Today I successfully changed the name on my neglected Google Plus profile to Ms. Naughty. This happened not because of the five separate rejected appeals I made for a name change but because Google finally came to its senses – just a tiny bit – and finally let people choose their own names. The reversal is detailed in Violet Blue’s article here and she sums up the situation well.
Meanwhile, Alex Skud Bayley has written the apology that Google should have made, acknowledging the real harm they did to some people, particularly those in danger of violence and those LGBT people who needed to protect their identities.
Like most of the planet, I’m in no hurry to use Google Plus. Having it shoved down our throats via forced integration didn’t do much to make me like the platform, despite my original eagerness to switch from Facebook when it first launched. Google squandered that original opportunity with their “real names” policy and it’s kind of sad that it took them 3 whole years to work out they’d fucked it up.
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The only reason I created a Google Plus profile was because I’d heard that Google was giving preference to “authorship” in search results; if you put your face and name to an article, it supposedly meant the page was more trustworthy. So I’ll keep my profile and I’m feeling glad that I can finally change my name from “Louise Lush” (fake but “real” enough for Google and Facebook) to “Ms. Naughty”.
Interestingly, 2 weeks ago Google quietly retired authorship photos from search. Names are still there but “trustworthy” faces are gone. SEO guy Larry Kim speculates its because those illustrated results were getting more clicks than the ads.
I’m still not sure if the real names change will help with untangling the giant mess Google has made of my accounts. As detailed here, I completely lost an original Youtube account due to censorship and G’s policy of not providing any human support whatsoever meant I had no ability to appeal or question what happened. I’ve tried to wall off my various identities but I don’t trust them to still start merging shit if I give them an inch.
Meanwhile, Google has announced they will no longer allow adult companies to use Adwords, apparently bowing to pressure from religious “morality” groups, one of which took the credit for their decision. This is a pretty massive piece of corporate censorship by Google, which in 2010 was standing up to the Chinese government, refusing to censor search results at their behest. Christian Thorn, CEO of Pinsex said:
“The real issue here is not about banning adult companies from AdWords. The concern is that this is the first step towards total censorship. What’s next, you will no longer be able to search for porn at all?
“What are the other legal industries that Google decides do not meet their moral standards? How about gambling? or betting? Will they start banning them too?”
So I think we can all agree that Google’s original motto of “Don’t Be Evil” has been dead and buried for a long, long time. The ongoing list of evilyness just keeps piling up and I find myself actively hoping the Google-killer will come along and save us from the mess they’ve made of the internet. And I really should start disengaging from their free services, though it’s going to be hard; I’ve got a shitload of email archived in Gmail and no handy replacement (especially after the ongoing Yahoo fuckery).
I’d love to say that the real names reversal means I can finally retire “Louise Lush” but Facebook has forced me to use that name and prevented any changes so it lingers.
What I am going to do is look at setting up Diaspora and encouraging my porny friends to do the same. Because fuck censorship and corporate ownership of the internet. It’s time we took it back.
/end incoherent rant.