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