[Stilgherrian writes: Oh dear. This post has generated a lot of interest. Thank you for that interest. But if you're visiting for the first time, I strongly suggest you also read my lengthy response to commenters and the fair warning before posting your own comment.]
I knew this would happen sooner or later. Google, a data mining company in the United States, has the ignorant arrogance to tell me, a citizen of Australia, that my name — my legal name — doesn’t fit their scheme for how names “should” work. Well fuck you, arseholes!
What’s worse, this is how they tell you.
They suspend your profile, tell you your name is wrong, and tell you to change it.
Your profile has been suspended.
It appears that the name you entered doesn’t comply with our Names Policy.
The Names Policy requires that you use the name that you are commonly referred to in real life in your profile. Nicknames, maiden names, and so on, should be entered in the Other Names section of the profile. Profiles are currently limited to individuals; we will be launching a profile for businesses and other entities later this year.
Your profile will be suspended until you do edit your name to comply with the Names Policy: you will not be able to make full use Google services that require an active profile, such as Google+, Buzz, Reader and Picasa. This will not prevent you from using other Google services, like Gmail.
We understand that Google+ and it’s [sic] Names Policy may not be for everyone at this time. We would hate to see you go, but if you choose to leave, make a copy of your Google+ data first. Then, click here to leave Google+.
Listen, Googlecunts. This name precisely fits your Names Policy.
This is the name I’m “commonly referred to in real life”.
Did you even look to see if that were true before acting? No. Slack cunts.
Not only that, it’s the name that I have consistently used on every legal document, from passport to Medicare card, from property leases to witness statements, for thirty… fucking… years!
Oh, you’re worried about me putting a “.” in the surname field? That’s because I had to put something in there because your stupid fucked-up data verification code demanded that I not leave that field empty, even though that would be the morally and legally correct thing for me to have done.
What’s wrong is not my name. What’s wrong is your fucked-up Names Policy.
You stupid, stupid bastards clearly have no fucking idea how names work in the real world. For all your cleverness in building huge data centres to mine every scrap of personal information imaginable, somewhere along the line you’ve failed to Hoover up the fact that names don’t always fit into your neat Americo-centric first name / middle initial / last name pattern.
They never have, and they never will.
And don’t give me some bullshit excuse about how this is “unusual”. You’ve been in business for a decade. You’re one of the richest corporations on the planet. I know damn well there’s lots of good research on naming practices out there. Are you seriously suggesting that you build stuff without first reviewing the basics? Are you seriously suggesting that you’re incapable of dealing with the merely “unusual”?
What you also seem not to have figured out is how to open a conversation with someone about something as personal as their name.
You don’t fucking well start off by asserting they’re wrong and you’re right and they need to change. Show a bit of goddam humility, you cunts, and gently enquire whether things are as they seem. And then, only after there’s been a reasonable period for people to respond, do you start suspending services.
I’ve already written about how only fools would rush in and pour their lives into Google+. Seems I was right.
So here’s what I reckon should happen.
- Forward me a copy of the email from last week where you indicated that there might be a problem. That seems to have gone astray. Note here that I’m giving you the opportunity to lie and pretend that you did actually send such an email and that you didn’t simply act like cunts and suspend service.
- Apologise. Profusely. Your behaviour is offensive and you need to make amends. Yes, my behaviour is offensive too, but I’m the aggrieved party. Your first customer service challenge is to reduce my anger. It’s about time Google learned how to do customer service anyway.
- You fix the entire workflow for notifying people about name problems.
- For a start, that first suspension notice should offer more choices than just “Edit your name”. You know, maybe the name is right and you’re wrong.
- Actually, before that, suspension should not be your first action. Fix that. Cunts.
- Get rid of this stupid “must have two names” rubbish.
Now there’s this other whole thing about not allowing people to use screen names and other pseudonyms. That’s pretty fucked up too. But I reckon we’ve given you enough for one day, eh?
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BWAHAHAHA… Spaz out more! please, watching you act like a four year old who can’t have a cookie is fucking hilarious…. whoever you are.
Epic Tantrum is epic. It’s just a website you clot, a website in a testing phase.
Baby.
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And if people don’t speak up about issues with it now they’ll never be resolved once it moves beyond the testing phase (which in itself is actually wrong, it’s well beyond the testing phase). That is why we talk loudly and clearly.
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Wow, haven’t you ever had something fucked up happen to you?
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You are definitely leading a sheltered life Mum. Stilgherrian was being unduly restrained. I had hoped for a small nuclear fullstop. And as for calling this a childish dummy spit! Well you’d have to hope you don’t get the self-elected righteous arbiters of identity coming after YOU.
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Epic meme usage is fail. Go away and let me read some educated comments would you
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someone at google is channelling mark zuckerberg:
“You have one identity,” he emphasized three times in a single interview with David Kirkpatrick in his book, “The Facebook Effect.” “The days of you having a different image for your work friends or co-workers and for the other people you know are probably coming to an end pretty quickly.” He adds: “Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity.”
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Madonna…typical cunt. If you were oinly intelligent enough to understand the things talked about at DEFON and BLACK HAT conventions, you’d shut your cumtrap.
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I must say I have been waiting for this to happen, and I figured you’d be one of the Australians to get blocked.
Good to see you held back as well
Of course all we have do is deed poll all our names to john/jane doe and Google will be happy.
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forgot to add there have been many times my name has been blocked when entering it on forms.. “Cocklin” contains swear words you know.
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be thankful you don’t live in scunthorpe!
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Pingback from A quick note on #nymwars « Social Motor – Blog on 16 August 2011 at 1:50 pm
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I’m quite surprised by this. They have been making a lot of noise lately about how people are going to get a four day warning period prior to any suspensions, yet if I read this correctly you were suspended before any other form of notice?
It is quite ridiculous, and sad that so many people seem to think Google is going about things the right way. They then support these thoughts with things that don’t make any sense what so ever. “stop spam” – the spammers have been using real-looking name since day 1. “stop abuse” – this has been proven wrong a few hundred times already.
The only ones who get hurt by this are those with names that don’t fit the trademark (such as yourself), those who are known by names other than their wallet names (myself), and those who have a reason to not want their names publicised (abuse/bullying victims).
The thing that gets me the most about their warnings/policy is this line “The Names Policy requires that you use the name that you are commonly referred to in real life in your profile.”.
For me, “Bastard Sheep” is in actual fact the name I am most commonly referred to by in real life, yet Google then go on to insist that someone’s profile name be the name that appears in their wallet (or some derivative thereof). So which do Google want me to use, a variation of our wallet name or the name we are most commonly referred to in real life? For me, the two do not match in the slightest.
If it is my wallet name, then that completely breaks the whole point of a “social” network, as the name in my wallet is not what I’m socially known as. My real life social circles will break, I will be anonymised, made invisible. The only way for me to be visible is to use my pseudonym, the one I use in real life.
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I’ve been trying to avoid this whole issue. Hoping that it wouldn’t affect me and, in my mind, telling myself that – like yourself Stilgherrian – all the kerfuffle about pseudonyms (which I disagree with) wouldn’t cross over into affecting those of us with unusual names as our legal names. After all, we have drivers licences etc to back our case.
Seeing you fall victim to it shows me that I can’t avoid it any more, and I’m just as likely to become a victim.
I’m hoping they change their mindset. But I’m becoming more convinced they wont.
I think they’ve crossed the line. -
@Madonna: Oh you clueless, probably-fake-email-using tosser! You really haven’t thought it through, have you?
I comply with moral and legal and, indeed, Google policy obligations by using my legal name consistently in online environments. They respond by saying I’m wrong.
If you write off issues of legality and consistency of online identity as “it’s just a website” then you really are a fuckwit. I sincerely hope you don’t advise people in this area, because if your understanding was any more shallow we’d have to put up signs warning divers.
@Bastard Sheep: Correct, there was no prior warning.
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No you massive crybaby… The point here is not what was done, the point here is how you reacted to it like a spoiled fucking child throwing a tantrum, instead of simply following the straightforward response procedure to have this quickly and easily rectified just like many other ‘False positives” have done over the last few weeks.
Step one, get a clue, step two GROW THE FUCK UP.
I hope YOU don’t advise people, on anything, at all, ever.
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@Madonna: Yes, Madonna, thank you for your advice. We should all meekly submit to corporations’ procedures and exhibit no human emotion whatsoever.
It’s a shame you don’t follow your own advice. Instead of saying “whoever you are” you might have bothered to read around and find out. Or you could have read the comments policy that requires real email addresses.
This is the last comment I’ll allow through without one. It’s not that I can’t handle your petty personal abuse — “grow the fuck up” indeed, Ms Maturity — but simply that if you’re in my house you introduce yourself properly.
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Oh, and how much are you paying for the service Google is providing you again? Maybe you should ask for your money back…
I’m just a casual reader of this blog (in Google Reader btw… I doubt I’d visit this website if it weren’t for that product). Is your legal name as the Government recognises you the same one you used on your Google Profile? Is your legal name really Stilgherrian?
This is a GROSS overreaction. From the way I understand it with Google+, they are letting PEOPLE join up first (that is, people with a first and last name) and then they will let companies and other “brand names” (which I assume is what ‘Stilgherrian’ is… that can’t possibly be your name??!) join once they have that functionality built.
Out of all the corporations you could call the “c word”, Google would be the last on the list. Reading this post gives me the urge to hit the ‘unsubscribe’ button but I thought I’d post something up here before I do that, and give you a chance to explain further.
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Ask for your data back?
One of the big problems is that this isn’t J. Random Startup Inc. acting outrageously, but a company with a lot of bloody weight to throw around. And as Google goes, so does the web. So this may actually be a problem.
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David, you can get your data back from http://www.dataliberation.org if you so wish, of course they’ve still monetized it in the form of advertising, but that was in their terms of service when you clicked the “I agree” button.
Your statement implies that Google’s stance is “outrageous”. It’s not, the majority of people are able to sign up for a Google+ account.
I agree, their naming policy requires some work… but to call them “cunts” for disabling his account with what appears to be a fake name… well, people simply have no right to be outraged.
First world problems hey…
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Oh, how kind of you, Dylan, to give Stil the opportunity to do *WHAT HE ALREADY FUCKING DID, AT LENGTH, ABOVE*. Yes, it’s his legal name. Yes, he has, legally, no surname. See that link titled “my legal name”, above? Read that, it answers your tedious questions.
There are a lot of countries and cultures where having a single legal name is completely fine. There are also many countries and cultures where it is usual to have more than one first name, or where it is normal to be referred to by a middle name, or to have a name with punctuation in it. All things that the utterly braindead Google+ naming policy needlessly freaks out about.
For those of you complaining that Google+ is just a website – damn! What a jewelled insight you bring. I’d forgotten that. And *this* is just a website, too. Go stick your head in a pig
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Everyone is talking about this issue like as if it’s their god-given-right to sign up with a Google+ account and post animated GIF’s of cats. They’re working through teething problems, hell, it’s still invite-only!! I don’t see the necessity of what is frankly a vulgar and insulting post.
@viveka – those are the words of all people with good reasoning behind their opinions – “Oh you’ve got a differing view? go somewhere else, we don’t want you here!!”.
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Dylan,
You point out that Google+ is still invite only, but those invites have changed from 10 invites to 150. And since it switched to 150, I have invited several people, but I am still allowed to invite 150. So it hardly seems limiting.
If they were working out “teething problems” with their naming policy, they would hardly be suspending people who they felt weren’t following the policy. They would instead interact with these people, check and see why these people feel they are entitled to use a name that makes Google suspicious, and then adjust their policy accordingly.
But so far they aren’t doing that.
They ignore that some people have single-name names, both by changing their names, and by birth.
They ignore that some people feel (justifyably in many cases) that they would be endangered in some way by using their real name. Whether because they are in prominent positions, or because they have been stalked via the internet in the past. And even just simple reasons.I’ll give you an example. My sister has her own business, and goodwill is built up around her name and her expertise. She doesn’t want to have people who search the internet to find information about her to see her posts on Facebook (or Google+ if she were to use it), so she uses a pseudonym on Facebook.
