Comment by kevinh | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kevinh | Hacker News Reader

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I disagree. Here's the scenario I envision with spammers on G+. Tell me if you see it differently because I could certainly be missing an angle.

1. Spammer signs up with fake name (something like John Smith) and either has no profile picture or some picture pulled off Google. 2. Spammer adds users to their circles. 3. Users see the circle request, but, since this is just some random person adding them, they don't reciprocate.

In this interaction, spammers don't have an avenue of communication except via their username. If they could use a pseudonym, their username could be www.getcheapp1llz-ezi.ly, which would be as effective a way as ever to get people to go to their site.

On a site like twitter, where usernames are not limited by any criteria that I'm aware of, the spammer would have the medium of username as a communication method.

Now how much of this is relevant to modern times, where spammers are mainly working on SEO for spam websites? I don't know.

For what it's worth, I know a few people on G+ who clearly have a pseudonym as their name and they haven't been banned yet.

So because a spammer could use a data field as a method of communication, we should screen every possible entry in that data field? Perhaps G+ should substitute all comment boxes with dropdown menus... Seriously, this has nothing to do with spam and everything to do with preserving real identities, which have more value to Google's expected future revenue model.

Unverified usernames do not inevitably result in a site that is overrun by spam. Time-tested methods of downvoting, flagging, reporting, and semi-automated filtering can quickly dispatch such shell accounts. You only need to look to reddit for proof of this--a site where users sometimes employ their username as the punchline to the joke. That's right, a username can be an avenue of communication in itself that carries positive, non-spammy (and dare I say fun?) results. Another example: would @shitmydadsays have caught on fire the way it did if the account was named +Justin Halpern instead? I doubt it. The final obvious example: HN, which thankfully does not require "verified" identities.

When I read discourses from Google like the OP's it reminds me how right moot is when he says that creativity is only preserved in a culture that values privacy and anonymity. When everybody is permanently attached to every action, nobody bothers to test the norms, and all that's left is consumption of "safe" content from centralized producers. Of course that's what Google and Facebook, being glorified advertising networks, actually want. Your anonymous account has no money to buy anything, no predictable real-world holdings or credit score or behavior, and therefore no value to an advertiser.

Perhaps G+ should substitute all comment boxes with dropdown menus

It would help with data hygiene. It would also integrate nicely with a no-keyboard computer. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BnLbv6QYcA "The aardvark admitted its fault."

A strategy that will work much better for spammers (and I guarantee that you'll see it in action) is temporary identity theft:

    1) spammer picks someone popular, signs-up with 
       similar name + similar picture
    2) spammer starts following the same people and 
       some of those people will follow back
    3) spammer starts spamming
    4) Google notices and bans account after some time
    5) repeat from step 1

Also, there are plenty of spammers on G+ already. Twitter is much more aggressive in dealing with spammers.

You don't even need to pick somebody popular, although I suppose it might make certain things easier. If you pick a plausible name and an attractive-looking profile picture, after a few hundred requests to people in the same location, you will have plenty of followers. Perhaps bootstrap with relationships amongst your bots so your profile doesn't look conspicuously vacant. It's not only spammers that do this... guess what, law enforcement does it too. Social networks have not changed how gullible the average internet user is.

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