Google Plus: Deleted, not suspended

[azurelunatic]

Google Plus accounts are supposed to be under an identifiable name, so people who know you know who they're talking to. It doesn't necessarily have to be the name on your ID -- there are examples like someone whose ID says Thomas going by Tom instead -- but it should be the name that family, friends, co-workers, know you by.

Since 2001, I've been azurelunatic on the internet. It's the name I use with everyone I'm approaching with the intent of friendship (as opposed to co-workers, who I have to work with whether or not I actually become friends with them, so I'm rather more careful there), and the name I most often use when I don't need to produce ID to say who I am.

I'm not as uncomplicated as people like skud (who links legal name and common name, and answers to Skud from friends and co-workers alike) and rising (who is Rowan Thunder just about everywhere but on his ID). There are places that I use my legal name, since I have neither cut ties with all the people who met me in high school, nor invited all of my co-workers into my real social life, nor scrounged up the cash for a legal name change and then tried to get hired with the last name "Lunatic". My best friend still calls me by my legal name, despite my best efforts to get him to at least use the diminutive.

Regardless of the complications, this is the name I answer to best, and the name I plan on answering to in my future on the internet in all of the places that matter. It's the name I get books autographed to, which is about as real as it gets.

I started hearing tell of people with non-standard names getting suspended. rising. metaphorge. skud. cz_unit.

Some of my friends told me that I should lie low on Google Plus until they figured out what they were doing, and change my last name as displayed there from "Lunatic" to "L" (no period, to avoid that known means of triggering the automated account flagging system) to make it less likely that if someone reported me as having an unreal name, I'd be less likely to get suspended. They said that even though I didn't have either a Facebook or a LinkedIn under this name, that my ten years on LiveJournal ought to count for something.

Various people have also suggested, although not directly to me, that people whose names of choice are not consistent with Google Plus flagging algorithms should simply pick a completely false, but authentic-sounding, name, and fly under the radar of the Real Name Police and whatever stalkers and griefers they might have. That suggestion is deeply offensive to me, and goes entirely contrary to the intent of that section of the terms of service, which emphasizes actual identity, even as it equates actual identity to something at least vaguely related to the ID.

I did eventually change my last name from "Lunatic" to "L" and lie low for a while, but the joy went out of it. I didn't feel like putting effort into sorting my friends into circles or sharing things if I wasn't going to be there long-term.

It was the combination of a conversation between some of my friends, coming to the consensus that (at least in the groups they knew) the pseudonymous web had been fun while it lasted, but the day of the legal name web was at hand, and that no few of the people who had been suspended were behaving unethically as they had known that Google Plus did not accept fake names when they signed up, and cz_unit's experience, where years of LJ presence under his name of choice was not sufficient to get his account reinstated that decided me. (I remember him fondly from my early days at LJ, so I don't have to take his word for it that he's been consistently using that name. megazone apparently also had trouble, another name I remember.)

Google Plus, at least at this point in time, is making it clear that it is not friendly to names that are not in some way derived from or publicly associated with people's legal names. They may be in the process of changing this. I did see some encouraging-sounding discussion. But at this time I do not feel like my presence on the site is in keeping with the Terms of Service. My real name is not in keeping with the letter of the ToS, as it is unrelated to my legal name, and my co-workers do not know it. My legal name is not in keeping with the intent of that portion, as it is not a name that the majority of the people I would interact with would recognize, and is not my real name. Accordingly, I have (voluntarily and without first being suspended) deleted my Google Plus account, at least for the time being.

Comments

[waketosleep]

You're right about this shift from pseudonymity to real names on the web. I can see it happening but it makes me so uncomfortable. I don't want people to be able to google my real name and find all the gay porn I've written!

On G+ I use the first syllable of my real name and a period, because aside from real-life/close friends and acquaintances a la facebook I also chose to take advantage of the easily tweaked privacy settings to use the same G+ account for fandom people. I am definitively not interested in letting internet people have access to my full first name or any part of it with my last name, because sadly I am not a Jane Smith and it's not rocket science to find me. Sigh.

[azurelunatic]

I dearly want a job where I can actually use my real name.

[jumpuphigh]

Just to give you a heads up, people who have been using a period for their last name have been suspended. That seems to be one of the triggers for suspension.

[cleverthylacine]

I'm also tired of the attitude that sockpuppet = malicious. I have a fictional persona/imaginary friend who is arguably nicer than I am who spends a fair bit of time talking to people on twitter, mostly my friends who know who he is, but also a few friends that he made on his own. Not everyone who knows him on line knows he is Not A Real Boy (he thinks he is after all--and the nice gay men who friended him because they were trading porn don't need to be freaked out at this late date--I just locked his twitter so he didn't attract a bunch more) but he's not doing anything wrong or bad.

