Cory Doctorow had an interesting piece in The Guardian this week about Google + and more to the point Eric Scmidt’s comments that nobody is forcing people to use Google +. This came on the back of Eric Schmidt’s comments to NPR’s Andy Carvin in Edinburgh. This was the same piece that led to claims that Google + is primarily an identity service, although Tateru Nino commenting on Hamlet Au’s blog post on social networks suggested it’s Google profiles that will be the identity service.
Cory’s post is largely about discussing the real name policy of Google + and why Eric Schmidt’s comment is off, I don’t entirely agree there, I’m someone who won’t use Google + because of their policy but there is an underlying function creep with these real name policies that could very well spread, I remain opposed to such policies for many reasons, one certainly being that in some ways they are anti social, you don’t need to know your friend’s real name on a social network because if that friend wants to interact with you, they will tell you their name, that’s often how friendships are forged, you meet, you say hello, you get to know each other, you get to know more about each other, this is normal human interaction. I’ve mentioned this before but in the days before Real_ID on World Of Warcraft the guys I play WoW with would share avatar and server names and then we’d all get into a guild together, that’s how friends work.
The arguments in favour of real name only social networking are flimsy to say the least, yet they come up all the time in these sort of threads. Why wouldn’t you want your name associated with a comment? What are you hiding? If you don’t want to be known don’t go on The Internet. All people who don’t use real names are just anonymous trolls, it’s tiresome reading the same flimsy reasons over and over.
A new tactic from the real name crowd is that Facebook and LinkedIn insist on real names so why aren’t people criticising them instead of Google + or along with Google +? Well for a start I have criticised Facebook over their real names policy, I criticised them here, I criticised them here and I criticised both Facebook and Google + here. I don’t agree with Facebook’s policy but I abide by it. Facebook is meant to be used by people you know in real life, there should be no problem with someone you know using a nickname on Facebook, because you know them, Facebook didn’t form as a social network to meet new people and some people like using Facebook to interact with friends and family members but you don’t need to use your real name to make that work.
Linkedin is different, this is a professional site, much like putting your curriculum vitae on show, people post their job histories, their skills, it’s used as a recruitment aid and in circumstances like that, where people whom you don’t know in real life are reading your biography it makes sense to use your real name.
We don’t as humans generally walk up to random strangers and ask them their name and then if they refuse, accuse them of having something to hide and being anonymous trolls and troublemakers, that’s not how we function and yet, that’s how these real names try and portray us as functioning.
However one big issue with real names and social networking is social networking and the workplace. This week Argos are reported to have sacked a worker who complained about his workplace on his Facebook wall, as reported by The Torygraph. This is concerning because from the report, he didn’t say anything outrageous or anything people don’t say down the pub day in day out about their workplace, yet people would be outraged if their comments down the pub got them the sack, of course comments down the pub are a bit harder to record but this points out glaringly how real name policies stifle freedom of speech. Let’s say there’s a newspaper article about nurses and a nurse comments that there are too many managers and they don’t manage very well, under a pseudonym people will see the comment and move on, under a real name the nurse risks being sacked for having an opinion, this is not healthy for freedom of expression.
The Torygraph article also warns of the dangers of bosses snooping on workers via Facebook and it really is a bad practice for this to be happening. However more and more firms are introducing social networking policies and reading between the lines they suggest using a pseudonym is best and yet social networks are working to convvince people it’s real names or the highway.
We do of course still have a choice on these matters and we don’t have to use Facebook or Google +, I don’t have a personal profile on either service but there is a funcion creep being introduced and it’s frustrating to see it happening, Facebook comments are an example of this function creep, this all needs to be nipped in the bud, there aren’t many good reasons for a real names only policy, as I said LinkedIn do seem to have a good use case for it, but Facebook and Google + don’t have a good use case for this sort of policy, Google know my real name, I’m not anonymous, they have my name on record, they shouldn’t need me to share it with the world to use their service, my pseudonym should be fine but as with Facebook, I abide by their rules and choose not to use the service.