Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Wednesday July 16 2014, @03:16PM   Printer-friendly
from the arrows-buy-ennui-utter-gnome-our-crust-as-wheat dept.

According to the Google+ Page, Google is finally giving up on forcing everyone to user their real names to join Google+.

When we launched Google+ over three years ago, we had a lot of restrictions on what name you could use on your profile. This helped create a community made up of real people, but it also excluded a number of people who wanted to be part of it without using their real names.

Over the years, as Google+ grew and its community became established, we steadily opened up this policy, from allowing +Page owners to use any name of their choosing to letting YouTube users bring their usernames into Google+. Today, we are taking the last step: there are no more restrictions on what name you can use.

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. Thank you for expressing your opinions so passionately, and thanks for continuing to make Google+ the thoughtful community that it is.

I know many folks that refused to join Plus, just because of the restrictions and the fact that they *cough* suggest you to anyone in your contacts. They've given up on youtube comments, app store ratings, and a dozen other things that require Plus accounts.

Some might now join, though most probably won't simply because Google was so darn stubborn about this for so darn long.

What say the Soylentils?

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by meisterister on Wednesday July 16 2014, @03:20PM

    by meisterister (949) on Wednesday July 16 2014, @03:20PM (#69807) Journal

    All you really had to do is format your name in a somewhat believable way. I still don't see the point of integrating Google+ into everything, because they really can't compete with facebook due to its sheer momentum (and because I trust neither of them with non-falsified data).

    --
    (May or may not have been) Posted from my K6-2, Athlon XP, or Pentium I/II/III.
    • (Score: 2) by JeanCroix on Wednesday July 16 2014, @03:41PM

      by JeanCroix (573) on Wednesday July 16 2014, @03:41PM (#69821)
      This. I've had a false but semi-believable name attached to my Gmail account for about two years. Finally, no more worrying about it being suddenly disabled if the eye of Sauron ever happened to fall upon it.
    • (Score: 2, Insightful) by karmawhore on Wednesday July 16 2014, @04:31PM

      by karmawhore (1635) on Wednesday July 16 2014, @04:31PM (#69844)

      I didn't really have a problem with the real name policy. I use a gmail account to e-mail people, so of course my real name is on there already.

      I *did* have a problem with Google tracking me across multiple services. It's weird, because quite frankly it only bothers me a little that they cross-reference what I watch on Youtube with the contents of my inbox -- but when they started also wanting a picture of me? My phone number? My address? I got severely creeped.

      --
      =kw= lurkin' to please
      • (Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday July 16 2014, @04:52PM

        by frojack (1554) on Wednesday July 16 2014, @04:52PM (#69856) Journal

        I've actually run multiple Gmail accounts since the very beginning of Gmail.
        One for each area of interest, one for work, one for home, one for mailing lists, one for investment research, one for recreation interests, etc.

        This worked out way better than filtering messages into separate folders. My work ID never shows up on some random mailing list rant for a customer to find via a search.

        Not one of my gmail addresses IS my actual name, although over the years it has been associated with my name, simply because you need one gmail account tied to a verified payment method if you want to use the Android app store.

        I use to Edit Google Maps, adding roads they missed, added picture for places I visited, review apps in the Market, etc. All that stopped when Plus became a requirement. Can't actually say I missed any of that.

        --
        No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday July 16 2014, @06:02PM

        by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday July 16 2014, @06:02PM (#69883)

        "I didn't really have a problem with the real name policy."

        Its interesting to look at century old social media networks like Ham Radio where "everyone" has access to a list that turns a callsign into a real name, real address... Even that I have an extra class license and have had it almost long enough to join the QCWRA club (old timers club, AARP for radio I guess you'd say)

        It boils down in practice and a century or so of experience to not matter very much to almost everyone.

        Hearing people complain doesn't mean that many people care.

        One interesting aspect is the semi-official yet not legally enforced amateur radio code where you just don't talk politics or religion on the air unless you want to be considered pretty much a dirtbag by everyone else. Oh and paid astroturfing is illegal. Oddly enough no flamewars means no real problem with the "ham radio real name policy".

        Note the existence of some smelly corners of 75M / 20M sideband does not invalidate the above... those are kind of the 4chan of ham radio, for better or worse. If you want to hear what /b/ will sound like in about 50 years just monitor 14.313 MHz or whatever it is. Not intending disrespect toward either party, just pointing out the similarities.

