Winning the Nymwars: Today Google+. Tomorrow Facebook?

Google+ launched it's initial Beta in June 2011 with a strict policy against pseudonymous identity. The initial justification was that it benefited users:

Google Profiles is a product that works best in the identified state. This way you can be certain you’re connecting with the right person, and others will have confidence knowing that there is someone real behind the profile they’re checking out. For this reason, Google Profiles requires you to use the name that you commonly go by in daily life.

Here's how it was explained to me in an imagined interview with a Google representative:

An interview with Google Executive Chairman Eric Scmhidt in August 2011 at the Edinburgh International TV Festival revealed that it's purpose was primarily to establish Google+ as an identity service that depend upon people using their wallet names to to build future products that leverage that information. He said:

It's obvious for people at risk if they use their real names, they shouldn't use G+ . . . The internet would be better if we knew you were a real person rather than a dog or a fake person. Some people are just evil and we should be able to ID them and rank them downward.

Based on the Google's official statements, along with those who supported them in comments on Google+, there was an assumption that those using pseudonyms were likely hiding more than their name and that it was dangerous to allow them into the community. Here's was my take at the time, on the underlying attitude:

Of course, the Nymish responded with a wave of protest which eventually came to be known as the Nymwars. Since Google was planning to extend their policy across their platforms. my main concern was they chilling impact a real name policy would have on free and open public discourse. As I wrote in August 2011:

When each post we make is permanently tattooed on our public record, self-censorship is self-preservation. The Brave New World that Google, the Zuckerbergs and the U.S. Congress are pushing us towards would deliver our complete virtual history to anyone typing our name into a search engine:

• Employers, Insurance agencies, load examiners and private investigators
• Children, parents, neighbors and ex-spouses
• Stalkers, griefers and others who may seek to do harm
• And god forbid if you're ever going to run for public office

A real name policy ironically works against people "being real" in public forums by making it too risky to bare our hearts and souls. A real name environment puts a damper on communication that is counter to the dominant culture or far enough outside of the mainstream to have potentially negative ramifications on employment or acceptance in one's physical world community.+

They softened the stance in January 2012, limiting pseudonyms to previously established identities that could be proven through references in a news articles or a link to a blog with a "meaningful following." I even tried using a letter of reference from my mom:

Then yesterday, seemingly out of the blue, Google reversed its policy in a post on Google+:

When we launched Google+ over three years ago, we had a lot of restrictions on what name you could use on your profile. This helped create a community made up of real people, but it also excluded a number of people who wanted to be part of it without using their real names.

Over the years, as Google+ grew and its community became established, we steadily opened up this policy, from allowing +Page owners to use any name of their choosing to letting YouTube users bring their usernames into Google+. Today, we are taking the last step: there are no more restrictions on what name you can use.

We know you've been calling for this change for a while. We know that our names policy has been unclear, and this has led to some unnecessarily difficult experiences for some of our users. For this we apologize, and we hope that today's change is a step toward making Google+ the welcoming and inclusive place that we want it to be. Thank you for expressing your opinions so passionately, and thanks for continuing to make Google+ the thoughtful community that it is.

The policy change probably reflects the recent reshuffling of Google management. Or maybe it's simply that they realized the misguided policy contributed to Google+'s failure to meet their initial expectations for social network dominance. In any case, I'm very happy that the policy is now reversed.

That said, I'm not very optimistic about Facebook making a similar change. They still outlaw pseudonyms and will go on witch hunts from time to time, suspending the accounts of suspected Nyms. Ironically, Facebook's stringent policy on identity ends up causing the type of abuse people were worried about on Google+. The inability to establish openly pseudonymous identities has helped create the "catfish"phenomenon where users hijack other people's images to establish online identities to hook up with unsuspecting people looking for internet relationships. When pseudonyms are outlawed, only outlaws have pseudonyms.

You can find all of my articles, videos and comics related to the nymwars here.

Google loves me. It loves me not. It loves me . . .

Fri, Sep 28, 2012 at 4:54 AM

The Google+ Team sends an e-mail informing me that their system has determined that Botgirl Questi may not be a real name. I have four days to appeal before they shut off my profile-related services such as Google Reader and YouTube.

Fri, Sep 28, 2012 at 10:ish AM

I follow the supplied link and list half a dozen online references to validate my identity, including Twitter (2500 followers), Vimeo (18,000 plays in the past year) and my e-book on Amazon.

