Because it's in direct conflict with what Google+ was advertised to be.
The core advantage of Google+, as marketed by Google, is to allow you to separate different parts of your life and keep privacy between them. You can keep in contact with people from work, from your private life, whatever -- and keep them all separate. This deals with the primary perceived flaw in Facebook: hardly any users cared about what Facebook knew about them, but they were very worried about what other people knew about them.
But often "keeping them separate" means not giving your real name. Artists using pseudonyms is the most common example, but there's many others: every day, millions of people take part in communities that they would not want to say at work that they were part of. Sometimes it's related to sexual fetishes/kink, unusual hobbies, fandom, or even things like sexual orientation.
Even with "circles", if the people in group B know you by the same name as the people in group A (say, work), you have no privacy at all. All it takes is one person from Group B to look up your real name and contact someone, and the separation is completely broken.
The idea of Google+ was to solve this problem: whether it's to avoid telling their coworkers about that drunken party last night, to maintain the personal privacy of a popular artist, or to avoid telling a bigoted boss that they're homosexual. This is what Google+ was supposed to do. But if people are required to use real names, Google+ doesn't actually solve this problem at all. It's just Facebook by a different name.
Exactly this. Also, because their public rationale for this policy is so obviously bullshit. If they're willing to lie to me about this, what else are they willing to do?
> Even with "circles", if the people in group B know you by the same name as the people in group A (say, work), you have no privacy at all
The communities that you mention exist IRL; do people use pseudonyms in real life in an attempt to protect their privacy? In my experience people nearly always go by their real name, even when they are doing things that they really wouldn't want their workplace to know about.
Why would someone contact your work to tell them that you were part of an unusual community? What would your work even say if a random person came and told them that? What you are describing sounds like it only applies if you are doing something so extreme and socially unacceptable that a random stranger who sees them on the street would think "I need to make sure this person doesn't get away with doing this".
Comments
Because it's in direct conflict with what Google+ was advertised to be.
The core advantage of Google+, as marketed by Google, is to allow you to separate different parts of your life and keep privacy between them. You can keep in contact with people from work, from your private life, whatever -- and keep them all separate. This deals with the primary perceived flaw in Facebook: hardly any users cared about what Facebook knew about them, but they were very worried about what other people knew about them.
But often "keeping them separate" means not giving your real name. Artists using pseudonyms is the most common example, but there's many others: every day, millions of people take part in communities that they would not want to say at work that they were part of. Sometimes it's related to sexual fetishes/kink, unusual hobbies, fandom, or even things like sexual orientation.
Even with "circles", if the people in group B know you by the same name as the people in group A (say, work), you have no privacy at all. All it takes is one person from Group B to look up your real name and contact someone, and the separation is completely broken.
The idea of Google+ was to solve this problem: whether it's to avoid telling their coworkers about that drunken party last night, to maintain the personal privacy of a popular artist, or to avoid telling a bigoted boss that they're homosexual. This is what Google+ was supposed to do. But if people are required to use real names, Google+ doesn't actually solve this problem at all. It's just Facebook by a different name.
Exactly this. Also, because their public rationale for this policy is so obviously bullshit. If they're willing to lie to me about this, what else are they willing to do?
> Even with "circles", if the people in group B know you by the same name as the people in group A (say, work), you have no privacy at all
The communities that you mention exist IRL; do people use pseudonyms in real life in an attempt to protect their privacy? In my experience people nearly always go by their real name, even when they are doing things that they really wouldn't want their workplace to know about.
Why would someone contact your work to tell them that you were part of an unusual community? What would your work even say if a random person came and told them that? What you are describing sounds like it only applies if you are doing something so extreme and socially unacceptable that a random stranger who sees them on the street would think "I need to make sure this person doesn't get away with doing this".