There are thousands, millions of reasons that people might want to use a pseudonym. But the worst part of this is Google presuming that someone’s name is a fake, as is Stil’s case.
Firstly, Google+ does NOT require any authentication of identity – you don’t have to prove that the name you present is your name.
Secondly, in the case of someone like Stil without a surname, he could just put in a fake surname, and no one would know the difference. But why should he have to do that, when HE IS USING HIS LEGAL NAME.Google needs to reconsider this, and soon. They are doing themselves no end of harm. It only took Blizzard a couple of days to realise the stupidity of this idea last year, and that was only a gaming forum. (In case you aren’t aware, the Blizzard employee last year who announced the policy and his full name had, within hours, his private address, his mother’s address, his home phone number and email address, and even his arreest history posted for all the world to see).
- Karl
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Dylan – ohhh no you can’t, not if it’s suspended.
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Google doesn’t have a contract with every citizen in the world to provide them with a Google+ account. Put plainly, I doubt that if Stil put this scenario to the NSW Anti-Discrimination Board his case would get very far.
I’m not arguing that Google’s naming policy is well thought out, personally I think it’s a bit silly and should allow for some breathing room (while not going back to the anonymous nature of MySpace). My point is that to get so worked up over such a minor issue, to drop the c-bomb, it’s just uncalled for.
If I worked for Google and read this post, I would think Stil is an absolute moron, and from reading some of his other stuff which made me subscribe to this blog in the first place, I don’t think that opinion does not do Stil justice. A critique of their policy, the pros and cons and explaining how it affects him would have been better, rather than an insult ridden bitch fest.
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As someone who has known Stil for a quarter century, and who is also a moononomencatured person (not a company) I can assure you that it is his Legal name for all appropriate laws in Australia.
I am likely to fall foul of this myself, as I put “nil” in as the family name I don’t have.
It is rude to assume that I name you are not familiar with, or is in a format you are unfamiliar with, is therefore false. In particular (assuming that Dylan is your real name) you should be aware that there are a number of Welsh formats that don’t match the US expected.If Google expect “Don’t be Evil” to be believed, they need to behave in a way that won’t be seen as evil. You will be known by the name I give you fails that test.
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as for *legal* names, I have the personal quirk of having *3* fully compliant legal names that I have on various legal documents,
I was given one name at birth, and have a second name I acquired
for online use (I have used this consistently for over 15 years),
and more recently (within 3 years) obtained a third name by marriage.my birth and marriage names are both containing 3 parts,
but my Internet name ( the most used of the three – *including legal documents*) is what I am known by the majority of people I have contact with.The action of asking a user to use a *wallet* name is in direct contradiction to the stated policy,
and this is a fact actually declared by the lead developer of google plus.none of my three names are a brand in any case so drop the “it must be a brand” thing.
Mr. Stiglherrian, I agree that google has a massive failure in suspending
your account and asking for you to change your name based on an employees opinion after your profile is reported as false.as for the “only one name” view as pushed by Mr.Zuckerberg of facebook fame.
It is only true in the sense of each persons name referring to that person by identity,
Identity and Naming schemes definitely need to be more clarified
and without the promoted adherence to “wallet” names.Does everyone you know go around using your full name for all reference to you?
Does that idea not seem strange?Googles policy document states quite clearly ***COMMON*** names,
which are NOT a legal document full name.
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Well, that was massively hypocritical of you Stil.
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@Navy Gazer: Yes, I’m a hypocrite. Sometimes I act in ways that don’t really fit into the ideal that I set out. And?
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@Navy Gazer: I just realised that the hypocrisy you refer to might not be the responding in anger to customer service processes and to commenters — which some folks have mentioned — but possibly me requiring a real identity for “Madonna” as a commenter.
Nope, different things.
As the publisher taking responsibility for the content of this website, I’m simply asking for a real email address as a contact point in case contact is later needed. That’s not revealed to anyone else, and at no point am I asking for a full name or any other identity.
Or you may be on about the other thing after all, in which case, yeah, well, I’m a hypocrite. Like most people.
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@Dylan: You didn’t actually read the post, did you? I did make the point that Stilgherrian has been my legal name for 30 years. Three times longer than Google has existed. The words “my legal name” link through to a more detailed explanation. I’m not sure how I could have put it more clearly.
As for what we pay for Google’s services… We pay by giving them access to our private information and allowing them to track our every move. Google does rather well out of this exchange, thank you very much.
It’s wrong to think of Google’s services a gift. They’re the bait.
I also recommend reading the comments that are appearing on the post. Some good issues are emerging. And I come back to the core point. If you’re challenging someone over something as personal as their name, this is not the way to approach it.
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At the end of the day, you only have yourself to blame. Didn’t you think that when you changed your name to one-single-word that would cause issues?
I admit i skim-read your post, I was in a rush to get home after finishing work.
They may not exactly be a gift, but even so, no-one is forcing you to use them. Sign up with Hotmail. Sign up with Facebook. To call them “cunts” just for not letting you sign up with their free (as it doesn’t cost you any money) service… well, I don’t think it can get much more offensive than that. What about Gaddafi? What about the government of Syria? What room is left for them?
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i love the irony that ‘madonna’ would fail google’s nym-check-bot test.
my g+ has also been suspended. and ‘outing’ my ‘legal’ name – whatever that might be – hasn’t resolved that either.
two things here annoy and alarm:
1. google already has a ‘real world’ name associated with the account. why does everyone else have to see that? surely it’s adequate that google ‘know’ the account is held by a ‘real’ person? (one who has been suing the account for some years now).
2. if google ‘win’ this ridiculous game, then every corporation everywhere can insist that we not only only use our ‘legal’ name(s) when dealing with them, and that they are entitled to require us to disclose it in and for any contact with the corporation, but – and here is the kicker – they can insist that they have the right to disclose it to the world should we choose to provide feedback at a website, or join a loyalty program, or any other ‘community’ ‘activity’. So long as it’s embedded in a policy or some such.
Sure, we have a ‘choice’ not to enrol. But increasingly, those choices are becoming socially moot. If all one’s friends are on Facetard, and I am not, I *will* miss out on everything they discuss there and organise there.
Do No EVIL. I think someone, somewhere, has used that to roll a huge stogie.
[For a Beta, G+ is a huge stoopid. They've started with limits set to max, and are stubbornly refusing to even try loosening up. The engineering has embedded the norms of some guy in NoCal into a system that faces the world. His boss needs to get out of the 'Plex more. The nym rules can't even cope with the diversity of 'Latino' names common in their own neck of the woods. It would fail any software development course I've ever been a party to.]
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I think the most worrying reason, and I hate to be a conspiracy theorist here, is that they want to know that the person using their applications is a “real person”. They want all the information on this page attributable to that real person and be sure that it is that person. For what purpose? I am not sure. I am not saying they are data mining here, although for what other reason would they need to know you are a “real person”?
Can’t they just ask for some proof that you are that person like Twitter does?
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If what they’re after is verification that the account belongs to a real person, they’re certainly not going about achieving that well. They do not require verification of ones identity during the signup process, people (http://is.gd/H1Nlnm) have explicitly told Google the name they set is not their real name and been unsuspended, and people (http://is.gd/RVzz7Y) have used blatantly false ID’s and been unsuspended.
Meanwhile, spam accounts with real-looking names run rampant (http://is.gd/3BRkLX).
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They seem to want your wallet-name – the name attached to your money.
This case is hilariously fuckwitted because he gave them that and they’re refusing it.
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Like Wolfcat, I kinda expected you to be a victim of Google’s current hot flush.
It’s interesting how Google take these actions with no idea of the damage they cause their users or their own brand.
The real challenge for you now Stil is to find someone at Google who can help you. At least the PR folk might be useful.
I know people who’ve been locked out of various Google services for months who are just stuck with no indication of when one of the Googleplex bureaucrats will tick a box or whatever it takes to turn their service back on.
Good luck.
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I know ex-employees of Google who got their G+ account switched off a few days after they finished working there, and can’t get it switched back on despite still having lots of good company contacts.
I also hear reliable tales of people leaving employment with Google and giving the G+ names policy as one of their reasons. While I don’t have more details (so you can believe me or not) and doubtless it was just a last straw, this names policy is actually hitting Google in the competitive advantage, i.e. their massive brains.
Google employees I know are still some of the most scarily smart people I’ve met anywhere. But it appears their managers aren’t any more. Popcorn time!
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I too have one-word name. My name is Aaron.
When I signed in to G+ I used:
(aaron) Aaron
as a likely way of friends knowing that yes, this is the Aaron I’ve been looking for, and as the closest approximation I could think of to comply with their policy and get past their form. I’m expecting them to kick me out, so far they haven’t.
I would prefer to remain in G+, I think some day it will grow into something worthwhile.
I wrote this G+ post recently.
As I say in there, Google’s policy is arrogant, culturally exclusive and culturally destructive.
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Also amused to note in the suspension notice that Google can’t use “its” correctly. Maybe it was written on an iPhone.
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Or maybe a Motorola Razr?
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Imagine the problems the artist formerly known as Prince must have with Google. Or Siimon Reynolds. Or Madonna (I assume not the same as the respondent here). Or for that matter 50cent, Usher or even Cunt Cunterson (I may have made that one up).
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50cent and lady gaga have no problems at all with g+ That’s right, they get profiles under those names, they’ve been cited frequently, it’s not like google is unaware of this preposterous double standard.
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Which part of any of this was unforseeable when you first changed your name to a single word? This is not something you were born with, nor a name which was assigned to you by your parents, it’s something that you yourself have done knowing that it made you a corner case in just about every identity management system ever created. Further, it’s not exactly cost effective from a personnel standpoint for Google to contact every single person with what looks like an Internet handle for their name, so there’s no reason to be indignant about it until you’ve actively contacted them and they’ve knocked you back.
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@Caprobole: Well for a start, the name change was 30 years ago, when very little of our lives was in “identity management systems”. It’s a perfectly legal construct — it’s neither “obscene” nor “frivolous”, which are the criteria here — and it’s up to any database designer and business process mapper-outerer to cover the spectrum of legal possibilities.
In the three decades since then, many organisations have managed to cope without any glitch whatsoever, including large government entities that one might otherwise think inflexible. Pretty much every organisation has asked first when they have a query, not begun by suspending services.
It’s up to all organisations to adapt their procedures to the reality of the world around them, not insist that we adapt to them.
Your argument about cost effectiveness falls on deaf ears. Google’s cash reserves are in the tens of billions of dollars. For the few dozen or few hundred edge cases in Australia, they can afford to send someone in a limo to serve cocktails while they sort it out.
I come back to the point that this is not new, no. I have 30 years of experience interacting with organisations over this issue. Google has just shown themselves to be one of the worst. It’s inexcusable.
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Stilgherrian,
You suggest that “identity management systems” were not much in our lives 30 years ago.
But we know that the Romans held Censii 2000 years ago.
Registrations of Births, Deaths and Marriages have been around for centuries.
As have Tax records.
These are all examples of Identity Management Systems.
I hope that you will be able to sort out things with Google+; Their currect policy doesn’t seem to be particularly viable given all the variances worldwide in names.
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true. but those didn’t refuse to acknowledge your existence if you failed to fit the naming criteria built into the tablet/scroll/etc.
google is insisting that ‘real’ people always have at least a first name and a surname that fits with their template.
that’s not a viable assumption.
stil is far from the only person with a single name in the english-speaking world (let alone elsewhere). i have known several, one with only a surname (fun for everyone at his primary school – particularly as it didn’t match either parent’s names).
their policy kills their traction in europe … many irish, balkan,
and spanish names, for a start … -
The plural of census is censūs (with a long ‘u’ sound). It’s fourth declension.
