SideBar: Google’s + Suspensions (Ham-fisted? High-handed?)

SideBar from me (Ben Tremblay): Do A-list really pay attention? see this from Guy Kawasaki’s “12 Most Enchanting Features of Google+” – #9. “It’s fun to watch Google smack down people who violate its terms of use.” Fun hunh. Really.

* Most Recent:

• RWW – “Google Plus Tells Pseudonym Lovers to Shove It”
  +Saurabh Sharma – “Google+ Update: Common Name Grace Period”‘
• My Name Is Me – “Supporting your freedom to choose the name you use on social networks and other online services.”
• h/t +Crystal Rehula – United Nations, Human Rights Council, Report of the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, Frank La Rue, 16 May 2011; Page 22, Point 84: “He [the Special Rapporteur] also calls upon States to ensure that individuals can express themselves anonymously online and to refrain from adopting real-name registration systems.” A.HRC.17.27_en.pdf
• +Simon Bridge – Simon’s Journal: “Pseudonyms update”
• danah boyd | apophenia – “Real Names” Policies Are an Abuse of Power; ““Real names” policies aren’t empowering; they’re an authoritarian assertion of power over vulnerable people. These ideas and issues aren’t new (and I’ve even talked about this before), but what is new is that marginalized people are banding together and speaking out loudly. And thank goodness.” [emph original --bdt]
• RWW – “Google Plus Bans Creator of Firefox, Facebook Product Director, For Using His Real Name”
• Documental.ly – “Another one bites the dust. Thanks Google+”
• O’Reilly Radar – Scaling Google+ – “Joseph Smarr of Google+ on early lessons, an API, and pseudonyms.”
• My Name Is Me – “My name is Rachel”; “For spiritual reasons as well as for intellectual ones, I believe in the value of letting people choose the names under which they are known — in offline spaces as well as online ones.”
• +Sandra Large – An open letter to G+ – Dear +Vic Gundotra and everyone else associated with the Google+ venture. [...] Since buying a computer and beginning to use the Internet, I have called myself Technogran. The reason why I decided to give myself a pseudonym rather than be known by my real name are actually pretty simple. …”
• Brigadoon Station – “Identity, Credibility and Anyonmyity”; see also +Kee Hinchley’s comment thread on +Betsy Hanes Perry’s “How Real Names improve Courtesy”
• Identity Woman – “Google+ and my “real” name: Yes, I’m Identity Woman”
• TechLiberation Front – “Google+ Stumbles Over Identity”
• skud – “An update on my Google Plus suspension”; Also: “Preliminary results of my survey of suspended Google+ accounts”; an update of “I’ve been suspended from Google+”
• +Scott Baker; PawPrint.net News – “The Google+ Real Names Policy”
• BBC Magazine – “Why does Google+ insist on having your real name?”
• Electronic Frontier Foundation – “A Case for Pseudonyms”
• Stowe Boyd – Google Responds #plusgate”
• GigaOM Tech News and Analysis – “Google+ and the loss of online anonymity”
• @GrrlScientist at Guardian.co.uk Science – “Google+ and pseudonymity: An open letter to @Google”
• +Violet Blue (an editorial on what I called, “Smoke and Mirrors”) – “+Vic Gundotra shared the announcement … described by a G+ community manager as “This is your feedback at work!” Um, no. It’s actually not.”
• +James Polley – “Here are the 12 comments to that post which have received +30 or higher (at the time of writing)”
• Phil Windley’s Technometria – “Google Plus: On Trust, Reputation, Pseudonyms, and Value”
• +Eric Raymond – “In a previous post on the realnames controversy, I suggested that it tangles together a large number of issues that Google probably shouldn’t try to solve all at once. Now I’m going to try to name and tag all these issues as an aid to discussion.”; previously: “Everyone on all sides of the G+ realnames controversy agrees that there are cases the present set of rules aren’t handling well, even if they differ on …”
• ZDNet – “Four Things Google Plus Could Do To Fix Google Plus”
• Geek Feminism Wiki – “Who is harmed by a “Real Names” policy?”
• Wired.com; Epicenter – “Google+ Identity Crisis: What’s at Stake With Real Names and Privacy”
• +Jay Freeman – “In the last couple days, Google has taken to quite actively enforcing its “real name” rule …
• Hack Education – “Should Students Use Pseudonyms Online?”
• Scripting News – “Google-Plus is going to be your bank account”; “now maybe that makes it clear why they want your real name on your Google-Plus accounts, and why they don’t want to screw around with corporate presences. Not such a problem for publications like TechCrunch or Mashable, which don’t move around a lot of money. But for any business like say an oil company (extreme example), they want to have all kinds of flows hooked up to your Google account.”
• Liminal states – Why it Matters: Google+ and Diversity“ (DRAFT!)
• Mashable – “Google Responds to Google+ Account Suspension Controversy”
• ZDNet – “Google revises G+ real name management policy“
• Digital Media | CNET News – “Google’s senior VP of social, +Vic Gundotra, explained Google’s logic for insisting on real names, as an attempt to set a positive tone: “Google VP: Why Google+ requires real names”.
• +Bradley Horowitz: “ I wanted to also more directly address some of what we’re learning and how we’re reacting to the feedback. Note that this isn’t a comprehensive “last word” on the topic …”
• +Doctor Popular (Suspended): Trapped in the Googlehole. – DocPop.org
• +M Monica: In response to +Sai’s post; Sai’s “Google+ requires you to use your “real” name. Unfortunately …”
• Gary Walker: Cheaper Than Paper: Privacy, strength, and the challenge facing Google
• +Janet D. Stemwedel: New post at Scientopia: Pseudonymity and Google -> Published Jul 25 2011 by Janet D. Stemwedel under Blogospheric science, Current events, Engineering, Professional ethics
• +Robert Scoble: “I talked with Google VP +Vic Gundotra tonight (disclaimer, he used to be my boss at Microsoft). He is reading everything we have written about names, and such. Both pro and con.”
• +Matt Cutts: I try not to share too much stuff about Google+ itself, but …

