Welcome to The Not-So Private Parts where technology & privacy collide
August 25, 2011 by admin
Filed under Choosing Lingerie
Google offers so many great products. Do we need to pick and choose more carefully?
Google makes great products. That’s why I use Gmail for email, Gchat for instant messaging, Gmaps for directions, an Android phone, Picasa for photos, and Buzz for…. Just kidding. Buzz sucks. But for the most part, Google makes great products. They have historically struggled with social products (if you ignore their success in email and chat), but their latest offering, Google Plus, is pretty great in my and others’ opinions. Though, at this point, it’s like an awesome party which hasn’t quite gotten started yet. It’s early in the night and most of the guests are still having dinner at Facebook’s house. Our Mountain View host has lots of microbrew beers features in the fridge but there aren’t a ton of people on the service to drink use them. (More on this via the suddenly astute G+ observer, Paul Tassi.)
The big criticism that Google Plus has encountered (beyond the “there aren’t enough people here doing stuff” one) is the company’s insistence that people use their real names, rather than pseudonymous ones. Facebook has the same policy; it’s why that site has become a universal social directory. Google would like Plus to be that too, and I think also has aspirations to become the gateway to “real identity” on the Web, something the U.S. government is pushing for to make the Web a more secure place where it’s harder to obscure your identity to make fraudulent purchases. Commerce aside, real names just make it easier to find and connect with people, knowing they are who they say.
(I don’t want to get into this, but advocates of pseudonymous speech have lots of reasons why forcing real name use is a bad idea. But Google is the decider here. When you open accounts with private companies, you’re subject to their rules. You couldn’t go to your bank and ask to open an account under a pseudonymous name.)
Violet Blue
Recently, a blogger at ZDNet ran afoul of the Google “real name” policy. Her real name seems like a fake one — Violet Blue — and so Google flagged her Google Plus account for a shut-down. After seeing stories like that of a 10-year-old who admitted his real age when signing up for Google Plus, resulting in that being shut down along with his Gmail account, some folks are feeling worried about losing vital Google services because they mess up something on Plus. Violet Blue turned Scarlet Red with anger describing the possibility of being locked out of all of her various Google accounts over a wrongful accusation. “So now I faced losing business services I not only used, but depend on as cornerstones for my livelihood,” she complained. “Social networks are supposed to be fun, dammit.”
Google says to chill out: “Google Account suspensions are rare, and using Google+ doesn’t make them any more or less likely,” says a Google spokesman. “If a user violates our policies in YouTube, Blogger, Google+ or any other Google product, they may be suspended from only that product or from their overall Google Account. It depends on the severity of the violation.”