        • (Score: 4, Interesting) by karmawhore on Wednesday July 16 2014, @07:01PM

          by karmawhore (1635) on Wednesday July 16 2014, @07:01PM (#69914)

          Interesting example. I would guess that in a relatively small community like amateur radio, using your real name would tend to keep you civil and honest. Same with SN, in a way. I'm using a handle, but I try not to blast total nonsense on here, because I would be bothered if I got a bad reputation in the SN community.

          By contrast, browse the comments on some of the major news sites -- the ones where commenters log in via facebook. It doesn't keep them civil OR honest! Same goes for twitter, which is another interesting case, because twitter is a good mix of real names and pseudonyms. You've got a lot of people who should know better saying stupid things to the ENTIRE WORLD and attaching their real names to it. Don't they care?

          --
          =kw= lurkin' to please
          • (Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday July 16 2014, @07:28PM

            by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday July 16 2014, @07:28PM (#69920)

            "By contrast, browse the comments on some of the major news sites"

            Our local newspaper comments are unreadable. Paid political astroturfers sloganeering at each other. Mostly college students hired per hour to post slogans. Its a farce.

            Are they real names, or "google plus old style" real sounding names? Ditto the twitter.

        • (Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday July 16 2014, @07:42PM

          by frojack (1554) on Wednesday July 16 2014, @07:42PM (#69925) Journal

          I was always told Politics/Religion ban was somewhat more than just ethics, and a recognition that some operators in some countries (soviet union always used as an example) could be jailed for drifting into politics.

          Was it all just propaganda?

          --
          No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
          • (Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday July 16 2014, @09:41PM

            by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday July 16 2014, @09:41PM (#69989)

            Well, since they could get jailed merely for speaking, speaking into a microphone doesn't give them much immunity. Its not like the USA is immune, providing formal legal or medical advice without a license is problematic.

            From what stories I heard of authoritarian regimes, a ham radio license was seen as something of a privilege and administrative interference was seen as kind of a non-judicial punishment. So did your license renewal disappear because of no reason at all or because you're talking about naughty things? Also a lot of the authoritarian regimes wouldn't issue a license to individuals or at least strongly discouraged it, but clubs were OK and everyone assumed someone in the club was an informant. Don't screw up everything for everyone else in the club, that kind of thing.

            There's lots of "grind game" ham ops who just want to log that they talked to some far away state. I said Hi to a guy in the Dominican Republic a couple years back on the 6M band (which is mildly unusual) and at least 100 other people were also trying to say "Hi", and I don't speak Spanish anyway, so that was a rather short conversation, which would make it hard for him to get in trouble anyway.

            I have had long conversations with North Americans. I would say its very much like meeting someone's spouse at a christmas party, if the first thing you two do is start screaming politics and religion at each other you've probably both had too much to drink already. On the internet it seems accepted, but ham radio despite being weirder is none the less more "real life" than the internet. This Canadian guy I talked to for awhile, health care system just never came up in the conversation. That wouldn't happen on the internet, that's for sure.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 16 2014, @08:44PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 16 2014, @08:44PM (#69956)

          > Hearing people complain doesn't mean that many people care.

          Correct. The people who have the most to lose by forced-identification simply refuse to participate.

          How many hams that were still in the closet talked about it on air?

          • (Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday July 20 2014, @12:01PM

            by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Sunday July 20 2014, @12:01PM (#71481)

            "How many hams that were still in the closet talked about it on air?"

            Sorry for the super late post, but over a 1/4 century or so I've never discussed my sex life nor anyone elses nor overheard discussions happening. Given there would be no theoretical stigma to hetros talking about hetro lifestyles, yet its never done, we can safely assume the number you're looking for is very close to zero.

            Its a big hobby and there's some interaction between subcultures but perhaps not as much as you'd think. So it is possible a mostly-emcom local unlinked 70 cm repeater 1000 miles from here has 24x7 discussions of this topic, although I find it almost infinitely unlikely.

        • (Score: 1) by Nickyname on Thursday July 17 2014, @01:09PM

          by Nickyname (4346) on Thursday July 17 2014, @01:09PM (#70235)

          If you want to hear what /b/ will sound like in about 50 years just monitor 14.313 MHz or whatever it is.