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@Chris de Lisle and @Karl L: I reckon you’re both wrong. We’re writing in English. The plural of “census” is “censuses”.
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what a daft piece of reasoning Caprobole.
So someone should think 20 years in advance to what a corporation may or may not want when they are changing their names.
Further you are taking a very anglo centric POV see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mononym re people with a singular name.
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@Caprobole: More to the point, what about the many people who are “born” with one name? Do we penalise people because they happened to be born in Java 50 years ago, because their rural villager parents somehow failed to predict the internet?
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@stilgherrian: Of course. Even the Bible says that some wheat that is sown will not grow properly. Some preacher told me that yes, those damned africans that lived 2000 years ago do not deserve to go to heaven even though no preacher taught them THE ONE TRUTH.
So, sucks to be the rural teenager! We don’t want you. Blame your parents.
Thanks, love,
GooglePlus
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I think the real issue Caprobole, is that Google are arbitrarily suspending people without following any fair or consistent process.
To turn your question around, “which part of any of this was unforeeable when Google decided to enforce a ‘real names’ policy?”
Unlike some of the newer web startups, Google are a grown up company with lots of managers and staff so they should have the corporate wisdom and resources to deal with the foreseen, and unforeseen, problems this policy was going to cause for some of their users.
This “suspend first, ask questions later” mentality of web 2.0 companies – of which Facebook, eBay and PayPal are just as guilty of – is deeply unfair to users and ultimately calls into question the reliability and trustworthiness of these services.
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If this was about what was cost-effective for Google, they would simply deal with people who engaged in abuse online when and if it happened, and never started down the path of trying to require “real looking” names.
Corner case? Most of the world’s population don’t have “real looking” names from Google’s perspective, and a social network started in the most populous country in the world has just been closed down because of its “real name” policy. It’s Facebook and now Google that are the corner case.
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Oh, and by the way, my real name has a space in it, and that’s caused more problems with identity management systems over the past 50 years than having one name ever could… and I didn’t even get to choose it.
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I face these problems from the opposite side of the bell curve to you Silgherrian. Thank you dude for this post.
I have used my real name above to make a point. For all the detractors the only _unusual_ thing about it is the number (five) of middle names, is rather _short_ if one goes by arabic culture where my first moniker was sourced (Family has Scottish origins, so I am lucky to have avoided apostrophes as well). Even so it is far too long with “wrong” letters for many online forms.
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You are aware that this criticism – ‘you should’ve known better’ – is not only hypocritical paternalistic, as in ‘do as we wish as Euro-centric US Americans’, it also completely neglects what Stilgherrian already wrote in his post: binomials aren’t the only naming scheme in the world, I’d wager it isn’t even th most widespread.
ATM, Google decides how you should be named – binomial, based on biblical and easily recognisable European names. If you are a Native American using your NA name you are fucked [not the first time it happens to NAs, or Jews for that matter]. Aboriginal name? Traditional Chinese? Bantu? Khoi San? Indonesian? Arabic, Persian? Even traditional Slavic names could be problematic. Not to speak of artisan’s names [those not so famous], pseudonyms, stalker victims, pen names …
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You don’t comply with Google +’s TOS (Names Policy).
Simple.
Why should they allow you to participate when you do not abide by their TOS?
Pretty simple to understand really.
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@Andrew: You’re not seriously suggesting that a corporation’s terms of service should decide what we as humans can name ourselves? That the rich variety of human culture as it is practiced around the globe should be replaced by the limited rules of a company in California? And that if we don’t comply, we can’t participate? Really?
Sir, I do not wish to live in your world!
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Where exactly in googles TOS does it say you can only use g+ if you have a “normal” looking name?
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read the ‘names policy’ for google plus.
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Aren’t you the smart one.
Please point out where the fuck in the GooglePlus’s TOS does it say that you cannot have a Single Name?
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@Andrew: Here’s the (only) relevant part of the document you just linked to:
To help fight spam and prevent fake profiles, use the name your friends, family or co-workers usually call you. For example, if your full legal name is Charles Jones Jr. but you normally use Chuck Jones or Junior Jones, either of those would be acceptable.
If you imagine that says anything about not being able to use a mononym then you’re hallucinating.
The key wording is “use the name your friends, family or co-workers usually call you”. And in my case that’s “Stilgherrian” — which also, as I seem to have to endlessly repeat to arsehats unable to read, is my name.
Maybe try again when you’re actually read this discussion and put some effort into thinking it through.
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Caprobole, you’re not from Indonesia are you? I suspect that Stilgherrian isn’t either, but mononyms are commonish there — from birth!
What people call themselves is their business. Going for one name is hardly that revolutionary — it isn’t like expecting all 12 middle names to be used. I have enough trouble with computers that can’t cope with two middle names (and I was given them at birth, I didn’t add them later). I’ve had David M Ingram more often than not, but one institution refers to me as D Mark Edward Ingram.
Mailing lists based on property records also break. “David Mark Edward & Ingram” is the owner of our house. We know the property records have been used when a letter is addressed to Mr Edward and Mrs Ingram.
Google’s name policy is so rectally based that it shows you can’t really run a company on python scripts. It is definitely making me evaluate storing information on google’s systems when they can be this arbitrary.
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When I was working in Law Enforcement, 20 years ago, in Australia, we were trained in how to deal with people only having one name. Our Medicare system has no problem. Our Drivers Licences have no problem. The AEC and Centrelink have no problem. Our Courts have no problem.
So why is a corporation saying that a name that is in accordance with their published TOS within its “rights” to then claim that the name is not real. They don’t even demand the “Legal name”, only the “commonly used name” (note: after 10 years these are the same in Australia).
BTW: misleading conduct by way of trade is illegal in Australia.
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While I completely agree with the sentiments of your argument and that google should allow for names that don’t fit with in their tiny little american world.. your argument loses some of it’s credibility in my eyes when you can’t convey it in a civilised manner.
To quote your own words: “I’ve never found it useful getting angry when something’s a simple mistake. After all, you want people to help you, and berating them won’t increase their chances of fixing your problem.”. Seeing as you chose to have only one name, and admit that it is more than a little unusual, I don’t see why you’ve decided to be so angry about it?
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@Paul Pichugin: Well, I don’t know that I decided to be angry, the anger just kinda happened… but… perhaps the core point has been lost in my long post.
What triggered the anger was not that Google had a stupidly arbitrary rule — I’ve had to deal with “surname required” rather a lot over the years — but the extremely poor way in which they broached the topic.
“Hi, we’ve suspended you, because you’re wrong. Edit your name to fix it.”
Wrong approach. Totally the wrong approach. Especially when dealing with something that’s as personal as a name.
Paul Wallbank has it in one back up there when he says that Google’s been around long enough that this sort of idiocy shouldn’t happen.
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Fair call on both points mate..
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+1
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Same thing happened to me.
Even though I haven’t (yet) changed my name legally, under google’s own wording, I should be allowed to use grum:
“The Names Policy requires that you use the name that you are commonly referred to in real life in your profile”
My friends, family, workplace colleges, professional acquaintances, clients etc all know me as grum. But Google believes a professional name is to be ignored if it doesn’t match my birth certificate.
TBH until G+ actually is used en-masse, I don’t really care. I created the account and rarely use it.
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You mean your name *isn’t* grum?!? haha
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@grum: You’ve hit upon an important point, and one that’s at the core of what now seems to be dubbed “nymwars”. Naming practice is far, far more flexible and nuanced than Google or Certain Other Social Networks are claiming for their own. This is an important battle.
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“TBH until G+ actually is used en-masse, I don’t really care. I created the account and rarely use it.”
People have had their other Google services suspended too – including their GMail. Holding people’s data hostage, not so good.
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“People have had their other Google services suspended too – including their GMail”
Has this been confirmed? I’m yet to read an article that states entire google accounts are suspended. From what I’ve seen, its just G+.
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Several people blocked for having typical Hong Kong names can’t get their GMail, so yes indeed. Other reports are that it’s a block on their Google Profile, not their G+ as such, and that Google claim it’s not a name block as such – though the effect showed up when someone at Google decided they didn’t like the user’s name. so the observed effects are the same and the only difference is hairsplitting over internal Google jargon.
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Rainyday Superstar was invited to G+ from the beginning. She now no longer has acces to Picassa, buzz, gmail.
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Jebus, And I thought changing Edward to Ed, Ned or Ted was proving difficult.
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Google’s anti-pseudonym policy has terrible human rights implications. Every person who would want to disguise their identity for perfectly legitimate reasons, such as being persecuted for being an ethnic, religious, political or other kind of minority should have the option.
It’s ridiculous to suppose that privacy is Google’s concern in the way they make out. Google+ clearly intends to capitalize on Facebook’s recent privacy settings fiasco. And yet, G+ forces you to disclose your real name to the public.
Google need to change this, particularly for the human rights reasons.
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Not to mention that it’s not Google’s place to tell people what their name is or isn’t or should be. That carries a Kafka-esque level of absurdity.
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Ah, there’s the solution! Everyone change your G+ surname to Kafka!
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Thanks for the comments so far, even the rude and/or stupid ones. It helps me refine my thoughts.
As it drifts into the evening here Australian time, I’m becoming aware that I have an early start and busy day tomorrow. So I’ll be patchy responding to comments for the next 24 hours.
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While the Romans may have carried out census(I) sorry my Son is the Latin scholar, there is no evidence they ever crucified anyone for having an unusual name, and let’s face it my name, Richard Barrington, is pretty strange to 85% of the worlds population.
I have spoken out against cultural imperialism ( yes Ironic, given as a Brit we know a thing or two about the subject ) but actually we embraced internationalism which is why our national drink is tea and favourite food is Chicken Tika Masala..
I wonder how Googola will get on with China where many adopt a western name for business purposes and change it when they change jobs…
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Fuck them.
Fuck them all.
Fuck them all to the fucking death they deserve.
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I don’t generally like posting +1′s, but…
This. exactly this.
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Further more, Google should realise that angering Prussians just results in war.
What were they thinking?
A simple Google search results in lots of single named people
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except for a lot of those artists and people, they aren’t their legal names.. their legal names are completely different!
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But not all. We are not a dual named monoculture!
This is exactly why Napoleon invaded Afghanistan
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While I certainly empathise with Stil’s incandescence over this, there’s a simple set of assumptions from a customer/user experience basis all the “Stil is an idiot” clown pack here aren’t getting.
It simply doesn’t matter whether he/you/I pay for a service or not, if it’s offered up out there in the wild on a basis that it includes a wide user base and geography, it should meet or exceed the expectations of the user in its flexibility and capability.
It’s completely reasonable to expect, for example, that name fields should not only not ask for First Name and Last Name (rather it should be Given Name and Family Name to allow for cultural and language variants), but that they should also allow for mononyms (a single name, common in certain cultures) and pseudonyms (which many of us use online).
For example, I’m widely known as “trib”. It’s etymology is largely lost in the mists of time, but it’s used by my family, friends, colleagues and at least one Senator. Should I choose, why shouldn’t I be permitted to use it, so long as it can be tied, in a private exchange between a service provider and me, to a verifiable identity?
Google’s blind insistence in the case of Google+ that names not only be in a standard English form, thus failing legally mononymous folk like Stil, but that they also not be pseudonymous treads a line that fails to protect any number of people who conduct their perfectly legitimate online lives behind an alter-identity, for a wide-ranging set of reasons that have more than adequately been discussed, at length, elsewhere (may I take the liberty of pointing folk at danah boyd’s post on the matter). Beyond that, it fails any number of reasonable user experience expectations that, as an application, Google+ be flexible enough to deal with its not insignificant user base, no matter how their name is formed.
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I just saw this posted on G+ and, after having tons of friends suspended for using their “fake” Second Life names (which they have used in public since many, many, years as artists, content creators, organizers, consultants, etc….), let me just thank you for exactly the right tone and language necessary to call attention to this incredibly fucking stupid name policy.
