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[prog]

Where I am on the web these days:

Still posting like dokken to Twitter, but find myself warming to Google+ as well. In many ways it does everything that LiveJournal was doing a decade ago, but with a far friendlier UI. Most everyone I know seems to be piling on in, too. It seems the best candidate for carrying LJ's torch forward.

Here's me on Google+. Feel free to encircle me as you will.

I have all but abandoned my Facebook account, and am likely to delete it later this year. I actively dislike Facebook for a number of reasons, privacy perhaps the least of them -- I find their attitude towards both their users and the rest of the internet cynical, exploitative and exasperating. Even if we don't wish to hang a halo on Google, their own new social network has already demonstrated their willingness and ability to be far better than Facebook in all these ways. I believe they want to deliver a service that's attractive and good for both Google and their users, and not just themselves.

I discovered last month that I created a tumblr four years ago and forgot about it. I started warming to it again, going so far as to make a long, experimental post to it. But with Google+ on the scene, I'll probably let it lie fallow again.

Comments

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

I've been trying out G+ and I like it in many ways, but their behavior with respect to the "real names" policy has me wondering if I actually want to be associated with it.

[prog.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I just now read your posts about it on G+. Based on the names that had encircled me (hi, Tablesaw) I wondered if Google just wasn't enforcing this rule, which various of my pseudonym-preferring friends had initially read and complained about. But according to your findings, they do enforce it, scattershot-style or based on tattletales' reports, and I guess I'm only seeing those who haven't been zapped yet.

Hrm.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Well, it's not my findings, it's mostly those of an ex-Google employee opposed to the policy who did us the service of testing it out.

I suspect the thing that actually got her is that her name has a space and a period in it; they're using some sort of lexical filters.

[hrafn.livejournal.com]

Doing very little research, I found a few cases of people being zapped for failing to use a name Google approved of. Some of them were even following the "use the name your friends, etc. know you by," but whoever at Google saw their account apparently still did not find it acceptable. (I posted some links in a post a few back; another case I heard of via email is someone who has always gone by a first and last initial - and got their account suspended by using that first and last initial.)

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Not to mention, it also means the fannish activity on LJ is never going to happen there. You cannot have, say, fanfic communities without pseudonyms. I suspect this is the way they like it.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Turns out if they suspend your account for having a wacky name, the data export tool doesn't work. You lose your data.

And one criterion for a wacky name is mixing characters from "different character sets" (the example given is Latin and Chinese). They also encourage users to report fake names, which is fodder for griefers.

This is unacceptable.

[hrafn.livejournal.com]

I have a very hard time trusting Google more than Facebook with privacy when they touch so very many things. Facebook's head people may be outwardly more hostile to privacy, but Facebook is really only a social networking tool. Google wants to be the internet - and their "no pseudonyms" rule is actively hostile to privacy - and personal security, for some folks.

I'll add you to my (often unread) Twitter stream, but I feel about as secure using Googleware as I would changing my citizenship to a an Eastern Bloc country back during the worst of the Cold War.

[radtea.livejournal.com]

I wasn't aware of any of this stuff 'til I read it here... this is a real problem. Names are not lexically limited, so any algorithmic approach will fail, and privacy concerns are completely legitimate.