          At least one 2m repeater in Los Angeles that have been spewing sewage that for quite some years, namely 147.435mhz.. I left California in 1996, and it had been blasting its sewage way before then and apparently still is.. Every few years the "Florida Citrus Commission" slaps a few hands, and like clockwork, the idiots are back at it again in just a short while..

          de K7DGF

      • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 16 2014, @06:34PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 16 2014, @06:34PM (#69903)

        Your mom must've not liked you too much to name you that.

      • (Score: 2) by mojo chan on Thursday July 17 2014, @07:41AM

        by mojo chan (266) on Thursday July 17 2014, @07:41AM (#70159)

        The policy was that you had to use the name people called you by in real life, not necessarily your legal name. I couldn't use mine until yesterday because it is a mononym, and Google required you to have two names. Well, they still do, but at least now you can make your last name a non-printable character (I used 0x200B, a zero-width space).

        --
        const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by geb on Wednesday July 16 2014, @03:24PM

    by geb (529) on Wednesday July 16 2014, @03:24PM (#69809)

    Some might now join, though most probably won't simply because Google was so darn stubborn about this for so darn long.

    Yep.

    I've gone without a G+ account for this long, so I can continue without it quite happily. I might join if shown some compelling reason to do so, but there isn't any "Ooh! New! Shiny!" excitement left.

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Ethanol-fueled on Wednesday July 16 2014, @04:24PM

      by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Wednesday July 16 2014, @04:24PM (#69842) Homepage

      Awhile ago Google tried to shoehorn some of the social G+ features into Gmail, as I discovered when I logged in.

      They also politely provided me an opportunity to let them know what I thought about the new "features," and I wrote for them to "Fuck off with that shit or users will flee your services in droves, and are already because you're Stasi NSA collaborators."

      Then I wrote that, "You try to pull this shit on me one more time, and I will quit all Google services for good."

      But who knows whether or not this capitulation mentioned in the article is related to bad press about their NSA collaboration, or their attempt to push users into G+, or both?

    • (Score: 1) by Arik on Wednesday July 16 2014, @08:24PM

      by Arik (4543) on Wednesday July 16 2014, @08:24PM (#69946) Journal
      If they had been more friendly years ago they might have gotten me on it, I admit.

      At this point, there's just no way.

      And no, I dont use FB either. This isnt FB > Google they both get the same treatment. Null route them and find replacements for sites that rely on their XSS pollution.
      --
      If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
  • (Score: 2) by Bot on Wednesday July 16 2014, @03:24PM

    by Bot (3902) on Wednesday July 16 2014, @03:24PM (#69810) Journal
    Aaaah, finally people like.... let's see.... mr. Jekyll A. Hyde [google.com] can use a pseudonym for better privacy.
    --
    Account abandoned.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 16 2014, @03:34PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 16 2014, @03:34PM (#69815)

      Well, sometimes the real name already looks like a pseudonym. Or would you have guessed that German Hacker [wikipedia.org] is a real name? I don't know if that man ever tried to get a Google+ account, but if so, I'd not be surprised if he had troubles opening one.

  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by kaszz on Wednesday July 16 2014, @03:29PM

    by kaszz (4211) on Wednesday July 16 2014, @03:29PM (#69812) Journal

    What hinders them or any other faceless-corporation from pulling [wikipedia.org] some privacy intrusion stunt later? And it's US based which means certain listen-all-r-us are in the loop. Besides pseudonyms has been the standard for previous discussion networks. So get in line..!

    Regarding real names. Just have look when teenage girls posts that they are looking for people to write to and read from. They get harassed. Same for anyone that happens to write anything out of consensus or what dweebles can comprehend. Some people just can't respect that other people are not like them self and respect that. So realnames just doesn't work in practice. Let alone for employer-HR-neighbour snooping.

    • (Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday July 16 2014, @04:34PM

      by frojack (1554) on Wednesday July 16 2014, @04:34PM (#69846) Journal

      Regarding real names. Just have look when teenage girls posts that they are looking for people to write to and read from. They get harassed. Same for anyone that happens to write anything out of consensus or what dweebles can comprehend.

      In this regard Plus was a lot better than Facebook, because of the user controlled "Circles" that Plus offers.
      Originally, I thought I'd rather have my (putative) teenage daughter in circles than out on the street in facebook.