First of all, I’m sick to death of people defending Google on this. It may be their site, but Google does not have the right to choose my identity. It is not their “right” to say that I am not whom I am, and it is not their “right” to play a tyrannical government who says that I have to provide them with a government issued identity card to prove that this is my name.
Yes, it’s their playground, but they provide public services since years and should observe legal protections for people – and it is not just Pseudonymous users saying this. There are many people who are using their “legal names” that are completely against this draconian behavior on Google’s part since G+ opened up. This was never an issue with them before and it is appalling how quickly they suddenly changed their tune.
Also, before anyone throws the following in my face as an excuse for Google: I AM a paying customer of Google, since years. In fact, I paid for my services under my Pseudonym, using a credit card registered under my Pseudonym, with real money that they were perfectly willing to take under that identity. I am a paying customer and I have every single right to speak my mind about suddenly being told that I am no longer welcome at Google, and threatened with the suspension of my services – some of which, again, I have PAID for. That, they have no right to do.
People who keep defending Google on this are complete and utter idiots and morons. This is a civil rights issue, and choosing your own name and identity should be a fundamental human right accorded to everyone. Google should not be the judge of this.
I used to support Google wholeheartedly. I own an Android phone and recommended their services for years to my friends and to companies. I have stopped doing that as of a few weeks ago. I cannot trust Google anymore. Their whole policy stinks to high heaven, they’ve had over a month of lying to us about their promises and solutions, and they have done nothing to fix this situation whatsoever.
And the fact is that Google is also a monopoly and, as such, should be subjected to anti-trust laws which protect the people. I am completely for Google making billions more – and more power to them – but not by dictating to everyone who qualifies and who doesn’t when the rule is so blatantly prejudiced against people who don’t fit into their cookie cutter molds.
So, Silgherrian, thank you for writing this. You’re absolutely correct and your tone was even tepid compared to what I’ve said to them about this.
And to Madonna and the rest: Fuck off. If you don’t want to join in, then it’s not your fight and it won’t affect you. Bugger off and leave the rest of us alone. If you don’t want to see us on G+, then fucking mute us in the exact same way that I sure as hell will be muting you when I see you spouting off stupid defenses about how Google is so fucking pristine.
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Stil unlike many of your commentors I found you anger very refreshing, I killed my account last week because I didn’t want to loss access to my gmail address.
Yes google’s model is ad supported, if they mess me around I remove myself as a product they can sell to there customers, advertisers
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To use another Americo-centric expresion: “I feel you dawg!”
Google’s real name policy is a mess, but cut them some slack – they’re still testing and change it.
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I will cut them some slack when they change it
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No, the site is beta. The names policy appears to be something they’re very fixed on and won’t change.
In internal testing, (I am reliably told that) they had hundreds of Google employees tell them how utterly fucked up from top to bottom their planned names policy for G+ was, complete with detailed explanations (this is mandatory reading for the idiots defending Google on this post, and was widely circulated). Everything happening now was predicted in detail beforehand.
(They also knew that their claim that “real names promote civlity” [presumably they mean WASPonyms] was actually shown to be false before they started claiming it. But that’s a different matter from refusing to understand how legal names actually work in the real world.)
But someone high up in Google has determined that this shall be his crowning glory, the policy he makes his name on. Well done.
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Google? What the hell kind of name is that? If you want to be a real company, use a real name, like Page & Brin.
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The fuckup value of Google’s name policy is really quite incredible.
All they had to do was not be Facebook. People hate the Facebook company even as they use the app. All they had to do was not be Facebook.
Now it’s all popcorn all the time.
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As I’ve said elsewhere: Google’s policy is stupid, and if you agree with it, you’re stupid too. Yes, really. Hey there, gentle reader! Do you agree with Google’s policy on names? Then you’re stupid! No, no exceptions. Stupid. You. Yes, really. Sorry if that bothers — no, actually, not sorry, because I don’t feel sorry to tell you that you’re stupid. And you are. I promise. I’m not, in fact, wrong about this, in case you were thinking maybe that was a loophole. Agreeing with the naming policy = stupid. Can I be any clearer about this?
Currently downloading all 800 fucking megabytes of my GMail so I can kill my Google Profile. They claim it’s possible to do that without messing anything up, but I suspect that’s another lie. Fuck them all. I’d call them cunts too, but I why name them after something I like?
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@Eric. I agree totally with that last. When called that in a professional context I tended to reply with “you are what you eat”. The looks I’d get were priceless.
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I couldn’t have said it better!
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I know Stil and see his viewpoint. It’s likely that the Googlers who made this call are probably people with limited real-world experience beyond programming or mathematics. In a few countries, notably Indonesia, many people have a single name and no surname.
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This post is EPIC, a thing of fucking beauty. All valid points. Make them bleed. Well done.
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I am a single name – Zero – have been for about thirty years. In all my dealings with bureaucracy I have had to provide a second name. So I devised ‘Blank’. The b is silent, the l is silent, the a is silent, etc. Google+ have so far allowed it to pass. We shall see. Join the gang – or rather granfalloon – become ‘Blank’!
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First, I absolutely effing love you and your frank language. I would not want you to be pissed at me. Second thank you.
third, please don’t blame americans for this twisted 2 name field nazi insistance. google IS an american company, however on the web I am a world traveler and constantly face this situation. Even in australian sites (im a web designer, I work world-wide and with australians).
lotta americans have been suspended for not having “real” sounding names. Im just waiting for the two I use who are known publicly by their psuedo-names to vanish. I havn’t a clue why they missed me in the first wave of cuts.
Its not just google that serves up this invasion of privacy though. Facebook does it as well. and to the point that someone scary found someone I loved via facebook. the someone I loved has left facebook in fear that the creep will mine her friends lists and find her real address. its not that hard to do.
Advertisers, marketers, they dont need your real name to track your habits and learn what they need to improve their business. only people who want to hack you and stalk you need your real name.
I hope more people will speak up, “golden-language” or spoken through clear rain water…I don’t care. just speak out. speak up. Our information is our world. Let’s really own it.
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Pingback from A Boy Named Stilgherrian on 17 August 2011 at 5:28 am
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Onya Stil.
OMG what a depressing set of comments you’ve triggered. In the informopolies’ Brave New World, they don’t need to feed us Soma when the populace has been lulled into thinking Google “is just a website” (Madonna).
It’s deeply deeply insidious for Google to force people to name themselves in a formal way. I’m shocked Googles’ countless ovine apologists don’t get that the Real Names policy is a commercial tactic, to aid their aggregation of Personal Information.
Their long standing ambition is to “organise the world’s information”. Truly, Google’s mission is to organise the world. -
This is awesome.
As Skud suggested, we need to fight this by bringing it to the attention of the Mainstream media outlets: here’s some great advice: https://plus.google.com/103325808503679220346/posts/LpCFPG1AezL
I applaud your anger, mate!
They are being stupid cun+s about this, but they won’t care unless the mainstream takes issue.
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More power to you. You’re not the only person writing under a non-traditional name. (Got a Latin dictionary? Check out the meaning of my last name…
) Just waiting for the googlebots to bounce me so I can rip them to shreds in my blog… -
Wow. So many comments overnight my time, thank you. It’s just approaching 0600 AEDT and I did get up early to do something else. However I have skimmed through all the comments and will write a follow-up post later today.
As a teaser, let me just say that I’ve received a boilerplate email from Brian at The Google Profiles Support Team that’s really quite inadequate. I’ll certainly post that too, once I’ve considered my reaction.
Meanwhile, people have mentioned Skud’s research into this. Google+ names policy, explained is certainly worth a read. It dispels some of the false rumours, but also points out some of the terrible, terrible hypocrisies about the policy and Google’s implementation.
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dizeyner – I’ve had the same problem with facebook…that’s how I became jane cerva to begin with. Used to blog under “jane doe” but facebook wouldn’t allow the name when I tried to set up a facebook account for my followers…and thus jane cerva was born.
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I too did wonder how long it would take for your name along with a friend (who also legally uses a single name in Australia) to get picked up by the normative naming police. Makes me angry how inflexible corps can be with naming requirements. One of my exes had a two-word last name and he had all sorts of trouble with banks and even my local library entering his name on the system. Ended up having to use a hyphen or join together as one word. My name on Google+ is currently “Chrissie M.” – I guess I am not far off getting picked on for that. At least I don’t use “crispynoodles” anymore.
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First they came for our our surnames
I remained silent
Because I have a surname. -
Oh, Stilgherrian. This one is champagne popcorn, mediapathy central:
G+ have got Robert Scoble to shill for them (Vic Gundotra, the idiot Google VP who’s bet his career on this names policy, is an old boss and friend of Scoble’s). Scoble is 110% in favour of the names policy, whatever the hell it actually is.
Scoble’s justification? The names policy is more aesthetically pleasing.
Note that we’re talking about a policy that has Hong Kong users locked out of their GMail unless they invent a name American reviewers like, and suspending an Asian-descended Google employee whose name is “Ping”.
“Don’t be evil, just racist.” Are we allowed to call excluding whole countries because you don’t think their Johnny Foreigner gibberish names are pretty enough “racist”, or is that going too far, d’you think?
Man. At this stage I hope they double down even more and absolutely ride this policy right into the ground.
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Surely this isn’t the first time you’ve had problems with systems requiring a surname.
You’re the stupid twat for only having one name.
Fucking self righteous Aussie pricks.
[Stilgherrian writes: I'm going to leave this comment stand, even though it clearly violates the comments policy, because it shows the sheer moronic level of stupidity of this customer of virginmedia.com. They're in Croydon, UK, I think. And they obviously haven't bothered to read anything here. Arsehats.]
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Here is a question for Brits who think that only having one name is for Twats: what about the Head of State, and the first three in line for the Throne? “Wales” certainly isn’t in compliance with Googles TOS…….
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Prince William enrolled at University as William Wales.
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Also in the Army. However, it is not either his “Legal” name, nor the name by which he is commonly known.
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Interesting, since his correct name [shortened like he seemed to have done it] is William Windsor. Windsor is the family name.
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I’m pretty sure that quite a few nobles in the English system lack surnames. Not just Chuck, Will & Harry.
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that all have surnames, but they don’t use them very often.
after all, everyone knows who “charles, prince of wales”
consider, for example, https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Mountbatten-Windsor
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DUDE! Madonna posted on your site! that’s so cool! how could you disagree with Madonna?
I haven’t got blocked, yet, I expect it every time I check in on the G+ page, I’m not truly concerned either way, cause it’s such a loopy item, Lady Gaga. Crowsheet is simply a less offensive version of Crowshit my actual name, but either one is not a legal name. I use both as an artist and am looking forward to whatever cockamamie reaction google finally puts forth.
I liked your discussion of this alot though sir, I’ll try to keep up and check back on your site. Your points about google needing to learn customer service are spot on. -
Fantastic rant, loved it!
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I was totally pseudonymous online until a couple of years ago, when I decided to tie my wallet name to my pseudonym (with little fanfare, I just put it on my About pages finally). Largely that’s because I started making some income with web work, and I thought clients would have more confidence with a wallet name. But that was totally my choice, and it shouldn’t have to be forced on anybody else.
There are many more folks online who have a whole lot more invested in a unique handle than I do/did, and who have whole cyberspace reputations built around those handles. It’s ridiculous to think that they don’t know more people under those handles or that more people don’t trust their expertise under those handles.
Add in all those non-Anglosphere naming conventions that also trip the alarm wires at google+, and it’s just a right-royal clusterfuck. This google VP who wants to die on a hill over this names policy? Congratulations on becoming on out-Zuckerberging Zuckerberg – how sleazy is the movie version of him going to look, do you think?
Mind you, I am enjoying reading some of the stories/profiles at http://my.nameis.me
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I am going to be a cynical & start a conspiracy theory.
Follow the money.
Twitter is full of spammers and corporates blasting the social media sphere with SMEG crap.
