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Monday, 23 January 2012

Google Plus admits they want fake names

Today, after 7 months, Bradley Horowitz announced that Google Plus will accept some pseudonyms. Kinda. If you can prove you're already famous. And can convince their robot it looks like a name. However, Google Engineer Yonatan Zunger spills the beans in a comment on that thread:

First of all, you might ask why we have a names policy at all. (i.e., why we don’t simply go with the JWZ proposal) One thing which we have discovered, while putting some miles on the system, is that it is indeed important to have a name-based service rather than a handle-based service. This isn’t a matter of functionality so much as of community: You get a different kind of community when people are known as Mary Smith than when they are known as captaincrunch42, and for a social product in particular we decided that the first kind of community is the one we want to build. In order to do that, we want to establish a general norm that the names you put in to the system should be names, not handles.

So one thing that our name checking flow tries to catch is handles, which should normally be nicknames, shown in addition to a name. The other important thing it’s trying to catch is people who are creating individual accounts, rather than +Pages, for non-human entities such as businesses or organizations. The behavior of +Pages is deliberately restricted in the system, and we don’t want people to be creating fake human accounts to circumvent that. The name check turns out to be a very powerful tool to catch these.

Our name check is therefore looking, not for things that don’t look like “your” name, but for things which don’t look like names, period. In fact, we do not give a damn whether the name posted is “your” name or not: we will not challenge you on this basis, nor is there any mechanism for other users to cause you to be challenged for this.

There are two main cases where the name check screws up. One is false positives: people (such as you) who have unusual names which get flagged because they looked like handles. Being able to appeal via things such as drivers’ licenses is useful for this case, since it’s a simple “oh, we got this wrong.” The other case is people such as +trench coat, who are so well-known under this handle that it would be bizarre not to let them onto the system under this name. For this case, we allow appeals based on being well-known under the name: thus the ability to prove the “established pseudonym.” We’ve deliberately set the threshold for that latter case fairly high for now, but we intend to continue to tune it; the objective is that the frequency of such names should basically be the same as their frequency in meatspace.

So to answer your questions one-by-one:

(2) “Meaningful following” only applies to cases of established pseudonyms which do not look like names. The definition of “meaningful” is deliberately vague so that we can tune it, so that it behaves in a natural fashion.

(3) That’s correct; drivers’ licenses are for false positives, not pseudonyms.

(4) Unusual names will indeed hit friction, because of false positives. We’re trying to minimize that, but it’s going to take some trial and error.

(5) Google+ can absolutely be your first identity online. No matter what your language, no matter where you come from. The “established pseudonym” logic should apply to a very small subset of people. If some groups are seeing a higher false positive rate than others, that’s a bug, not a feature, and we have the data available to spot this situation and remedy it.
(posted in full, in case of subsequent retraction, and because G+ doesn't have permalinks for comments)

Yonatan admits what Bradley obscures:that this is an Identity Theatre issue. They don't want your name, They don't care if you have a forename in one language and a surname in another. Let me quote this exactly:

Our name check is therefore looking, not for things that don’t look like “your” name, but for things which don’t look like names, period. In fact, we do not give a damn whether the name posted is “your” name or not: we will not challenge you on this basis, nor is there any mechanism for other users to cause you to be challenged for this.

This is what I suspected when I wrote Google Plus must stop this Identity Theatre

Google+ is letting an algorithm decide what is a name and what isn't. You will be forced into it's Procrustean idea of what names are, or be harassed for it. You have to pass as normal, like call centre workers forced to learn to sound American.

You can create disposable accounts with fake names, as long as they look plausible to Yonatan's bot.


This algorithm has allowed people called 'panel heater' 'The Phoenix Rising' 'tous les mais du monde' and Mehr Decent , a bot with a well-known actress's photo posting links to a single website to follow me (and that's just in the most recent 30 I checked).

So Google continues to encourage fakers and discourage those who need a pseudonym for good reasons.
Posted by Kevin Marks at 14:29
Labels: google, Identity, pseudonyms

21 comments:

Michael Mahemoff said...

Just FYI it's not really a new/covert position. From just after launch:

https://plus.google.com/111091089527727420853/posts/Fddn6rV8mBX

January 23, 2012 3:24 pm
Kevin Marks said...

I know, Michael, I cited that in my original post about Identity Theatre.

They've been eliding this and briefing to imply 'Real Names' when it has been a 'Common Names' policy all along. In other words an Ellis Island policy. If you spelled your last name in Cyrillic, they'd reject you.

January 23, 2012 3:56 pm
S. said...

Interestingly, Yonatan's comment seems out of sync with the current Google Terms of Service:

"""5.1 In order to access certain Services, you may be required to provide information about yourself (such as identification or contact details) as part of the registration process for the Service, or as part of your continued use of the Services. You agree that any registration information you give to Google will always be accurate, correct and up to date."""