Fri, Sep 28, 2012 at 1:50 PM

The Google+ Team sends an email denying my appeal:

Hello, 

After reviewing your appeal, we have determined that your name does not comply with the Google+ Names Policy. 

We want users to be able to find each other using the name they already use with their friends, family, and coworkers. For most people this is their legal name, or some variant of it, but we recognize that this isn't always the case, and we allow for other common names in Google+ --- specifically, those that represent an individual with an established online identity with a meaningful following. If you haven't already done so, you can provide us with additional information regarding an established identity by re-submitting an appeal that includes references to where you are known by this name either in online or offline settings. 

Note that if you're trying to set up a page for a business, band, group, or other organization, please sign up with your own name and then create a Google+ Page. If you're trying to add an alternate name (such as a nickname, maiden name or name in another script), please sign up with your full name; you can add this alternate name (which will appear alongside your full name) once you've signed up. 

You may re-appeal with additional information, if you have not already done so. If you're already using Google+, your current name will continue to be used. 

The Google+ team

Fri, Sep 28, 2012 at 1:50 PM

Without any additional action on my part, the Google+ Team sends an email accepting my appeal:

Hello, 

Thanks for sending us your appeal. You're right: your name does comply with the Google+ Names Policy. Your name has been updated on your Google+ profile. If you submitted the appeal during sign up, your profile has now been restored. Log in to Google+. 

Sorry for the inconvenience,

The Google+ team.

So what happened?

It turns out, my situation came to the attention of Yonatan Zunger, Chief Architect for Google+, who wrote:

So looking through the records, I can't find any record that +Botgirl Questi ever did go through the names appeal process prior to this -- but she did now, and we all agree, she should definitely be approved. Done.

I'm grateful for the intervention and happy to see that Google now accepts the validity of existing virtual identities. But I'm troubled that it took the intervention of a high-level Google+ employee to turn around their initial rejection. How many people with equally valid virtual identities get rejected by Google's standard process and end up having Google services shut off?

By the way, I posted a copy of my Aug. 2011 appeal email and Yonatan acknowledged,

Looks like we had a bug in the system that makes sure you don't get reviewed twice. We're working on a fix now.

More than a year after the initial nymwars controversy, progress has been made but work still needs to be done. To paraphrase Dr. King, hopefully one day we will live in a virtual world where we will not be judged by the normality of our name, but by the content of our character, as expressed through our interactions.

I'll leave you with this parody song I put together last year in the heat of the nymwars:


Take Me Down (Little Google) from Botgirl Questi on Vimeo.

Google's New Pseudonym Policy is Rorschach Test for Pundits

After six months of campaigning to change Google's pseudonym policy, I was thrilled to see this headline yesterday afternoon from the honest-to-god New York Times:

In a Switch, Google Plus Now Allows Pseudonyms

Woo Hoo! We Won! Or did we?

Over the next few hours I read dozens of conflicting reports from major internet publications, bloggers and social networkers:

Google Plus buckles to social pressure allowing fake names – Herald Sun

Pseudonyms on Google Plus? Wrong. – ZDNet

Google+ Finally Allows Pseudonyms – Mashable

Your Google Pseudonym Must Be Approved in Google Court – Gawker

Be Who You Want to Be, On Google Plus – BetaBeat

As Clay Davis, my favorite politician from the The Wire would say, "Sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeit!"

Google in its infinite genius has managed to come out with a new pseudonym policy that's even more ambiguous than its predecessors. It's as yet unclear whether the average pseudonymous Joe or Jane Doe can use their Twitter account for validation. Or whether your pseudonym will only be accepted if you have more than 10,000 followers and can document retweets from @scobelizer.

Beats me. Time will tell. Stay tuned.

Social Network as Horse-Drawn Automobile - Part 2

In part one of this series, I introduced the idea that we are just beginning to perceive virtual identity and online social networks outside of mental models related to their physical world analogs. We always frame new technology through earlier paradigms. A good example is the early history of film.

At first, “moving pictures” merely extended the paradigm of the photograph, capturing daily events from a static camera position. It then extended the ancient medium of the stage play, presenting actors on a set through a continuous fixed shot. But over time, filmmakers began transcending the old mediums with new concepts like zooming, cuts between long, medium and close-ups and montages that escaped physical world boundaries of space and time.