G+ wants to both stop the spam & leave the opportunity to sell corporate identities later. And they also want to deplete the volume of eyeballs going to Facebook.
This involves locking down the naming mechanism, acceptable whilst in beta and mainstream English speaking world centric. Not so acceptable when going worldwide.
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A giant fail from Google, to be sure.
An enormous fail in terms of basic information design. If, for instance, someone in Google had bothered to use their own search engine to search for “personal names web forms“, the first hit (that I see, anyway) is a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) page which does a nice job of outlining the issues with personal names around the world and web forms.
This is just basic common sense for any self-respecting and competent modern web programmer. I’m gobsmacked that Google, of all companies, could so utterly fail this one.
And another enormous fail in terms of breaking most of the more fundamental principles of customer relations.
What a monumentally boneheaded – and, yes, racist – policy.
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Well, google haven’t learned ANYTHING from the last time a computer company tried to force people to use their real, full names.
http://inewp.com/?tag=bashiokbut for those of you who don’t want to follow the link, the story goes like this:
computer gaming company Blizzard (owners of the hugely successful (World of) Warcraft, Diablo and Starcraft families of games) decided that they would try to combat internet “trolling” on their forums by forcing people to use their real names.In order to alleviate privacy concerns amongst the user base, a blizzard employe revealed his full name. Within hours, other forum users showed the employee his own personal information including his photos, address, telephone number and other such things by providing links to his Facebook.
Real name + internet = bad news and people have every right to protect their privacy by entering whatever fricking alias they want to use. Definitely an epic fail from Google. I’m surprised they haven’t backed down yet.
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I used to be known far and wide as Dunetraveller, Dune, and currently on a favorite website: “DT” for short. I have used that name since 1998 when I first got online. I was even referred to by one or more variations of that name in phone conversations and in face to face meetings, so I am definitely feeling the thread.
One thing does have me in a quandary. I know of someone whose profile lists his legal name of record, but his posts display another name. I am not sure how this is done. Perhaps it is related to “other names”, and a name listed there can be used as a display. Like I said, I will have to seek out more info.
As to the start of all this frothing anger… I was highly amused by the whole thing, and don’t think I ever thought Still was wrong for his wording. I like honesty, and it was the very essence of honest. I know these guys have a long way to go to get this right, and it will never be 100% addressed, even if proof is required.
This is starting to bring back long buried resentment at MSN (back in the early 2000′s) for their pay or else policy for their chat rooms. It was to mollify parents that their chat rooms were safe for their children to be in without constant parental supervision. Guess it was to deter pedophiles, but when you think about it, those are exactly the people that would find a way to pay (under a false name) to keep on showing up. The rest of us honest folk who desired to use a site for free just walked away pissed off. Looks like it could happen to another “well meaning” company….
Dune
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Sorry for the spelling mishap there, Stil. Damn autocorrect. Sigh.
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what sort of a name is Google anyway?
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Ok Madonna – fucking OWN UP you prokaryote
You’re a fucking sockpuppet for Google+ aren’t you!
Supercilious cunt.
(Yes I AM pissed off at them. SecondLife monikers – which follow the usual duonym formation – are sometimes allowed. But not mine, despite being more mineable than the ones they DID wave through. Aborted Monkey-twats!)
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Pingback from The Rant-O-Matic » Grappling with Google Plus on 17 August 2011 at 6:10 pm
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Google just dropped the ban hammer on me.
Like you, I have a one-word name and I cannot give them the name I use in daily life.
Stupid, and insulting.
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:standing ovation:
Sir/Madam – my most sincerest applause for your wonderful, logical and well based rant!
I will of course link to this from G+, in the hope that it will encourage some more people to stand up and tell Google where to get off that high horse of theirs (which they appear to be riding backwards).Have you experienced the “reasoning” behind the “real names” policy?
It is there to provide Security and Trust. It’s likely there for accountability and increased civility.
Unfortuantely – creatigna fake account and impersonating a Google Employee was not only ignored – G have since deleted those comments showing how ridiculous their “reasoning” is/was.I’d also like to congratulate you on some of the fantastically fanciful vulgar phrases.
I haven’t seen anything that inventive in years – true art!Teh same appleis to many of those posting comments here – thoroughly enjoyable terms/slang/conjoining!
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For those of you that are interest … PLEASE … come and post a comment on G+ to show support.
Well – those of you that aren’t currently banned due to Google Corps stupidity.https://plus.google.com/108803085270706476599/posts/8tbALxLKCXm
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Seriously….. There is a bug in a BETA TEST for a FREE PRODUCT and you scream and bitch and cry about it like it was something major.
Please grow up.
Not much more to say than that really.-
It’s not a “bug”, it’s a policy… and the policy is not in beta…
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It was only a matter of time Stilgherrian, but I too have fallen foul of this silly rule.
Like you, I used my legal “wallet” name. But because some minion in an office 10 timezones away doesn’t like it, I’ve been blackballed.
I think the only choice is to play elsewhere. For even if you, with your public profile much bigger than many of the rest of us, manage to get Google to allow you to use your legal name, do you want to? They’ve been quite disrespectful of you as a person and maybe it’s time to hang out in some other pond.
The nym wars I think are a screwup on Google’s part. I’m starting to wonder if Google have lost their way a bit.
As xkcd pointed out when G+ was launched, all they had to do was not be Facebook. And what happened? They ran around shooting themselves in the feet, and now G+ has all the feel of an abandoned town with tumbleweeds in the main street.
Or was that a business strategy? Was the Buzz fiasco? Was the failure of Wave? -
Oh, I don’t know if you ever saw this one, but it’s a classic tour-de-force:
http://gremlin.net/main/2011/07/24/plusgate/
“So. What have we learned.
In order to use Google+, you’ll want to:
* Have a normal name
* But not a common one
* But not a famous one
* But not a foreign one
* But possibly Bob Hitler.” -
I guess we should be reassured that Stalin or Pol Pot would never have been allowed on Google’s services.
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I’m now picturing Pol Pot sending, as proof of his name, a scan of two million skulls.
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So when you get that one sorted out, can we get all the programmers out there to realise that some surnames include spaces? Like “De La Rue”. And many others, in many parts of the world.
Programming languages have been capable of handing strings with spaces for at least 30 years. I know. That’s about the time I learned to code in Pascal. So why do so many systems today still seem to struggle with recording the surname with spaces? And then if they do, why don’t they support searches that find the name when a keyboard operator types it in without spaces?
Further, the whole this is the surname. If a mail merge program is wanting to include a title and surname in a salutation, then it needs to use the whole surname, not just the bit after the last space. If I must be referred to as “Mr”, then it’s “Mr De La Rue”, not “Mr Rue”.
Enough already with the lack of proper data analysis.
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Oh, and another thing. From now on, we are all going to have to ensure that our children have unique names, aren’t we. Are IANA going to coordinate that?
I’m so glad that my parents were thoughtful enough (in the 1950s) to give me a Scottish first name and a French surname. Even if computer programs can’t get it right.
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I’m naming my next child 127.0.0.1. Nobody else copy me, mmmkay?
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1. Google is way to too influencial, has access to way too much information, and way too necessary for business and indivuals to be written off as “you dont have to use google+ if u don’t like it”. For now, we have to live with google, they have massive influence. If we want to succeed in these days, we need to use google, it is no more a choice than medical insurance is.
2. Dropping the ‘C-bomb’ is innapropriate, regrdless of how justified your anger is. Show some self control mate. -
Wow. 127 comments and counting. My editor at Crikey asked me to write a piece yesterday, To Google, we are data fodder, and I am an unperson. The story was picked up by an American political blog and linked to by The Wall Street Journal. This post has been read at least 6000 times and has been seen and tweeted by broadcasters and people who study online identity for a living.
And now I suppose I ought to try to respond…
I won’t be able to reply to every issue and commenter individually. Nor, in general, will I repeat points I’ve already made. If you were too lazy to read it to first time, well, repeating it wont help.
But here are a few random thoughts.
- I suspect that most people with typical Anglo-American names living in a typical Anglo-American community — which, we must remember, is a small minority of the planet’s population — have never really thought about identity. I mean really thought about it. I’m trying very hard not to think of such people as stupid. They are merely ignorant, and ignorance is easily cured with knowledge — provided they’re willing to STFU, listen and learn.
- If you’re having trouble understanding what it feels like, well, imagine you’re David or Dianne, but every time you go to enter your name someone says “No, that’s wrong, you have to write ‘Daphne’.” Substitute your own name for David or Dianne if you have trouble with abstract thinking.
- Quite a few people seem to think that because people’s names are “unusual” that it’s their fault for running into problems. This is nothing but the bullying of those who are different, oppression by the majority. Blaming the victim. You had it coming to you. This is made significantly worse by Google’s inept implementation of a stupid policy. Names can only be exactly two words, with no “unusual characters”? WTF?
- Quite a few people seem to think that because Google is “free” we should just accept how they behave, that we have no right to complain. Well, as I’ve already pointed out, Google isn’t free. We pay for it with access to our personal information, and it’s made Google rich. But whether there’s an exchange of money, personal data, or six dried fish and a handful of shiny beads is irrelevant. The core issue is treating people with respect, no matter what their background. And besides, Google wants me to sign up so they can mine my data. How will this be encouraged by giving me a bad experience?
- Some people reckon that Google+ is only a beta product and this is just a bug. No. The way names have been set up is so fundamentally flawed that this isn’t even an alpha-level problem, it’s worse than a beginner’s mistake! This isn’t some undergraduate programming exercise marked out of 20. This is the core name-handling code of a significant new product from an 10-year-old global corporation with cash reserves of tens of billions of dollars — and they get it this wrong? So many other organisations get it right, and get it right every day. FFS, this is serious incompetence! Why are you apologising for Google’s incompetence?
- Some people think I shouldn’t use the word “cunt”. I disagree. The English language provides a glorious spectrum of tools for expressing our anger, if anger is precisely the right word here — we also have fury, rage, outrage, ire, pique, vexation, wrath etc. I chose the word quite deliberately because this is for me a fundamental, nuclear-grade screw-up on Google’s part.
- A separate, special mention for Drenzul, though. You really are just a fuckwit. An ignorant, lazy, self-centred fuckwit who clearly didn’t bother to read or even attempt to understand the issues here. Where the fuck did you just wash up from?
- Yes, I’m a hypocrite. But this is a FREE SERVICE and you scream and bitch and cry about it like it was something major. Please grow up. Not much more to say than that really.
- See what I mean?
- No, I suppose you don’t…
- Finally, there’s the small matter of legality. If Google is recording personal information, then at least under Australian law they are required to get it right. It’s not us that need to submit to their arbitrary rules, but the exact opposite.
Well that covers it for now. It’s just gone 0540 and I have real work to do.
Oh, except for one thing. Here’s the response I got from Google.
Hi,
Thank you for contacting us with regard to our review of the name you are trying to use in your Google Profile. After review of your appeal, we have determined that the name you want to use violates our Community Standards.
You can review our name guidelines at
http://www.google.com/support/+/bin/answer.py?answer=1228271If you edit your name to comply with our policies in the future, please respond to this email so that we can re-review your profile.
Sincerely,
Brian
The Google Profiles Support TeamI have yet to bother trying to find out if there’s any differences between the Names Policy and the Community Standards. But the core message it there again. You don’t comply with our standards. You must change your name to comply with the stupid, fucked-up policy.
Sigh.
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i can’t even complain. or, having entered my ‘real’ name, get them to unsuspend my account.
why? because i’m using the uk english version of firefox (i have a huge soft spot for real english, even if this persona usually only uses lowercase).
it has taken me ages to figure out why i get:
Thank you for your interest. If you would like to contact us, you will need to do so in one of the languages below. We are unable to provide email support in your language at this time.
when the page claims to be a form for contacting someone, anyone, at google.
turns out, english (gb) isn’t one of the languages understood by google:
العربية
中文（繁體）
Português (Brasil)
中文（简体）
Deutsch
English (US)
Español
Français
Italiano
日本語
Nederlands
Polski
Português (Portugal)
Русский
Türkçe*headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk*
[inside i'm laughing *and* crying in equal amounts. these are *such* first year undergrad's mistakes that to see it in a live system, forcefully defended by a billion-dollar company, is ... well, you've already said it.]