[aella_irene]

I just never signed up in the first place: the legal name insistence, and the insistence on providing your gender, makes me very leery indeed. I'm a 20 year old woman with an extremely rare name. I'm not going to make it easy for people I don't know to find me, all jokes about how people can't find me even when I give them directions aside.

[waketosleep]

I signed up relatively early, with no knowledge of their insistence on using legal names. I also have a weird first name with a weird spelling, and if you google my first name/last name you get: me. I complained above about how I don't want my internet acquaintances who I Want to share G+ with to have access to that and vice-versa. I have a gmail address formatted as firstname.lastname but I didn't use it for G+ for a reason. I thought people at Google would be nerdy enough and internet-savvy enough to understand our plight.

[cleverthylacine]

Yeah, if you have my middle name you can find me, period. If you have my first and last name without the middle you will find a bunch of girls from Australia and NZ and the UK before you find me, because my real first name is much more common in Australia and NZ than it is in the USA.

[niqaeli]

I have a legal name that I am fond of and that I attempt to keep loosely disconnected from my online pseud. (I didn't always. I am lucky as hell that I was able to separate them, as this pseud is absolutely unique and my legal name is pretty uncommon.)

But I resent the hell out of the implication that this is not my real name. I've been going by it for a decade. Most of my friends know me by it in some capacity. It is damn well my real name. And some day, frankly, I expect to drop the separation -- some day, I'll not care if potential employers might stumble across my fanfic. (My fannishness itself is no secret; it's only that I don't care to be on the defense in an interview or, worse, never have the opportunity to defend my fannish works.)

Anyway, yeah. The fact that this is not my only name does not make it not my real name. :/

[baskerville]

The fact that this is not my only name does not make it not my real name.

This times a million!

[azurelunatic]

Yeah, I am pretty sure I have your legal name written down in an address book or something, but you are totally Niq to me. Just as Rah is Rah.

[majoline]

Not only am I pissed off because I have legitimate reasons for not wanting to be found, but many people have legal pseudonyms.

So the name they actually do work under isn't good enough either?

And thank goodness my very uncommon name is still not associated with me at all on a Google search. *is working hard to keep it that way*

[azurelunatic]

I know Rowan has his account back. Skud is not yet reinstated.

[cleverthylacine]

...another thing I am fucking tired of is the notion that deliberately choosing to go against the requirements of a service is necessarily unethical behaviour. Just because something goes against your particular code of ethics doesn't make it unethical; people often have highly developed ethical reasoning behind deciding to do things that contravene the requirements or terms of service of various services, should they consider those unjust or unfair.

[cleverthylacine]

...this rant partially brought to you by some friends of yours thinking it's unethical to join G+ knowing that you don't plan to do what they want you to do (which isn't unethical if what they want you to do goes against your ethics) and partially brought to you by some assholes on egl insisting that not sharing their ethics about intellectual property is the same as not having any.

[litotease]

I totally understand why you are going, but it still makes me sad.

[niqaeli]

Additionally, I find it fascinating that we're supposedly heading back to legal name internets.

Once upon a time the majority of the people online were functioning under their legal name, or at least the name they were known by at university as hardly anyone not at a university (faculty or student) or in the government was online.

I don't know, somehow I think that the reasons why pseuds became more common mean that they're gonna survive Facebook and Google.

[majoline]

Considering how much of the internet exists outside of Facebook and Google I don't doubt that pseuds are here to stay.

[cleverthylacine]

Yeah.

The reason I started using pseuds on line was that I've always worked as university staff and when I went to Japan in 1998, I announced (in Japanese, on a small Japanese BBS) that I'd be coming to Japan on X date and would like to meet up with people from that group.

A lurker on that BBS worked for the same university system. He was to put it very politely, unhinged. As in, I'm not using ableist language when I call him a crazy fucker, because I'm quite sure he is actually mentally ill. Now, for that matter so am I and so are many of my friends, but we all know it and are trying to keep it under control rather than letting it rule our entire lives. This guy not so much. He tracked me down from the campus he worked on to my campus and tried to start a relationship with me despite the fact that he was a married postdoc with small kids. And then the batshittery began, because our common fandom was Yutaka Ozaki fandom. Ozaki fandom is like the Japanese version of Elvis fandom. Which is to say, most of us are sane and/or sensible about it, and then there are the people who believe he was killed by the government for some deeply nefarious reason (protip: people who do as much and as many drugs as Ozaki did do just get found dead in alleys, which is what happened) and also the people who believe he is still alive out there, see him at the Family Mart, and I guess think he and Elvis and Jimmy Hoffa are chillin' and laughing at us all, except that would make him a total asshole since he left a young wife and a baby behind. Well that's where this guy was coming from, and he was obsessed with me because I was a white person who "got" Ozaki, and he wanted to run away with me and to talk my ear off about his tinhat conspiracy theories, and it was just not a whole lot of fun. I ended up NOT having to get a restraining order because after an episode of hysterical deafness that could only be cured "by the sound of your voice" his wife and his shrink reined him in and he left me alone, but I just don't ever want that to happen again.