      As originally designed, circles were just your invited friends. Originally they never exposed your actual email address. However this was quickly leading to Plus earning the reputation of being a wasteland of inactivity. So little by little Google started expanding circles, suggesting circles, adding "communities", hashtags, hangouts and all sorts of things [scottbuehler.com] to the point where it is now every bit as bad as facebook in every negative way.

      You can still dump all those noisy circles and get back to the basics, but its too late. By the time you realize its a trap you're already out there, and your email address is in the wild, and Google knows even more about you than they did before, and the Three Letter Agencies are certain to be mining the entire writhing heap.

      --
      No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by strattitarius on Wednesday July 16 2014, @03:29PM

    by strattitarius (3191) on Wednesday July 16 2014, @03:29PM (#69813) Journal
    Is soylent. I really have very little to discuss with family... I like them, but most of us don't agree on much and all of them are not interested in the things I am; plus we have email. As for my close, personal friends I want to keep in touch with... we all have email. And for the rest of FB/twitter, it's mostly idiots espousing mean and, at an alarming rate, incorrect/illogical statements and engaging in arguments trying to convince equally idiotic people why each other is wrong/right.

    No FB/G+/twitter/instagram/etc. for 3 years and no problem. I do have Linked In for professional connections.
    --
    Slashdot Beta Sucks. Soylent Alpha Rules. News at 11.
    • (Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Wednesday July 16 2014, @03:57PM

      by Nerdfest (80) on Wednesday July 16 2014, @03:57PM (#69830)

      I used to use Facebook, but found it too intrusive and filled with people I frequently didn't want to communicate with. I use Twitter as there are quite a few of the big names in fields I'm interested in (software development and wine) that are active there. It's nice to exchange ideas with someone like Robert Martin (as an example) on occasion. I use Google Plus for general social media for other interests. I have circles for mathematics, science, motorcycling, photography, popular culture, etc. The functionality of it is quite good and their Android app is really nice to use. Facebook's was a nightmare last time I checked, which admittedly is several years ago. I like Soylent as well, but we're a very small community.

      I never had a serious problem with their real name policy for myself, but I can understand it being a problem for some and I'm glad they've changed it. I do hope the quality of discussion stays up though, as it's quite good at the moment.

    • (Score: 3, Funny) by tibman on Wednesday July 16 2014, @06:20PM

      by tibman (134) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday July 16 2014, @06:20PM (#69894)

      My social network is soylent.
      /me takes a look at: https://soylentnews.org/~strattitarius/friends/ [soylentnews.org]
      Awwww

      --
      SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
      • (Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Wednesday July 16 2014, @08:57PM

        by Nerdfest (80) on Wednesday July 16 2014, @08:57PM (#69966)

        Well, damn it, I'm his friend now, despite his views on Pastafarian headgear.

        • (Score: 2) by strattitarius on Thursday July 17 2014, @06:24PM

          by strattitarius (3191) on Thursday July 17 2014, @06:24PM (#70382) Journal
          Awesome! I like friends with different viewpoints! It forces me to learn and understand.
          --
          Slashdot Beta Sucks. Soylent Alpha Rules. News at 11.
  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 16 2014, @04:11PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 16 2014, @04:11PM (#69837)

    They already know too much about you.

  • (Score: 2) by BradTheGeek on Wednesday July 16 2014, @04:16PM

    by BradTheGeek (450) on Wednesday July 16 2014, @04:16PM (#69840)

    This is simply another attempt to get more people to use G+ vs Facebook. Now anyone that wants to use a fake name without getting das boot at some point can.
    Maybe it will work, who knows.

    • (Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday July 16 2014, @05:53PM

      by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday July 16 2014, @05:53PM (#69877)

      "Now anyone that wants to use a fake name without getting das boot"

      Maybe they were just overwhelmed by child verification of 13+ year olds. I went thru that a few months ago. So my son meets their legal age requirements but doesn't have a "real ID" drivers license or whatever it was they required, and I'm not insane enough to let my son scan and mail some random internet company his official certified birth cert (who's dumb enough to do that, anyway?). And he doesn't have a credit card which is probably good. So he had to use my CC under my name. Interesting business model to collect 50 cents or whatever it was per person.

      My guess is he's on file at the mighty GOOG as being an alias of mine although he really is just a real living teen boy.