It took audiences a while to develop an intuitive visual lexicon to make sense of all of the newfangled cinematography and editing. For instance, some french theaters in the early 1900s employed a narrator to stand next to the screen and explain the action to the audience. Luis Bunuel recounted a 1900s audience reaction to a camera zoom. He wrote, “There on the screen was a head coming closer and closer, growing larger and larger. We simply couldn’t understand that the camera was moving nearer to the head . . . All we saw was a head coming towards us, swelling hideously all out of proportion.”

So it's not surprising that people today have a hard time understanding the emergence of virtual pseudonymous identities on social networks. I imagine if you took someone out of the audience watching one of Edison’s early films and dumped them into a theater showing Avatar 3D, they would find it fairly incomprehensible. But just as movies were an extension of photography and drama, virtual identity is an expression of physical identity. And if we stand back and see it within that context, it can make better sense.

We are just beginning to explore virtual identity and social networks outside of the confines of our old ways of thinking. Although this early work will pave the way for future breakthroughs, I don’t think we’ve even reached the Model-T stage.  In part three of this series, I'll explore how pseudonymous identity can help bring to light the difference between "who we are" (the sentient being) and "what we are" (the aggregation of our physical aspects).

Taking a Much Needed Break From the Nymwars

After cranking out 15 videos and 25 comic remixes related to the nymwars over the last couple of months, I've decided to go on an extended fishing trip with the Muse in search of deeper waters. Although I won't be posting original nymwars content for the time being, I'll continue to update the #plusgate site with new external links.

Who Was That Masked Girl?

Why You Shouldn't Get Mad at Google

Nymwars and Monoculture

I posted a dozen tweets yesterday with quotes related to name and identity. My intention was to break out of the rut that has framed those multidimensional topics inside the corporate-vs-consumer duality of the Nymwars debate. It's not surprising that most of those conversations have been focused on the low end of the Maslow hierarchy. Both Google and the pseudonymous communities feel as if they are fighting for the future of their virtual lives. So it makes sense that arguments tend to center around issues of security and commerce.

But an even more fundamental cause of the constrained conversational scope is the invisible force of our modern monoculture:

In our time, in the early decades of the 21st century, the monoculture isn’t about science, machines and mathematics, or about religion and superstition. In our time, the monoculture is economic.  F. S. Michaels

The opinions we hold about these issues are based upon a fundamental worldview that has been instilled by a Mother Culture still rooted in the Industrial Age. Although organizations calling for an end to traditional privacy expectations see themselves as the vanguard for an emerging Digital Age, they are actually reactionary throwbacks to the robber barrons of the 19th Century and are seeking control of all aspects of the digital economy. I hope to explore more of these underlying dynamics here over the next few weeks. For today, I'll leave you with yesterday's quotes:

• When they say "Be yourself", which self do they mean?  -Rob Brezsn
• A simple separate person is not contained between his hat and his boots. -Walt Whitman
• The real meditation is... the meditation on one's identity. -Ezra Pound
• An identity is questioned only when it is menaced James Baldwin
• A name represents identity, a deep feeling and holds tremendous significance to its owner.” -Rachel Ingber
• I reserve my right to be complex. -Leslie Feinberg
• Who are we but the stories we tell ourselves, about ourselves, and believe? -Scott Turow
• Perhaps it's impossible to wear an identity without becoming what you pretend to be. -Orson Scott Card
• I've tried to become someone else for a while, only to discover that he, too, was me. -Stephen Dunn
• A self-made man may prefer a self-made name.  -Learned Hand
• The name of a man is a numbing blow from which he never recovers. -Marshall McLuhan
• Inside us there is something that has no name, that something is what we are.  -Jose Saramago

Eric's Song: Truth is More Surreal Than Fiction

Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt is a seasoned executive with decades of public speaking experience under his belt. So it was hard to fathom the stream of near gibberish that came out of his mouth in a QA at the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International TV Festival. His quilt of "forgot to take my meds" invectives was so surreal that I was inspired to make another video. This time, instead of putting my words in Google's mouth, I just snagged some of the phrases he actually used.

Deep Tweets 10: Transparency

Che, Warhol and Me

NYMWARS Comics - Anarchy on the Internet

ATTENTION HUMANS: Morbo demands you read this guest post immediately!

