Dear Googles: G+/YouTube Anschluss – you've done outed me
OP here -- I am absolutely in favor of persistent pseudonyms associated with a user-generated reputation system, as discussed here:<p><a href="https://plus.google.com/u/0/102524008019896509925/posts/ivyA6FS9XR7?cfem=1" rel="nofollow">https://plus.google.com/u/0/102524008019896509925/posts/ivyA...</a><p>However, there are significant safety issues associated with requiring people to use their legal names for online discussions, and I think that it will seriously muzzle political dissent, social movements which don't currently enjoy mainstream support, gender and sexual minority group discussions, the creation of "safe spaces" (which, I realize, are something of an illusion, but still have value), and vigorous intellectual discourse.<p>I certainly wouldn't have been comfortable being as politically and socially outspoken as I am on G+ (a deliberately public-facing persona with a unique nym for that purpose), if I had been forced to use my full legal name for the purpose.<p>Given some of the hate and harassment that has been directed my way (and, honestly, I've gotten off light compared to many), I absolutely would not feel safe engaging in some of those discussions if my name, phone number, and location were easily accessible.<p>I know that it's difficult to completely compartmentalize between nyms and platform identities, but I think that the ability to choose which face is forward, appropriate to the social group that you're engaging with, is an important part of the human experience.<p>If you don't want your boss and your grandmother reading your opinions on politics, social issues, sexuality, etc., then a pseudonym is the obvious answer -- and I've seen any number of sites (LiveJournal is a particular favorite) implement granular controls on privacy, in order to establish nym identity and reputation, while still allowing users to speak to their chosen audience.<p>Can you ever be truly private?  Probably not.  But it's important to be able to have some form of shield from the casual observer, to have a name and identity that <i>you</i> choose, rather than having one chosen for you, which may reveal far more than you intended.<p>Yes, I post publicly on G+, and sacrifice some level of privacy in doing so -- I do it because I enjoy the level of discourse on that site, and talking with interesting strangers is part of the fun.  On the other hand, I deliberately didn't link that profile with any of my other online identities . . . and, while I may not have done a perfect job of it, I at least did my best to create walls between those personae.<p>As Dredmorbius said, it's important that users be able to maintain those walls if they choose, without a service provider choosing to collapse them and merge those identities without permission.  By using their services, I did <i>not</i> consent to that action (in fact, repeatedly refused their attempts to do so), and if given a choice between leaving the Google-services hive and having my legal identity attached to everything I've ever written, I'd leave.<p>What is deceptive and duplicitous about this latest G+/YouTube action, is that many users who <i>expressly refused</i> the "offer" to merge accounts were merged without permission, and often those merges revealed personal information that the users had not chosen to share with YouTube.<p>I find that <i>intensely</i> disturbing, and I am seriously hoping that some type of action is taken against Google, as with Buzz, regarding the breach of private user information.