The Google + issues rumble on for those with pseudonyms, there have been some interesting blog posts (and comments) from Prok, Marx Dudek and Hamlet Au. Marx Dudek’s post is interesting regarding verifying their account to google by using a mobile phone, when Marx hadn’t supplied them with a mobile phone number. I didn’t have to provide a mobile phone number when I signed up for Gmail either.
Prok and Hamlet both have links to a google plus discussion, with Prok linking to a post by Andrew Bunner, a google engineer, calling for people to report fake profiles. Whatever the intent of Andrew’s post was, the reality is that it will have meant people reporting avatar profiles, the intent may well have been to report business profiles, but that doesn’t seem to have been how the post was received.
Hamlet’s post links to the same post by Andrew Bunner but suggests he’s saying if your name doesn’t look fake, you’re hardly likely to be flagged. Andrew Bunner is an engineer, not a policy maker, so that may explain some of the confusion but the bigger confusion really comes from Google’s odd attitude. This really goes back to February when Alma Whitten, director of privacy posted a blog post under the title: The Freedom To Be Who You Want To Be …. this is where their stance on Google Plus and real names really gets confusing.
Continue reading “Google Plus In Land Of Confusion”
