this something you find out at signup or does it take a while to get cancelled? .
The terms of service are available when you sign up – and as always, such terms should be read carefully. Thereafter, whether you are using a pseudonym or not, your profile is safe until someone at Google thinks it might sound a bit weird and suspends it pending your proving that it meets their standards, or changing the name to something that you can prove.
I’m not using Google+.
I’ve seen several stories about incidents similar to this, where people seem to have been locked out of every Google service they use.
My Gmail account uses, for the username, the word that forms my domain name. My domain name provider, because of European privacy laws, excluded my name and address from WHOIS responses. However, Google do have my real name (or a form of it) attached to that account.
The name isn’t Wolf Baginski. (Which is, apparently, a plausible name. They’re both names found in Poland.)
The thing is, I’m not sure that I want to link my SL name to my RL name, except as necessary to use SL. I have to trust Linden Lab with that linkage, and I’m not so sure I can trust them as I once was, but revealing it to Google+ or Facebook is adding hugely to the risk.
Maybe SL should have kept Avatars United running.
Minor edit to the article to add the UK as a country which also allows pseudonyms to be used for any legal purpose.
Yet another reason for some people to avoid real names: political safety for themselves and their friends. In half the world this is a real issue. Or does Google think Google+ is only for people who live in countries with enlightened governments?
Just another Facebook. I did not adhere to the policy on FB when I signed up, but changed to my real name when two people (who were actually using their real names) had their accounts suspended for misrepresenting themselves. I hate it, but I’ve been in too long now to get out.
Google found out that there is money to be made by selling real identities. Whether the user is aware or not, that’s what FB does. I’ve never had any delusions about my privacy, but I liked the idea that Googling my name would not reveal the real me at all. The fake name is more well known on the Internet, and I will not sign up anywhere else that requires my birth name, unless I’m buying something or signing a petition.
via Dirk Talamasca
https://plus.google.com/114929190273737402078/posts/iWuTJzUGF9G
it seems well establishied web identities have a chance
[...] learned through the author of Beth Fish Reads, that the overlords at Google have decided that you must use your real name by July 31 on Google +. Now I could go into a long diatribe about why I use the name “Unfinished Person” and [...]
Interesting post on CNN about Google+ .. seems we’re not the only community feeling a bit bewildered by the “WTH” factor.
http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/social.media/07/13/google.plus.confusion/index.html
I’ve been a long-time follower of privacy concerns, including following Lauren Weinstein’s Privacy forum since the late 1970s. I asked him what his take on this question was, and he published a response Tuesday, citing this blog. You can find it here:
http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000880.html
Read it, promoted it, and replied to it:
http://dwellonit.taterunino.net/2011/07/14/second-life-mesh-upload-questionnaire-now-usable-in-beta/…. and yeah, that would be the wrong link in the paste-buffer. Let’s have another go at that: http://dwellonit.taterunino.net/2011/07/13/of-nyms-and-names/Tateru;
Lets be frank, it is simple, for Facebook and Google this all has to do about money, and linking, tracking and compiling data on real people ergo real consumers. My ID JeanRicard gets 60,200 Google search returns, but JeanRicard does not buy cars or lindens, only spends virtual (we can’t call it money) in SL. Ford & AT&T do not want to know me. I only create problems for the database and allot of data cleaning/scrubbing to make the data sets valuable.
Well, I’m a real consumer. I spend actual money on things, and this is the name I do it under. The same goes for quite a lot of other nymous folks, from discussions I’ve had with them – though I’ve no idea what percentage. I work under this name, I buy things online under this name.
This is sillyness. “the name” you go by in daily life. They assume people have precisely -one- such name ?
I’m known under atleast 3 completely distinct names in my daily life.