[arkeiryn]

I have to ask, why do you use (what I assume is) your legal name on facebook?

[azurelunatic]

That's where the people from high school who I still talk to are. I debated with myself quite a bit before adding any people connected to my real name there, and sometimes I still think it's a bad decision. I don't like Facebook. I don't always remember to poke people and say OMG NO if they call me Azz there, since I don't like the names to be connected. Ever.

[twistedchick]

::hugs::

[jecook]

I'm mostly opposite*, but my google account (which originally was intended as a throwaway-type account many moons ago) is under the name of my primary WoW charecter. (Bonivus Elderheart, if you are curious.)

I'm pretty sure I'm under google's radar as well, but I will be quite upset if they whack me with that stick.


* I've used my actual name on the internet pretty much since I started, but then, I'm not even on the first page of search results unless it's my full legal name. (in which case, the #1 link is to the finger file for my very first shell account EVER, and I need to ask the sysadmin for that machine to expunge the middle name at some point...

[musyc]

This whole thing disgusts me. Google is doing its best to strip our chosen identities from us. Even by their "real name" standards, it's folly. In my family alone, I have one cousin whose name is legally "Junior", a great-aunt whose birth certificate says "Sis", and a distant cousin whose name is a color. I went to school with a fellow whose name was a single letter.

By their "one language" demand, I couldn't even use my legal name. As I pointed out in firecat's post, my first name is French and my surname is German. I'm out. And sucks to be anyone with a "non-standard" name like Douglas Blue Feather or Björk Guðmundsdóttir. (Ahhhhhhh, NON-STANDARD CHARACTERS AHHHHHHHH.)

What about Moon Unit and Dweezil Zappa? Soleil Moon Frye? ANY of the crop of Hollywood kids like Apple, Pax, Aleph, Pilot, Kal-el? Going to make them prove those are their names?

/frothing

I've used this nym online for over fifteen years. I put a lot of effort into ensuring that my meatspace name and my online name don't connect. Hell, my "real" name has less of an existence than my pseudonym. Look that name up and you'll find nothing except the "public information records" sort of deal. Look this name up, and you'll find years of history. She's the alias. THIS is me.

[jld]

Björk Guðmundsdóttir

Who, in a subtle example of how Names Are Not That Simple, does have a “first and last name” like the G+ guidelines expect, but it's incorrect to refer to her by just her last name, either with or without an honorific (or so we are informed by Wikipedia).

[charcoalfeathers]

Found your post while searching about the topic...

I just deleted my Google+ too and left them a comment in the "exit survey" box about why. Hopefully it doesn't get the rest of my Google stuff deleted, but it's ridiculous. This crap has to stop with Facebook. I, too, have separate main identities for different things that need to remain different, and that's not even getting into how things like this disenfranchise multiples/plurals.

[azurelunatic]

I cannot even imagine attempting to do the Facebook dance with my head as it was back in ~1996. I do not envy anyone with more assertive headmates who is doing that.

[jld]

Various people have also suggested, although not directly to me, that people whose names of choice are not consistent with Google Plus flagging algorithms should simply pick a completely false, but authentic-sounding, name, and fly under the radar of the Real Name Police and whatever stalkers and griefers they might have. That suggestion is deeply offensive to me, and goes entirely contrary to the intent of that section of the terms of service, which emphasizes actual identity, even as it equates actual identity to something at least vaguely related to the ID.

Huh. The only thing I saw like that was this post, which was pointing out that anonymity (which the management claims to not want) can still be achieved under the current way of things by using a “normal-looking” fake name to avoid suspicion; but people who are using the names other people know them by (which the management claims to want) are getting screwed over because those names happen to be weird-looking.

[azurelunatic]

I saw more than just that one post, some of them being people who were against obvious pseudonyms but who were acknowledging that people who were in danger shouldn't be exposing themselves more, and suggesting that well, for people who had a *really good* reason...

[silverflight8]

I was thinking about joining google+ at some point, but if they're requiring legal names, then absolutely I'm out.

[azurelunatic]

Currently they seem to be. I'm waiting to see how things shake out. It's really fascinating.