The community standards and the name policy are different. one is a terse list of thou shalt not’s, the other one of your name shalt not’s.
what we say you’re allowed to say, and who we say you’re allowed to say you are.
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Haha, that could only be better if they listed “American” as an approved language (or just “US”, like LEGO and other sites do)
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I had the same problem [and also the part where they don't like my name, even though I've now written and released a book on the subject, and linked them to it]—they don’t reportedly speak English at GOOG, which nearly explains something, to me.
I got around it by guessing—changing the URL’s ‘gb’ bit to ‘us’, or whatever. It still didn’t do a lot of good.
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“There is no such thing as ‘American English’. There is English and there are mistakes.”
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“There is no such thing as ‘American English’. There is English and there are mistakes.”
That’s patently incorrect. The American government changed the spelling of certain words (after a debate about whether their official language should be German or English, having just had a war with the English it was close vote).
Americans have their own official dictionary.Australia has its own standards of English, too, and we have our own Dictionary – the MacQuarie English Dictionary.
However, I do find it ironic to see websites showing flags for Language selection, with the USA flag for English.
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Your Majesty, Karl doesn’t get it. No knighthood for him!
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I registered to Google+ under the name, Syl Mobile, knowing that at some point the Google algorithms will eventually scan me and deem me an unperson too.
Of course, in my case, Syl Mobile isn’t my legal name. What’s more, it is an ironic twist that Syl Mobile is a recast of my preferred online handle, sylmobile. Lower case. One word.
Look, I’ve given Google my real name in connection with the email address I use for Google+ for other commercial services of theirs. But for a social tool, I wish to use sylmobile. People on twitter, for example, know me by that name. People down the pub call me all sorts of names – none my legal name – but they know who I am.
It is reasonable, I think, to question social tools that don’t let people be social under their own terms.
It is reasonable to question businesses which makes any kind of demand on our own identity.
It is reasonable to push back forcefully and demand businesses to justify their practices around the use of peoples’ personal data as well as to promptly modify their practices when they are relieved off their ignorance in this domain.
I hope this makes sense. I typed it on my slow phone from bed before coffee…
Thanks for making a forceful stand.
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You’re dead to rights, though trust me, it’s not “just” an America-centric foul-up; actually, it is fouler to US than you can imagine, as I tried to politely outline early in my own efforts:
Needless to say, I have since reached the same conclusion as you and am presently struggling to extract myself from the now-tenter-hook-laden grip of this company.
I feel foolish, really; that I actually thought to place my trust in a company… let alone my identity and content.
Lesson learned, at last.
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FAIR WARNING: If you post a comment here which clearly indicates that you haven’t read the discussion and thought about it, I will treat you with contempt. I’ve run out of energy to deal politely with stupid people.
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You’re my new hero.
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Having known you for most of the thirty years you have been Stilgherrian, i applaud your rant sir.
I am fairly certain i introduced myself to you as creog, way back in the Scriptorium days….
Thank you for the lulz and hopefully again you will be able to use your android or any other G service that has now become essentially inaccessible with this ridiculous suspension.
creog -
I have to jump in with those who have commented on the tone of this article – How can you expect to get anything done when all most people can see is a tantrum? I agree that Google made an obvious error; there’s no question there. But honestly, what an overreaction. Until I got to the part where you mentioned you’d been using the name for over thirty years, I’d gotten the impression that this article was written by a teenager. Is all the swearing simply because you were that upset, or is that just how you speak most of the time? It really doesn’t make your point very well, and implying that your inappropriate behaviour is justifiable simply because you felt wronged doesn’t help either. But I suppose it will be assumed that my comment is a personal attack, rather than my taking a genuine interest. I’ve never agreed with the first-name-last-name template, in general. But I think you could be presenting your complaint a lot better. Kind of hypocritical to be screaming at them about how to handle the situation.
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@Zymish: You’re making the (false) assumption that Google is the primary target audience for this blog post and that I expect(ed) the blog post to resolve the problem.
I believe I’ve already answered the questions about the language and the anger, and if you want to know how I usually write, well, you’re looking at a website with 2000+ posts and links to everything else I do in the media. Go your hardest and draw your own conclusions.
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I have something of a professional interest in names and computer programs, and I will state flat out that things violating the “normal Anglo naming conventions” is the sort of thing that you run into within the first couple *thousand* names you try to work with. At most.
How can I say this? Because I work for a company that writes software for government record management. Things like the legal documents that register birth and death certificates and change-of-name proceedings. You know, the sort of stuff where what goes in and comes out had DAMN WELL BETTER be your legal name, because it is being used as that when customers-of-our-customers do things like name searches.
Admittedly, it has been a bit of a challenge to get some of our conversion standards to explicitly permit Unicode rather than only ISO-Latin-1, but that is at least a hell of a lot rarer to run into problems with in the US, and they learned early on that US-ASCII wasn’t going to cut it.
And, admittedly, all the fun of surname prefixing (“de la”, “von”, etc.) and suffixing (“Sr., Jr., III, Esq.” and so on) can be quite the mess when you’re trying to clean up data from an old system which got it wrong. Or trying to scan it in off of a document. Guess what? That’s what “punt to a human for review” exists for. It should be the *first* thing you do when something doesn’t fit your view of the world. And it should be a human who is trained to deal specifically with the machine asking “what do I do with this?” and how to resolve weirdness.
But to sum it up in a sentence? This is what I get paid to deal with. So do the four other people on my team. Our entire company is smaller than many Google departments; they can damned well afford people whose entire *job* is to figure out how to get the code to deal with “weird” situations gracefully. It just isn’t that difficult to turn “reject for lack of surname” into “check to make sure they didn’t just accidentally forget it”, optionally followed by “flag for human review” if you’re being really persnickety about things. Only after *both* of those is it even remotely reasonable to consider “send an inquiry”, much less suspension of service.
Anything less is just plain being fucking lazy and careless about it. I know for a *fact* that Google has employees who were part of Google+ before it was even in the ‘alpha public’ stage who violate this naming policy, because they are people I have met in person. This wasn’t just “overlooked” or “a beta issue”, it was raised as an issue before it ever got a whiff of going public and what you see today is the result of deliberate decisions.
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Spare a thought for those of Vietnamese heritage, some of which have surnames that when anglicised result in 2 letters.
Most name policies won’t accept “Ng” in the Surname field, as it’s too short to be a “real surname”.
See also: http://xkcd.com/327/
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two of my brother’s friends from school are stuffed: ah ha, and ha ng
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Stilgherrian, I have deep sympathy for the Google arragance towards you. How many times has my E-mail address been refused as “not correct, cos we can’t send you a mailing”. On inquiring they had added .ph or .co.uk or some other bullshit.
Lot’s of Indonesians only have ONE name,remember the Bali bomber ? The gods at Google will have trouble with them (300,000,000 strong) hee hee!!
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To add insult to injury, I notice the folk on the Google Profiles Support Team don’t have to post their full name. It’s just “Brian”, not “Brian Surname“. I guess the intention is to make Google seem cool and informal. However, it leaves me with the impression that Stilgherrian is dealing with not-too-bright interchangeable flunkies on US minimum wage.
I hope this blog post lets the naming issue get escalated up to the next level, where workers have the freedom and autonomy to post with their last name. Stilgherrian would rather deal with the organ grinder than the performing monkeys.
Oh, and “Brian” – whoever you are, we know that leaving off your last name anonymizes you. But worse, this allows you to be unaccountable for your actions, because nobody is ever going to know which of the many “Brians” working in Google HQ signed off on the decision. So you’ll never have to take responsibility for your actions. Isn’t that grand? But never the less, whoever you are, and wherever you may be, we still know you’re a tool.
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@Down and Out of Sài Gòn: I’m actually not fussed that Google’s representative was only identified as “Brian”. That may be how he or she prefers to be identified, and in any event there’s a tracking number on the email that’ll presumably link back to a specific human.
But if “Brian” is not Brian’s complete name, well, indeed it is a bit of a double standard.
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Some have been busted using pseudonyms, e.g. “Bayle”, a name which does not exist in the last few US censuses. (Responses from “Bayle” seem to have dried up.)
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Google+ Blog “Suspension saga continues”
cites the letter signed with:“Sincerely,
The Google Profiles Support Team”Is it (The Google Profiles Support Team) the “the name commonly referred to in real life” or they hint using one ID names for a profile and the others for identifying (signing) yourself?
Did the responding person have Multiple Nym Disorder?
Or they write Emails in groups?-
There was a comment (later deleted) which listed the G+ profiles of all members of the profile killing team. Their leader had given his occupation as Google Profiles Team, and so his co-workers were all linked to him. One of them promptly deleted their profile. I’d like to think that person suddenly gained enlightenment as to why someone might not want their wallet name listed every fucking place they went on the internet … but I doubt it.
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Hahahaha! Well done Sir!
As you can see I also prefer to use the ‘interwebs’ under a pseudonym that has been one of my preferred ‘social’ handles for about 20 years, having to do with my Wordsmith and Musical endeavors and then transferred to the ‘interwebs’. because if any fame/notoriety .is associated with my existence, it’s more likely to be associated with this handle than the name on my driver’s license.
May not always agree with some of the words in your vocabulary, but…
Why I was prompted to write this is to tell you that my ISP (2nd best in Australia!) who acquired my original ISP has your location blocked. I could only get in via Anonymouse
Apparently some of your vocabulary is causing their (non-existent) ‘voluntary’ Australian Govt filtering system to freak out !!! No ‘Adult Only’ Options….
I accepted an ‘invite’ to G+, got as far as that name screen, stopped, thought for a moment, and just closed the screen. (As I said, any web existence of mine is associated with this handle, not my driver’s license!) Can’t see why I would like to go back, other than that FB has recently gone even more bananas than usual with more insane unannounced changes that mean I seriously was looking for a CREDIBLE alternative…. but that’s another story… ohh well …
The new games ticker is driving me mad – even games I BLOCKED are showing when friends are running them! Had to delete hundreds of game player friends to stop the massive download rate clogging my broadband!
Now FB has banned me from liking anything as it claims I have liked too many times! Also my wide screen laptop now has the page squeezed into the middle with heaps of wasted space around the edges! And now I can’t like or comment on some of my favorite Political groups!
Fight The Good Fight with all your might….
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You wrote “It’s about time Google learned how to do customer service anyway.”
You are not the customer.
You are the product.The ad companies, who actually pay something (28 billion USD in 2010), are the customers.
You’re just one of many data points they could potentially “monetize”. Since you’re outside the norm, it would take some effort on their part (through human intervention) and apparently you’re not worth that. It’s a simple economic decision.
They’re not a charity or a non-profit, even though they like to pretend to be one, as having such an image encourages people to surrender their personal information.
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Not the customer, just the product ? That’s a needlessly pedantic viewpoint. The eyeballs owner’s are an essential part of Google’s business model, and just as critical to please as their paying customers. Like a TV network their goal is to attract your attention (mouse-clicks) as that is where the advertising $ flow.
They have acted in a stupid way that they can get away with because of their monopolistic position. Many companies that generated the same amount of entertaining swearing would already be issuing apologetic press releases; will they or is the idiotic policy entrenched too far. They would be wise to remember that 10 years ago they were nothing, and hubris alone will not prevent 10 more making them resemble AOL. I’m most interested to see if they try to fix this result of poor upfront thinking or whether their attention moves on and Google+ is left to wither.
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@hb: This observation…
You are not the customer.
You are the product.… goes to the essence of the situation. And that’s how I began by Crikey article, To Google, we are data fodder, and I am an unperson.
