Google Surrenders in the Nymnwars | Hacker News Reader

Google Surrenders in the Nymnwars

eff.org

111 pointshornokplease29 comments

Why would EFF phrase it this way? Do we really need to make policy debates into wars? This sort of gloating is not useful. Google did not make this decision. People inside Google, subject to the same biases and ego defense mechanisms as anyone else in the world, made this decision. If you really want people to resist you at every turn, by all means, taunt people for agreeing with you.

The EFF raises money through gloating about the good they do. If they didn't trumpet their successes people wouldn't see the value. Frankly, Google was forced to make this decision by people like danah boyd, poor press, and a bad position in the market. They aren't doing this based on any moral reason but because their position was unsustainable for logical reasons.

I believe that when companies make terrible decisions, organizations like the EFF should shame them, because it sets the standard for the future.

It's called "nymwars" because ... that's what it's been called. If online communities had a more Muslim bent, it might have been a jihad, whatever. It was a struggle between ideologies over resources, and that's fundamentally what a war is.

"Google" made this decision and by all appearances (see Eric Schmidt's "identity service" comments) at the very most senior levels.

It seems rather polarizing. Instead of coming to an agreement through thought and evidence based argument, calling things "wars" seems to suggest one should pick a side and stick with it.

Promoting an opinion based on ideology alone is dangerous.

> calling things "wars" seems to suggest one should pick a side and stick with it.

Italy during World War II?

We have always been at war with Oceania.

It's a giant flamewar about names.

And so this is flamewar about the namewar about the flamewar about names.

What should we call it?

How about "Harry"?

The "nymnwars" will still be waged as long as I do not have the option of giving GOOGLE a pseudonym, not people in a given circle. The crux of the issue is the ability to remain anonymous from Google and their advertising partners, not my friends, who already know my real name.

You're a fool if you think you can remain anonymous today. Google products or not. Real name or not.

And you're a fool if you think that the fact that there exists no "total anonymity" (pretty much like there exists no uncrackable encryption) is an argument against striving for a feasible level of protection of anonymity rights.

It's not a question whether you can stay anonymous. It's a question of whether you should be allowed to - which you should.

I believe one can achieve quite strong anonymity given sufficient effort. The effort is probably more trouble than most people are willing to make in most circumstances. Often people want precisely to engage in social activities on line with their primary identities visible.

A lot of smart people have put a lot of effort behind projects like Tor and Torbutton. https://www.torproject.org/torbutton/ Having some expectation that they can be effective when used properly does not make one a fool.

At least you can remain anonymous to advertisers in as many contexts as possible, and make the others work for it a bit. No reason to make it easy on anyone.

This is promising, but I guess I should wait and see what Google actually rolls out before I go and start adding content again.

My theory was and will be that Google knew they would have to eventually allow other name types. Meanwhile, everyone that was on the fence, relented and used their real name.

Then when they eventually allow people to do whatever, they look like the good guys.Google is a pro at suggesting data, before gmail everyone was cutelolgirl17263@hotmail.com. Google made a fake gold rush to secure your real name.

IMHO, if that's true, that's brilliant.

They've been saying for a while that pseudonyms were a "feature" that wasn't yet supported in the early release. They've always planned to eventually allow them. http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2011/07/google-plus-pseudonyms.html

Full disclosure I use my real name on Gmail and G+

JWZ: "EFF declares premature victory in Nymwars"

www.jwz.org/blog/2011/10/eff-declares-premature-victory-in-nymwars/

I wouldn't call this a surrender. Google seems to have bought some time to enable it to come up with a workaround while being seen to be compliant.

What? Let's see what they're going to roll out and then we can discuss surrendering and capitulation. As of now all we have are rumors.

Can we now agree to never again use that sad stump of a word?

Google "surrendered" on this in the same way that the Sun eventually "surrenders" to those at night calling for day.

You seem to imply that it was inevitable. The big blue and white gorilla in the room begs to differ. It certainly positions G+ slightly differently than FB, but whether this is actually a competitive advantage is still to be seen.

I recall them saying that pseudonyms would be allowed later on, I think this is just "later on".

It always seemed inconsistent to me that they would require real names on Google+ but not on YouTube.

YouTube had a pre-existing community and screen name conventions long before Google bought it.

In defense of google -- and I fully support anonymity -- youtube comments make the btards look like friendly socially adjusted grownups.

So, so true.

From xkcd: "The internet has always had loud dumb people, but I've never seen anything quite as bad as the people who comment on YouTube videos."

http://xkcd.com/202/

Looking at the amount of utter retardation comparable to youtube comments which people spew on Facebook under their real names is my prime argument against the assertion that enforcing real names has any correlation to the quality of discourse.

A positive example of relative anonymity and mostly high quality discussion is this very community.

In other words: Sturgeon's law[1] holds true for any form of communication, as well.

[1]"90% of everything is shit."

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