      I'm convinced the whole program, aside from revenue generation, is a privacy experiment. When GOOG decides I'm a 3 year old and threatens to close my account, they can financially experiment, via A/B testing, will this idiot give us a scan of his birth cert or drivers license or is privacy worth 50 cents to him? How about $5?

      You only have to be 13 to have a GOOG account. Short of having an account open for at least 13 years I donno how to make myself immune to that other than giving up privacy or spending money...

    • (Score: 2) by cafebabe on Wednesday July 16 2014, @10:18PM

      by cafebabe (894) on Wednesday July 16 2014, @10:18PM (#70006) Journal

      "Don't be evil" was ditched for "Chase the almight dollar" and this week it is more profitable not to have real names. But what about next week? Would they bring it back? Or maybe introduce some other arbitrary requirement?

      --
      1702845791×2
      • (Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday July 16 2014, @11:56PM

        by Thexalon (636) on Wednesday July 16 2014, @11:56PM (#70054)

        "Don't be evil" was ditched for "Chase the almight dollar"

        That is almost inevitable for a for-profit corporation (and not uncommon for non-profits as well, let the donor beware). No matter how virtuous the founders are, eventually it ends up in the hands of people who are looking to maximize return-on-investment as measured in dollars.

        A good example of this: Ben & Jerry's. Ben and Jerry were a couple of hippie types who started the company on Jerry's credit card and basically wanted to make great ice cream while remaining ethical (as they saw it). But as they grew bigger and Ben and Jerry both wanted to spend less time at the company, they ended up abandoning their hippie policies. For example, early on there was a rule that nobody could make more than 5 times what the lowest-paid worker made, which was scrapped when they wanted to bring in a new CEO to run the day-to-day. In 2000, they sold out completely to Unilever, and while they still engage in the occasional hippie-inspired policies that's more to maintain the brand image than anything else.

        The reason for the phenomenon is simple enough: founders eventually want to cash out and do something else with their life, and the people with sufficient cash to buy in are those who are rich, who tend to be those who are motivated by ROI measured in money.

        --
        The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
        • (Score: 2) by cafebabe on Thursday July 17 2014, @03:04AM

          by cafebabe (894) on Thursday July 17 2014, @03:04AM (#70091) Journal

          If I recall correctly, the Google IPO prospectus stated that Google would never issue dividends and never intended to make a profit. If this is correct, Google doesn't have to chase profits aggressively.

          I also understand that voting power from stock options dilutes by a factor of 10 when an employee leaves Google. This makes Google shares de facto junk bonds to anyone outside of Google.

          Overall, it is a shame how ethical brands get diluted.

          --
          1702845791×2
  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by zeigerpuppy on Wednesday July 16 2014, @04:23PM

    by zeigerpuppy (1298) on Wednesday July 16 2014, @04:23PM (#69841)

    No, I mean it, fuck them,
    The fuckers have been carving up Internet standards, stealing everyone's information, avoiding tax, shrugging off courts like the impotent peons they are, strengthening the rich, selling out our rights, stealing literature, distorting markets and generally just being totally fucked up.
    Fuck them, I'll roll my own internet services just to avoid the cunts.

    • (Score: 2) by meisterister on Wednesday July 16 2014, @04:38PM

      by meisterister (949) on Wednesday July 16 2014, @04:38PM (#69850) Journal

      Says the person who, according to browser statistics (from http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp [w3schools.com], has a 59.3% chance of using Google's browser, or an 84.4% chance of using a browser with Google's fingers in it. They make me sick, and the fact that they fund Mozilla is even worse.

      --
      (May or may not have been) Posted from my K6-2, Athlon XP, or Pentium I/II/III.
      • (Score: 2) by tibman on Wednesday July 16 2014, @06:23PM

        by tibman (134) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday July 16 2014, @06:23PM (#69895)

        Nobody else seems interested in funding them. Who here has donated in the last two years?

        --
        SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
        • (Score: 2) by halcyon1234 on Thursday July 17 2014, @11:24PM

          by halcyon1234 (1082) on Thursday July 17 2014, @11:24PM (#70528)
          If Mozilla released a statement like "We promise to ditch Australaeroelis, stop fucking up the UI with pointless make-work changes, maintain configurable options, and (most importantly) fire all the life-blood sucking CEOs, CFOs, and Directors of Marketing, who are all drawing six figures who all have to constantly justify their existence with the useless shit from above", then sure, I'd gladly kick some dollars into their cause.