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Could I refine that somewhat? We aren’t the product, our personal information is the raw material for Google, Facebook and the bulk of the web 2.0 businesses built on targeted advertising.
They are going to slice, dice and process our information to suit whatever they believe will maximise their returns. That could include slapping our pictures on adverts for some sports drink or hamburger we’ve ‘Liked’ or followed as part of a promotion, or even just what the service thinks we’re interested in based upon their algorithm.
We have to understand this when dealing with these services, we are raw material just like cattle on their way to an Indonesian abattoir.
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@Down and Out of Sài Gòn: This story blipping up up The Register isn’t as unlikely as you might imagine. The author, Richard Chirgwin, is well know to me. What’s more interesting is an observation he made yesterday: “Interesting. El Reg commenters generally more in favour of @stilgherrian than commenters on his own site!” I suggested that might be because commenters are reacting first to the “bad language” rather than the real issues, and that’s framing their response.
However since then he seems to have changed his mind: “So you know, @stilgherrian, comments on the Google+ names story now dominate my El Reg story lines. The Google apologists have chimed in.”
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I’ve just written a lengthy response to the 127 comments so far. I do think that people who say “It’s only a beta” and “It’s just a bug” and “Well it is a free service” and “What do you expect with a weird name?” have entirely missed the point.
I agree entirely.
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Maybe I’m weird but doesn’t anyone see what’s really going on here. If Google/Facebook and all the other social networks can’t get explicit data such as first AND second names then all the algorithms/logic fails to work s well when matching, identifying and supporting search. Simplicity sucks if you are in the social network business of using as much personally detailed data as possible to establish patterns, work out who should be friend recommended to who etc. There is motive in this naming policy, don’t kid yourself.
As an aside I have an employee with one word name from Indo and it really annoys the crap out of me how often people and forms demand his second name from me. He’s an awesome guy stuffed around by stupid rules like this also.
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Absolutely right, Marc. I think people are missing the point that the business models of free online services, particularly social media platforms, are based upon harvesting user information.
The more accurate and identifiable it is, the more valuable that data becomes and hence the more lucrative the business.
Apart from Google, I wonder how much of these shenanighans by various services is being driven by monetizing user data as far as possible to justify sky-high valuations of their businesses?
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Well done, mate. I really hope you get an adequate response from Google. ISTR the majority of Icelandic folk have mononyms, too.
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Stilgherrian is an assumed name. That’s pretty much where this story begins and ends. You chose a name that does not conform to what is socially expected of a person’s legal moniker. Does that make you wrong? No. But, if you assume that failing to conform to the socially accepted norm is not going to cause you any issues whatsoever…well, NOW you are wrong. Are you seriously trying to imply that this is the first time since you adopted this name in your 20′s that you have had difficulty in using it on a form, document, etc? Perhaps the real lesson here is that any twit with a non-conformist streak can raise hell at will when the world proves un-ready for their individualism. We didn’t need your rant to know that. Get over it.
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Ren: you’re just another “blame the victim” wanker. And that’s where this story begins and ends.
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Patience my friend.
Sooner or later an “African-American” will try to use a name such as that used by the activist Malcolm X.
Google will crumble rather than risk being called RACIST.
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They’re being called “racist” already for blocks of their own employees.
You’re overestimating how much white people give a shit. They don’t even notice. (This is what the technical term “unexamined privilege” means.)
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I’d like to re-emphasise, by the way, what an incredible fuckup this is.
The G+ software is brilliant. It’s one of those products that is just ridiculously good. As an office productivity destruction tool, G+ knocks Facebook into a cocked hat – I did some A/B testing on this matter. I actually want to love it lots and give it my life and tastes and let its advertisers get their paws on my juicy, juicy credit rating and probably a DNA sample as well, in return for the very finest of Internet-as-television entertainment.
But the names rubbish means I’m not only not inviting anyone (unless I want to encourage them to risk their email), I’m actually reluctant to post content of substance that isn’t names rubbish related (since those are the people adding me these days), and about half my stream and increasing is names rubbish. When I go to post, the number in “Also email X people not yet using Google+” keeps going up – those are people who were in my circles, but have left or been booted off.
I don’t think Google realise just how dependent they are on the goodwill of us cattle to keep supplying the milk. I’m seeing serious discussion of alternatives to Google, for collaborative documents, for email, and almost unbelievably, for search.
Just how toxic does your brand have to be to make Bing look like a workable idea?
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@Ren:@Ron: You’re a classic example of the ignorance and stupidity that leads to intolerance and suffering in so many realms.The key giveaway, Ron? This phrase.
“failing to conform”
The crime of being different. Of being in the minority. Of not being in your — what’s the other phrase? — in the “socially accepted norm”.
Problem is, Ron, your idea of “socially acceptable” is limited by your own ignorance.
We’re all in that situation, I suppose, shaped by our experience.
But you’re too stupid to realise that the world is richer and more complex than you know. The limit here is not what “society” finds acceptable — as I’ve explained, all manner of organisations in my society and others can and do deal daily with me and with others far more unusual — but some far narrower scope invented by your ignorance.
Too stupid to have understood from the discussion here and elsewhere that mononyms, “assumed” or not — as if it would be different if someone else had written the word and signed the document — are far more common than you know and are far, far from being at an extreme of name variation.
Too stupid to realise that the merely unusual is not “unacceptable”.
Too stupid to have realised that, no, of course I’m not saying “this is the first time … that [I] have had difficulty in using it on a form”. But it is one of the very, very few times I’ve encountered a names policy so brain-dead and internally inconsistent that it can’t even cope with “Anne Marie van Dyke” or “Adrian D’Hage” And certainly one of the very, very few times an organisation has had the arrogance to begin the conversation by saying I’m straight-up wrong.
No, Ron… I’m calling you Ron because Ren isn’t a proper name. I don’t know anyone called Ren. You must have made a mistake. No, Ron, for you the world is simple. “Conform with my narrow views, or shut up.”
I hadn’t written about it yet, but I was going to disagree with people who were calling Google’s actions “racist”. I was going to say it’s not as bad as that. But upon reflection it’s exactly the same underlying attitude. The same attitude you’re showing right here, Ron. Someone does things differently from how you do them, so they’re wrong and must change their ways.
Well fuck you, Ron, and the toxic tapeworm you rode in on.
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I’m a non person too so I didn’t even sign up, seems that was the right answer. Now seems like a great time for someone else to enter the search engine market.
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I’ll be posting your rant to G+ on this pseudonymous account, just to see whether the googlebots notice.
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Ahh, this is most amusing… Back in the late 90′s i worked for a local electronics firm, the VERY first customer was called “fungus the bogeyman”. Thats his name, on his credit card, driving license and passport.
Its a comical name but they key is thats his name.
Or a guy who we interviewed for a job who’s name was “Kirk”.
Not Mr, just Kirk.
Changing your name is a legal thing to do. Its just typical of some giant like google to decide what the “socially” accepted norm should be. The norm is your name. NOT google (mis) interperation of it. Trouble is, most numpties will bend to googles whim, especially when they start selling all this data.
Fuck google, facebook, twatter et all and all the shit that is NET2.0. -
I wonder if Bono and Madonna and a few others have profiles? This might prove selective discrimination and be good fodder for a legal challenge.
And, @Ren, apart from your opinion, specifically why does only having one name make you eligible for discimination? Should Pieter van den Hoogenband also be discriminated against because his has four parts? The IOC don’t think so. Where is the authority you can refer to (other than Google and you) that has a right to determine what names are appropriate?
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@Kelly: Obviously because Ron’s dick is bigger than yours…
On the other hand, Pieter van den Hoogenband’s parents were obviously compensating for something….
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This is the kind of thing that happens to socialists, especially stupid socialists who laughably only go by one name.
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“Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.”
What we have in this comments section here, is clear evidence of who the fools are.
Lucky for them, they are likely using pseudonyms.
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I, for one, heartily agree with your post and the manner in which you have chosen to post it. You have chosen a subject with is seriously and honestly in need of a good smackdown, and by golly, you have provided that smackdown! I tip my hat to you, Sir.
And ignore all those nitwits who simply don’t have the talent to do what you did with even half as much of the artistry and cathartic vitriol in which you did it.
Cheers,
René Kabis ← My real name, which Google+ has issues with as well… -
Some have complained about your use of cunts in this situation i just think you missed the full stops in the double acronym C.U.N.T.S Can’t Use Names Thoughtful S.O.B.’s
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That “Thoughtful” should have been “Thoughtfully” ironic in the circumstances but then we all make mistakes as the Dalek said climbing off the dustbin
and hopefully Google will also soon attest to in its handling of the #NymWars
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This one is great, and could do with a journalist using it:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/d110295984969329522620/posts/ExKJZgBAYxM
That’s a report from inside Google, from an anonymous employee, on what it’s actually like inside.
Precis: It’s the biggest internal issue, everyone working there with half a principle is torn, many are leaving because of it, and Vic Gundotra is a massive cock. Also, if you’re not a white rich man, fuck you, they don’t care, it’s explicitly a network for white rich men with the proper name format.
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Well, I’ve signed out of G+ till they sort out this mess.
But I had a thought this morning that could help Google with the pseudonym issue, if not the single-name (or many-part name) problem.
G+ should let you specify a Nickname for a circle. Then people in that circle would only see you by the name linked. This would seem to work with their philosophy of real names, yet allow people to separate their circles – for example, those in family would see your full name, while those in your online friends circle might see you by the name you use in your blog, etc.
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from a comment on my request fro your name. I lost it
“Lorraine Murphy – Yep, they’ve killed my account twice (because I’m not “raincoaster?”) but that troll is still around posting pictures of corpses and labeling them with my name.” -
Reading through these articles and blog entries (not to mention the comments!) has been an interesting learning experience. Usually I find Internet kerfuffles simple entertainment with that added flavour of trainwrecky miscommunication, but this one actually has left me something to chew on for a long time, re: identity, and its handling in bureaucratic situations.
(And here I thought having a non-Anglo name with three first names and a long, long surname with plenty of umlauts was an inconvenience on international internet sites requiring identification. One learns something new every day.)
It’s rather ridiculous that G+ does seem so reluctant to let people go by their internet pseudonyms – I could understand requiring a “real name” to be kept hidden, and allowing a “display name” to go by; after all, such basic courtesies are extended by far more simple and small services and sites.
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Have to agree with all you say really, I have to wonder who sits there and decides what is what isnt a name and then makes some algorithm to enforce their odd ideas.
They may find this is the one thing that stops people from using their service I mean come on putting in your name only to be told it doesnt conform to what they say it should look like is a bit of a slap in the face and one other thing. They need us far more than we need them….
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Considering how much you use the word, ‘fuck’, maybe it thought that was your name. I think it is understandable what google is doing, Mr. Fuck.
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Mr echo: if Stilgherrian had been as polite and deferential as Jeeves telling Bertie how to deal with horrible Auntie Agatha, then he wouldn’t have been reblogged and retweeted around the world. Sometimes a little bit of cussing helps.
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Great post.
You might already know this, but: the objections to the word “cunt” may be from the US. In en-us, the word is much cruder than in en-gb (I don’t know about en-au), just as the reverse is true of “shag.”
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I think such a moment could be epic.
Smart people don’t just fill a blog, screaming desperately about how weak they are.
Maybe this is the moment when you could jump on the opportunity and create something better than Google+, could you ?
After all, Google doesn’t owe you anything. They just offered you some free services, and you just scream now about how bad are they ? Take it or leave it ! It’s their servers, dude !
And don’t think that “free speech right” is going to save you anytime soon ! It seems you are just free to say stupid things, you moron that polute the web !
“Free speech right” might be instead “right of saying the TRUTH”, not just anything that comes in your empty head !
So, here is the truth, even if you like it or not. Google is free to act as it sees fit, disregarding of your opinion.
Ugly truth, right, but it’s the truth !
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As of yet, this is without a doubt my absolute favorite post on this subject and believe me, I’ve read a lot of them.