Dear Google:

Morbo has stooped to appearing on this pathetic blog to send an important message to you. Especially the one called Eric E. Schmidt and his whiny little sidekick Vivek (Vic) Gundotra.

As you know, all humans are vermin in the eyes of Morbo and one day my race will destroy you all! But the leaders of your technologically primitive organization have offended Morbo in an especially vile way. You are even more repugnant to Morbo than the carrion eating fungus leeches of Alpha Ceti Thirteen.

You have made the fatal mistake of granting special mononym privileges to the red-mouthed succubus Madonna, while denying Morbo the same courtesy. Despite Morbo's deep male voice and huge, throbbing forehead veins, you have failed to recognize Morbo's enormous celebrity status. You have dared to give Morbo four days warning of profile suspension.

Tremble, puny Geeklings!

I would devour you and your entire Board of Directors immediately, but corporate executives give Morbo gas. And I hate picking the tiny bones of emaciated geeks from between my sharp carnivorous teeth. Nevertheless you has moved up to the top of Morbo's "to destroy" list.

You have been warned. The outcome is now in your weak and puny hands.

Sincerely,

Morbo

Big Nymwars News Weekend and a New Music Video: Take Me Down (Little Google)

After another big weekend of new revelations, the Nymwars issue continues to gain steam both in the mainstream media and the blogosphere.  A post yesterday on Slashdot generated 380 comments on their site and over 8000 visitors to my blog alone (which wasn't even the main link in the article.)  I was inspired to go Weird Al on their ass again and rewrite another song. This time it's a reboot of Dead Flowers:

Take Me Down (Little Google)

When you're sitting there

In your ergonomic chair

Talking to some rich geeks that you know

Well you know you won't see me

Or any other entity

That you cannot monazite or own.

Take me down little Google, take me down

I know you think you're the King of the virtual town

And you can suspend my profile every morning

Suspend my profile through gmail

Suspend my profile on my birthday

But I won't forget that you failed with Google Wave

Well, when you're sitting back

Typing on your brand new mac

Buying out a few more companies

I'll be somwhere on the net

Posting' bout your corporate threat

Until the FTC takes your throne away

Take me down little Google, take me down

I know you think you're the King of this virtual town

And you can suspend my profile every morning

Suspend my profile through gmail

Suspend my profile on my birthday

But we won't forget that you failed with Google Wave

CNN Interview Reveals More From Eric Schmidt on Google+ as an Identity Service

". . . I think it's pretty clear that the Internet as a whole has not had a strong notion of identity, and identity means, "who am I". So we spend an awful lot to of time trying to guess who you are. Plus it's easy to have impostors, people can spam, and so forth and so on. Facebook has done a good job of building a way of disambiguating names. So if you use Facebook, if you have John Smith and you try to pick which one, you look at the pictures of their friends and that's how you disambiguate it. But fundamentally what Facebook has done is build a way to figure out who people are. That system is missing in the Internet as a whole. Google should have worked on this earlier. We now have a product called Google+ which has been in developments for more than a more than your half which is a partial answer to that." Google Executive Director, Eric Schmidt

NYMWARS Comics - Nym Wars

Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt admits Google+ is Essentially a Trojan Horse (Identity Platform)

Andy Carven caught up with Google Executive Chairman Eric Scmhidt at the Edinburgh International TV Festival and asked him about real names and Google+. His answer was mind-blowing:

G+ was build primarily as an identity service, so fundamentally, it depends on people using their real names if they're going to build future products that leverage that information . . . G+ is completely optional. No one is forcing you to use it. It's obvious for people at risk if they use their real names, they shouldn't use G+ . . . The internet would be better if we knew you were a real person rather than a dog or a fake person. Some people are just evil and we should be able to ID them and rank them downward. 

So it seems like my crazy cooking a live frog theory was right.  The underlying purpose of Google+ is basically a Trojan Horse gambit to gather more information about us and to tie it all together with a wallet name. I came up with this truth-based graphic that is probably the start of a series.

NYMWARS Video Festival

It's hard to believe that we've been fighting the Nymwars for two months now. Along the way, I've slammed together a dozen short videos on the topic. I've collected them all here for you viewing pleasure. 

NYMWARS Comics - Who Will I Huddle With on Sadie Hawkins Day?

NYMWARS Comics: Up to Date E-Book

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