          But they won't, and I refuse to have my money actively support the above. My rule of thumb is that if I have spend my time to hunt through about:config and install add-ons just to restore base functionality, then I've paid my dues.
          --
          Original Submission [thedailywtf.com]
      • (Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday July 16 2014, @07:52PM

        by frojack (1554) on Wednesday July 16 2014, @07:52PM (#69933) Journal

        If you are going to appeal to statistics, at least appeal to OUR OWN statistics:

        http://wiki.soylentnews.org/w/images/b/b8/Sn_report_mid_june_2014.pdf [soylentnews.org]

        --
        No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
        • (Score: 2) by meisterister on Wednesday July 16 2014, @10:28PM

          by meisterister (949) on Wednesday July 16 2014, @10:28PM (#70013) Journal

          Fair enough. Of the 48671 visits:

          (going by the browser family, because I'd really rather not calculate for individual browsers)

          33.72% were Chrome/Safari,
          31.92% were from the Gecko rendering engine (lovingly funded by Google)

          The unknowns accounted for a massive portion (roughly the size of Gecko minus Internet Explorer), which may include old versions of Gecko or mobile versions of Chrome.

          --
          (May or may not have been) Posted from my K6-2, Athlon XP, or Pentium I/II/III.
  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by MrGuy on Wednesday July 16 2014, @04:39PM

    by MrGuy (1007) on Wednesday July 16 2014, @04:39PM (#69851)

    Hands up who thinks this is "the thing" that's going to make GooglePlus a viable Facebook alternative?

    Most people ALREADY use their real name on Facebook, or at least aren't shy about linking it to their real name in their profile.

    As I understand it, the main reason that people were against the "real name" policy wasn't the "they can identify me!" aspect, as much as that it made "cause/issue" pages impossible (e.g. "Delta Airlines sucks!" as a page). Sure, lifting that barrier is nice, but it's hardly like people were ready to flock to G+ if only it had this one feature.

    Also, if people are thinking "I didn't want Google tracking me!", newsflash - Google already has plenty of info to identify you, even if you don't use your real name as your G+ profile ID. This is pure and simply whether OTHER USERS see your real name, and whether a given "real person" can/should be restricted to one-and-only-one account G+ account.

    This is, I guess, a step in a less incorrect direction, but it's a useless one. G+ failed. Deal with it. Either get some actually compelling features to get people to switch from Facebook (and you'd really need a "wow factor" to do that at this point), or give up on G+. Expecting "getting closer to feature parity with Facebook!" to matter is to fundamentally misunderstand the nature of how a social network works and what makes them successful. Which is kind of important to have a firm grasp on if, y'know, you're trying to BUILD ONE.

    I'll say it again - people choose to use a social network primarily because OTHER PEOPLE they want to connect with use that social network.

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by cafebabe on Wednesday July 16 2014, @05:18PM

    by cafebabe (894) on Wednesday July 16 2014, @05:18PM (#69867) Journal

    While some people change their name to be more unique, there is also a strong tide of people going the other way. For example, more than 300 people per year change their name to John Smith [bbc.co.uk].

    --
    1702845791×2
    • (Score: 1) by len_harms on Wednesday July 16 2014, @05:54PM

      by len_harms (1904) on Wednesday July 16 2014, @05:54PM (#69878) Journal

      What if they are just hard core doctor who fans?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 16 2014, @08:49PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 16 2014, @08:49PM (#69957)

      > While some people change their name to be more unique, there is also a strong tide of people going the other way.

      I've been seriously considering it myself. I've taken to using a handful of pseudonyms picked from name-frequency tables for my geographic area. But there are a couple of times you have use a real name (like to get a driver's license) that also associate your name with an address and "john smith" + address is still almost completely unique.

      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by cafebabe on Wednesday July 16 2014, @09:36PM

        by cafebabe (894) on Wednesday July 16 2014, @09:36PM (#69986) Journal

        You've given me an idea:-

        1. Find someone with the same date of birth.
        2. Move in together.
        3. One or both of you change your name so that you have the same name.
        4. Create chaos.
        --
        1702845791×2
  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Tork on Wednesday July 16 2014, @05:19PM

    by Tork (3914) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday July 16 2014, @05:19PM (#69868)
    "What say the Soylentils?"