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Madonna just got her profile up and verified. It is spelled “Madonna .” Yes, “.” is her last name.
I thought it was worth mentioning. Rich and famous gets you a free pass.
(I deleted my profile when they blocked it. To me that the only way.)
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So if I start adopting kids at the rate of one/colour/week and tell the whole world, I can have “Lykurgus .”
I’ll give it a try (never mind “rich” – Trumps net worth is minus 600M, so I’ve outdone him).
By the way
Such brazen steering-clear-of-the-point as this…After all, Google doesn’t owe you anything. They just offered you some free services, and you just scream now about how bad are they ? Take it or leave it ! It’s their servers, dude !
…has ALREADY BEEN FUCKING DEALT WITH! REPEATEDLY!
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Thanks again for all your comments, even the stupid ones like Olalaaa’s. And my apologies again for the delay in responding. I have read them all as they came in, however, and they’ll be fed into my notes for the forthcoming edition of the Patch Monday podcast — because I’ve decided to cover the #nymwars there.
There has actually been some progress. I posted a polite enquiry to Google, they posted a not-quite-boilterplate response. I’ll put them in a blog post tomorrow.
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I’ve just posted an update, Stilgherrian versus Google, Round 2. It includes the full text of my email back to Google after they sent me their boilerplate “your appeal has failed” email and their response, as well as links to some recent media items.
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If the Google names issue is important to you, I would really appreciate it if you could sign the Google Pseudonym Petition at http://l.skeptical.ly/pseudonym-petition and consider helping to promote it.
I started it for people who have valid reasons to use pseudonyms on-line, but I think it’s just as relevant to those with names that do not fit the Anglo-American “First Last” patter, such as those with a single name.
Thanks in advance for any support!
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The link to l.skeptical.ly/pseudonym-petition redirects to change.org, where the petition has a number of fields to fill in, including name and address.
The Terms Of Service say, in part: “In consideration of your use of the Site, you agree to (a) provide accurate, current and complete information about you as may be prompted by any registration forms on the Site (“Registration Data”); (b) maintain the security of your password and identification; (c) maintain and promptly update the Registration Data, and any other information you provide to Company, to keep it accurate, current and complete; and (d) be fully responsible for all use of your account and for any actions that take place using your account.”
Accurate current and complete information. For a petition? Related to nymwars?
AYFKM?
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And what’s so bad about accurate, current and complete? Pseudonyms are accurate, as are mononyms. From my perspective, that of privacy, those goals can be attained as still respect online privacy.
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Considering the subject matter, the irony is pretty damn thick.
I’ve never had to agree to such a long TOS for a simple petition. When I got to the part I quoted I terminated.
Reasonable people can disagree with me, but it rubbed me the wrong way, especially considering the subject.
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I’ve just approved three comments that for some reason had been mistakenly identified as spam. This one, this one, and this one. Some interesting points about long names.
Sorry they took so long to get online, but I don’t check the spam very often.
@Aaron and @Cory Albrecht: Petitions should probably have some sort of reality check so the recipient can’t be reasonably sure it’s not astroturf. I haven’t figured out my own opinion on how much is enough.
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When I’ve signed online petitions in the past, they’ve only required an email and a name (and not first and last at that
. That should be enough. As Stilgherrian points out, there needs to be some sort of reality check, I think email is enough. I think full name and address plus agreeing to a TOS that extends well below the fold is ludicrous. I mean that in the nicest way possible (really). -
oh boy they really fucked you.
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This week’s Patch Monday podcast is an interview with Kirrily “Skud” Robert about Google’s failure of a names policy. Enjoy.
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So, it turns out that Google+ isn’t really a social network service. Google chair Eric Schmidt reckons it’s an identity service. The battles of #nymwars will doubtless run for ages.
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I’m sorry…& you’ll probably call me names for this, but…
Is the title correct?
The current title…
Right, Google, you stupid cunts, this is simply not on!
Should it be…
Right, Google, you stupid cunts, this is simply not OK!
The…”not on”…just doesn’t make sense to me…”not OK”…makes more sense…am I wrong?…did I miss the meaning?…am I (dare I say it?) right?
Bug: The “smart”…”quote”…”replacer” fails when there is any char before an open quote or after a close quote: “works” .”<–fail” “fail–>”. .”<–fail–>”. I hate WordPress’s comment string replacer, I want the chars I typed not the “smart” versions…& an ellipsis should be 3 seperate dots not 1 char. I love the insta-preview tho!
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Bug Followup: Ah, the “smart”…”quote”…”replacer” only fails during insta-preview, the posted version worked.
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@Is the title correct? and @Bug Followup: I should call you names, yes, because you’re using a fake email address — in my goddam domain, if you please! — and two different entries in the name field when some sort of consistent identifier looks way less dodgy. But…
The title is correct. I wrote it. I should know.
If you’re not familiar with the usage “not on” for “not permissible” or “not a possibility”, with a sense of having transgressed social rules, all I can suggest is that it happens not to be common usage where you’re from.
It’s a much stronger statement that something being merely “not OK”.
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I came here via “the register” website. I’ve read what you have to say and have to say I totally agree with you. I have not read the other commenters, I’m afraid because I’m sure they’ll be off topic quite a lot. Management that determines policy often overlooks the diversity in the world and we should not comply with what how they want us to be. Good on you.
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Belatedly following. I’m not doing Google+ any more than I’m doing Facebook because I just don’t want to be that public. But I agree this sucks, and does nothing to change my non-participation.
And there’s another twist – if you have to provide your ‘real’ name, surely you should have to provide all of it? What if there’s already a John Smith or Susan Chang on Google+?
My parents in their wisdom (and in compensation for not having the 8 children the Catholic Church expected) endowed me with four given names. This means that in cases where I am required to provide my full legal name, I usually can’t. That includes my passports which both allow me three given names. That’s ok by my since I never use the fourth one by preference anyway. My driver’s licence only allows me two given names (which I don’t like at all). So the name in my passports is not the same as the one on my birth certificate or the one on my driver’s licence. Yet all of those documents can be used to ascertain my legal identity. I wonder which version Google+ would be willing to accept?
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This whole episode made me decide to get my email away from Gmail – I spent last weekend setting up my own mail server, it’ll cost me $US 20 a month to hire the virtual server space.
I’m not going to say I’ll never use a Google product, but I certainly don’t want them running my mail, calendar or contact list any more (I’ve moved the last two over to Zoho for now). I deleted my Google+ account after two weeks, not because of this but because FB and Twitter give me all the networking I need right now.
But if Google are prepared to be this callous towards people with legal names that don’t fit the dominant convention in the USA, and also to those who don’t choose to reveal their legal names, then I really, really don’t trust them – even though I use my legal name online or a very similar handle.
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Oh my god I might be in love! Love this post
but I have to say your mistake was in thinking you were the customer. My dear lad you are the product and your information goes to companies which are the customer. -
Love the post.
This might possibly piss you off but Google+ just gained a new member called … wait for it…… “will.i.am .”. None other than Vic Gundotra the Google VP is advertising it:
https://plus.google.com/107117483540235115863/posts/iU84bBLaPXA
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I haven’t responded to some of the recent comments here because I’ve been both busy and dealing with health issues alternately. But thank you all.
@Shantul Sharma: Thank you. I’d heard about the will.i.am thing, but it only pisses me off a little bit. It’s hardly the first time someone or some organisation has been so besotted with celebrity that they’ve ignored their own rules to help get their tongue even further up their arse.
Gundotra doesn’t even follow the rules himself, of course. My understanding is that Vic is not his wallet name. That kind of hypocrisy does piss me off. I daresay a further post on this point will soon appear.
@kim: You’re 100% right about is being the product and the advertisers being the customers. Someone made that point earlier in this long comment thread, I think. Or maybe it was just on Twitter.
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Sorry for what you have been through and thank you for sharing. Your report saved me from the temptation of buying a Samsung Galaxy S II. Great hardware, but a spydroid in my pocket 24/7? No thanks, Google.
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Pingback from Google Plus and why I left on 27 September 2011 at 8:32 pm
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Oh by the way, Google are still at it: suspending someone for their 100% legal, government-sanctioned, birth name, which is an Indonesian mononym.
https://plus.google.com/103112149634414554669/posts/dLZoT7LEJWU?hl=en
Hi, Google employees! What will you do today about your company’s corporate racism?
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I just cancelled my Google+ account (Nov 27, 2011) because of their stupid real name policy. I guess they wanted to make it easier for Government and non-Government stalkers to track us
. So, anyone who has a nom de plume or in my case, a nom de cyber, will not be able to use Google+. And no, I’m not going to send Google a “mother may I” letter. Well, I got news for Google, I don’t need your second failed attempt (Buzz was #1) at a social network, and I am in the process of cancelling my personal Gmail account. I’m thinking Yahoo or Yandex…yeah. -
It’s not just that you don’t have two names. Someone over there has simply decided to make value judgments about the “authenticity” of people’s names, regardless of what their stated policy is. I’ve been using the name Dagmar d’Surreal (although mainly just Dagmar) everywhere that’s not going to be giving me a paycheck (not making myself unemployable, thanks) for about 20 years now. Maybe less than five percent of my friends even care whether or not they know my “real name”.
In December, Google+ decided my name is “inauthentic” and their communication with me about it has been one (count ‘em, one) form letter from a “Calvin” who ironically does not appear to have a last name.
I can’t help but think they’re only managing to create a slightly more accurate system by which snobby people can try and invade other people’s privacy… without all those “inauthentic” names in the way.
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@Dagmar d’Surreal: Sorry for the slow response — other matters have been the focus of my work lately — but you’re quite right. The most annoying parts of this entire matter for me? The policy said one thing — well, it said about three contradictory things — but then their actual practice indicated that they did something else. Their back-end systems didn’t support the policy or practice. And their entire customer “service” process was rude and ill-planned — though I wish to say on record, again, the individual staff were polite and did their best but eventually “the system” just gave up.
In your case, if you use the name Dagmar d’Surreal or just Dagmar in our interactions, then that is your “authentic” name as far as I’m concerned, because it’s the one I see with complete consistency. I have no idea where you reside, but in common-law countries that should be sufficient — though for many practical purposes a piece of paper is of course needed.
Any employer who’d not hire someone on the sale basis that their name is “a bit different” deserves a bullet in the head. But only two hours after the one in the gut.
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Pingback from This week in Social « three nine seven on 27 January 2012 at 10:23 am
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Much here has been said of Australian law and getting the details right. I totally agree, but will point to the Australian Government who has issued my passport as belonging to Jorn Sanda. When I pointed out that is incorrect, they simple responded that “Australia doesn’t do umlauts”.
Curious to see if the platform for this environment will render my name with an umlaut…
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@Jörn Sanda: I run this website on WordPress and it handles Unicode character sets just fine. The real problem is when the reader’s computer can’t handle it.
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You might be my function designs. Thanks for that article
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Pingback from Unthinking WHAT? » Disjointed Ramblings on 03 April 2012 at 6:26 am
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Very, very fine vitriol, mate, -I hear this burning hatred for Google from more & more folks every day.
On the bright side, Sergey Brin & Larry Page have given our world two faces no one could ever get exhausted of punching.
But there is indeed something very sinister about ‘Google’ -a scopomaniac/hegemoniacal intrusion into every single person on Earth’s privacy -no less.
Googlevil demanded my mobile phone number. I don’t have a mobile phone. So Google insisted that, if I wanted to use their services, I’d have to get one & give them the number!
I no longer use Google services, but routinely have to manually disinfect unwanted Google products that install without my consent.
History tells us that greedy, hubristic Google are heading for a well deserved crash. Perhaps like Berezovsky.
P.S. “Madonna” is an “Hindian”, unpaid Google employee/sycophant from Bombay -having been schooled in cod-Americanese at the call centre where he/she makes billions of rupees annoying the f*#k out of normal humans.
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