[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?
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 😉
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
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.
argh, fucked up the URL.
https://plus.google.com/u/0/110295984969329522620/posts/ExKJZgBAYxM
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.
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.
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….
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.
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.
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.”
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 !
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.
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.)
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!
https://stilgherrian.com/only-one-name/right-google-you-stupid-cunts-this-is-simply-not-on/#comment-37875
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.
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.
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!
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
This week’s Patch Monday podcast is an interview with Kirrily “Skud” Robert about Google’s failure of a names policy. Enjoy.