January 23, 2012 5:13 pm
John Gordon said...

The policy does work for me. I use the pseudonym "John Gordon" for all my web work -- it's a bland tag that happens to be my first and middle name.

This is the identity I am comfortable sharing as. I've used this tag on G+ and wondered if G would delete it. I guess not. (I deleted my truename G+ account so this is the only one).

January 23, 2012 7:33 pm
Kevin Marks said...

Kevin Marks: @yonatanzunger so why are you still suspending @catvalente?
via twitter.com

September 18, 2014 8:25 pm
Kevin Marks said...

Catherynne Valente: @yonatanzunger @kevinmarks Thank you for fixing it--I swear I'm me! Who would pretend?
via twitter.com

September 18, 2014 8:25 pm
Kevin Marks said...

Yonatan Zunger: @kevinmarks @catvalente That doc is incredibly dated: plus.google.com/+YonatanZunger… .
via twitter.com

September 18, 2014 8:25 pm
Kevin Marks said...

Yonatan Zunger: @catvalente @kevinmarks Whoops -- looks like we left old text in that warning. I'll fix it. You were taken down for impersonation.
via twitter.com

September 18, 2014 8:25 pm
Kevin Marks said...

Catherynne Valente: @yonatanzunger @kevinmarks I did the verification thing, linking to other social media.But no email that they received my appeal or anything
via twitter.com

September 18, 2014 8:25 pm
Kevin Marks said...

Kevin Marks: @catvalente @yonatanzunger perhaps Google's decided that you are notorious for making things up that aren't true.
via twitter.com

September 18, 2014 8:26 pm
Kevin Marks said...

Yonatan Zunger: @kevinmarks @catvalente Dunno, but I can guarantee it's not her name: the code for that isn't even there anymore. Cat, send me a link?
via twitter.com

September 18, 2014 8:26 pm
Kevin Marks said...

Yonatan Zunger: @kevinmarks @catvalente We haven't had any name suspensions in close to a year. Which acct was suspended, and why do you think it's names?
via twitter.com

September 18, 2014 8:26 pm
Kevin Marks said...

Yonatan Zunger: @catvalente @kevinmarks I'll ping the team. Not sure why it happened. You aren't fraudulently claiming to be yourself, right? :)
via twitter.com

September 18, 2014 8:26 pm
Kevin Marks said...

Catherynne Valente: @yonatanzunger @kevinmarks I'm not sure what to link you to. When I went to my profile it said it had been suspended because "this doesn't
via twitter.com

September 18, 2014 8:26 pm
Kevin Marks said...

Yonatan Zunger: @catvalente @kevinmarks No idea; it looks like the acct was suspended last Oct, so I can't see the details easily.
via twitter.com

September 18, 2014 8:26 pm
Kevin Marks said...

Catherynne Valente: @yonatanzunger @kevinmarks ...look like a real name, or we suspect you may be impersonating someone."
via twitter.com

September 18, 2014 8:27 pm
Kevin Marks said...

Kevin Marks: @yonatanzunger @catvalente impersonating herself? Oops.
via twitter.com

September 18, 2014 8:27 pm
Kevin Marks said...

Yonatan Zunger: @kevinmarks @catvalente Hey, she's a suspicious character. :)
via twitter.com

September 18, 2014 8:28 pm
Kevin Marks said...

Daniƫl Crompton: mentioned this in I tried inviting a non-gmail a....
via plus.google.com

March 24, 2016 10:42 am
Kevin Marks said...

Eduardo Gonzalez Loumiet: mentioned this in I tried inviting a non-gmail a....
via plus.google.com

March 24, 2016 10:42 am
Kevin Marks said...

Pamela N Red: mentioned this in Here's another blog on the pse....
via plus.google.com

March 26, 2016 12:10 am

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Kevin Marks
Kevin Marks works on IndieWeb and open web tech. From 2011 to 2013 he was VP of Open Cloud Standards at Salesforce. From 2009 to 2010 he was VP of Web Services at BT. From 2007 to 2009, he worked at Google on OpenSocial. From 2003 to 2007 he was Principal Engineer at Technorati responsible for the spiders that make sense of the web and track millions of blogs daily. He has been inventing and innovating for over 25 years in emerging technologies where people, media and computers meet. Before joining Technorati, Kevin spent 5 years in the QuickTime Engineering team at Apple, building video capture and live streaming into OS X. He was a founder of The Multimedia Corporation in the UK, where he served as Production Manager and Executive Producer, shipping million-selling products and winning International awards. He has a Masters degree in Physics from Cambridge University and is a BBC-qualified Video Engineer. One of the driving forces behind microformats.org, he regularly speaks at conferences and symposia on emergent net technologies and their cultural impact.
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