* My posts via TwitLonger:

• “CNet published “Google G+ faces thorny online identity issues”; my comment there.
• “In their G+ project has given us, the public, a look at how they get things done, more than we’d see”
• “If you’re interested in how Google treats people, how the explain their policy (and fail to do so)…”.

* Blog Posts (including on G+):

• on Point7: “Google+, the pseudonym banstick, and the netizen cultural schism”
• on CNet DeepTech: “Google+ faces thorny online identity issues”
• on TechCrunch: “Google Plus Has A Problem. Fear Not: I Have A Solution”
• +Emlyn O’Regan’s: “This account banning is the equivalent of the privacy blowout at the beginning of Buzz”, “now Random Geek is gone. ffs.” and “Google+ has a policy of only using real names (real world identities) in profiles. And they’re enforcing that policy with a big lumpy banstick.”.
• +Robert Scoble: “If you know someone that Google has suspended/deleted from Google+, add …” and, slightly related, “in all the noise about deleted profiles it’s interesting that I didn’t see anyone pointing out that Techcrunch’s founder, Michael Arrington, no longer has an account on Google+.”.
• +John Hardy: “Great to see +Robert Scoble receiving so much push-back on this issue.” and “Thanks Google. You fucked up AGAIN.”.
• +Rob Gordon: “No one has supported the idea of getting rid of fake profiles more than I have, but …”.
• +Jay Blanc: “Things that might get you suspended from G+”; “Time for more Share and Re-Sharing”; “Apparently confirmed. If Google force a European Account Holder to have” and +Kryptyk Physh’s comment thread on that post along with “Outstanding!”.

* Google docs:

• Public Policy Blog: “The freedom to be who you want to be…”.

NB: G+ suspended me for Bernard (ben) Tremblay, but they allow this: The Emperor – A meta-fictional entity and also such as Name X. Y. (plausible name with initials and punctuation) and Name O’Last, and Name “Nick” Last.

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