    I say: I don't want my email account in the same building as my social networking account. Ever. It doesn't matter that you're listening to your users, I don't want a fuckup over there revealing who I am to the jackass I taunted on YouTube.
    --
    🏳️‍🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️‍🌈
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 16 2014, @09:20PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 16 2014, @09:20PM (#69980)

      Of course, it might just be easier to not taunt any jackasses on internet forums. Just a thought. (Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm sure he had it coming to him. Whatever.)

      • (Score: 2) by Tork on Wednesday July 16 2014, @09:45PM

        by Tork (3914) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday July 16 2014, @09:45PM (#69990)
        That's a fine bit of advice, except not-taunting jackasses doesn't mean I'm safe from weirdos. Right now my wife's being stalked by a guy who got the wrong phone number. He didn't believe her when she told him. Fortunately with modern smartphones it's easy to block people. But imagine if he was able to look up her number and find what part of town she's in. Both Facebook and Google have asked me for my phone #, so I hope you can understand my concern

        It doesn't matter how I behave (hey, at least I was being honest!) nobody should have to worry about shit like that.
        --
        🏳️‍🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️‍🌈
  • (Score: 1) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday July 16 2014, @08:54PM

    by bzipitidoo (4388) on Wednesday July 16 2014, @08:54PM (#69962) Journal

    I used to use my real name on my gmail account. Then one day upon logging in to gmail as usual, Google threw this Youtube integration crap at me and, impatient to get to my email, I clicked past it. Google ditched my real name for my Youtube handle, and, worst of all, provided no easy way to undo it. I didn't want my Youtube and gmail accounts linked. Didn't want my real name associated with Youtube. I hear it's possible to unlink it by creating another gmail account to link to my Youtube account. But it's not possible to just unlink it, has to be linked to something. Been unhappy with Google ever since.

    There was also a brief time when Google's search was doing some sort of redirect before going on to a search result, and that redirection was noticeably slow. That was when I moved to Duckduckgo. No bull, just took me directly to the search result when I clicked the link. Now Duckduckgo is doing some kind of redirection too.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 16 2014, @10:09PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 16 2014, @10:09PM (#70002)

      > Now Duckduckgo is doing some kind of redirection too.

      You can get rid of those redirects on both google and ddg and most anywhere with this firefox addon:

      Redirect Cleaner [mozilla.org]

      The only downside for me is that it interferes with the color of visited links. If the "cleaned" link is in my history, firefox still colors the link as unvisited unless I move the mouse over the link. I guess redirect cleaner only rewrites URLs on mouse-over rather than on page-load.

      Still, it is a big net improvement, both in time-to-load and in reduced tracking.

    • (Score: 1) by Jiro on Wednesday July 16 2014, @10:23PM

      by Jiro (3176) on Wednesday July 16 2014, @10:23PM (#70010)

      Google search still does it. Turn off Javascript and you can see it.

      As far as I can tell, if I just use noscript rather than turning Javascript off in about:config it gets into a weird state where hovering over the links sometimes shows a redirect URL and sometimes shows a direct URL. It doesn't seem to be redirecting but I can't figure out how.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 16 2014, @11:02PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 16 2014, @11:02PM (#70029)

      DDG does it to clean up the referrer so that the result site doesn't see your search's URL. (AFAIK)

  • (Score: 2) by Nobuddy on Thursday July 17 2014, @12:45AM

    by Nobuddy (1626) on Thursday July 17 2014, @12:45AM (#70070)

    I full name on Google+ is "Fuck you, Google Plus. No means No."

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 17 2014, @03:31AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 17 2014, @03:31AM (#70095)

    I am much more interested in joining now. Going to go give it a try.

    I like the concept of G+ much more than I liked Facebook. Hope it gives me a way to engage more closely with some of the groups I've been interested in without having to sell my soul.

  • (Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Friday July 18 2014, @08:42AM

    by Aiwendil (531) on Friday July 18 2014, @08:42AM (#70685) Journal

    Not that I'm going to sign up; but now their policies allow me to actually use the names people know me by.
    Yes, more people know me by this handle than my real name (heck, more people even know me by my standard aliases than by my real name) and that includes the people I meet and know irl.

    I never really got the idea of having to use real names as I see a much greater value in using the name that the most people know you by.

    (To take an example from the world of music; people would be more likely to search for "Ozzy Osbourne" than for - the up until recently required - "John Osbourne")