On the obnoxious entitlement of the “nymwars” crowd

Re:On the obnoxious entitlement of the “nymwars” crowd by InclinedPlane on Sunday August 21, 2011 @01:57PM (#2909729)

It's beyond ridiculous for a company to claim title over what individuals have a "right" to use as a name or not. Nicknames and pseudonyms are at the very core of social identity and to avoid recognizing that is I believe a fault on google's part. Surely google can say "we choose not to support pseudonyms for X reason" but it's too far to say has any sort of absolute authority on what names people can use to call themselves, their authority begins and ends within the confines of google's own services.

The only good argument on google's side is the "my roof, my rules" argument.

P.S. Some interesting google-plus-y names: samuel clemens, edwin aldrin, john draper, charles dodgson, allen konigsberg, paul hewson.

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Re:On the obnoxious entitlement of the “nymwars” crowd by anigbrowl on Sunday August 21, 2011 @03:00PM (#2909909)

Not as ridiculous as claiming a right to a free account using the name of your choice. Nobody expects this from a bank or other commercial supplier. If you care about your pseudonym that much then set up a corporation and trademark it.

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Re:On the obnoxious entitlement of the “nymwars” crowd by kennywinker on Sunday August 21, 2011 @05:32PM (#2910358)

In Canada, anyway, there is something called the "right of paternity"

"This right includes the right to claim authorship, the right to remain anonymous, or the right to use a pseudonym or pen name."

I've heard stories that this is as far reaching as getting a bank account under a pseudonym, but I'm not sure about that. It DEFINITELY applies to publishing and copyright, which is what we're talking about. Google, in the case of G+, is a publisher.

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Re:On the obnoxious entitlement of the “nymwars” crowd by InclinedPlane on Monday August 22, 2011 @03:04AM (#2911650)

This isn't banking, it's chatting with friends. If google wants to make chatting with friends as stringent as banking they are not going to win a very high level of satisfaction or be able to keep up with competition who understands that chatting with friends is a casual endeavor.

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Re:On the obnoxious entitlement of the “nymwars” crowd by anigbrowl on Monday August 22, 2011 @12:54PM (#2913097)

So? Nobody's making you use Google+, any more than you're forced to use Facebook or LinkedIn or any other social networking platform.

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Re:On the obnoxious entitlement of the “nymwars” crowd by InclinedPlane on Monday August 22, 2011 @02:34PM (#2913508)

Of course not. I'm just saying Google is fucking it up. The fact that facebook also fucks it up is no consolation. All it will take is a smart competitor who knows how to cater to their user base better than google or facebook to steal their userbase out from under them.

Nevertheless, it's a free country, google is free to fuck it up to their heart's content.

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