Me too. I use Duck Duck Go for my search engine and it won’t even display You Tube videos because you are tracked on You Tube every step of the way.
I used to occasionally comment on You Tube but do not wish to associate my comments on such a wide open site with either my real name or an account associated with an email I use mainly for private conversations. I’m pretty happy with the Discus option of having a version of myself that posts on several sites under the same account but it doesn’t tie back to a) my real name and b) anyone being able to figure out my email without my permission.
Thank you denizens of Earth - the great GOOGLE has determined that real names are no longer required for our products. We now know exactly who you are as we have mined all the data via ANDROID in a far more efficient manner. Carry on about your business and call yourself whatever you like.
Next big hullabaloo and scandal? When google is exposed for data scraping info from non Android devices with their apps beyond what is needed for that app’s purpose.
Interestingly, the comment on the announcement itself feature a lot of people who liked real name enforcement. It’s not really surprising because people who really hated it were obviously not the ones using the service. I’ve had a fake name Google+ account for quite a while, but only because it kind of made itself without asking me. I never wanted to touch it lest someone look at the name and disable the gmail it is tied to or something like that. At least I don’t have to worry about that anymore.
It seems they’ve closed the barn doors after the cows have already run away on this one. If they’d had this response in a more timely manner, it might have changed some hearts and minds and it might have encouraged some folks who were really bothered about it to go ahead and use the service early on. Instead, they rubbed folks wrong, especially some folks who would have been good strong allies for growing the network’s popularity, and waited till they were a ghost town to try and back pedal. Not that their being a service that relatively few people actually use and like is entirely or even dominantly related to the names controversy, but it certainly didn’t help. Fixing it now is too little too late.
I think the names controversy was a really big deal. It made a lot of people I know think, “What happened to ‘Don’t be evil’?” Saying that abused women and trans people should just not use their service pretty much crossed the line into evil territory.
There was probably a market for Facebook that wasn’t Facebook, but when they launched Facebook that is basically Facebook, they not only made sure it wouldn’t succeed, but they tarnished “Google” in a lot of other ways. Google is just as vulnerable as every other corporation to letting a few morons run the show on an ego-driven fantasy.
Well, there some that attract fewer trolls. Skills based videos, such as woodworking or photography, don’t attract many.
Although you do get your “Canon Sucks!” and “Nikon Sucks!” comments. Curiously, there seem to be substantially fewer of the latter. I don’t know if that’s because Nikon is better or because Nikon users are bigger assholes.
(See what I did there?)
So, I guess I’m not following, can I use my real name for my gmail but not have it tightly coupled to every random comment I make on youtube without multiple accounts/hacks yet? If not, Google is still permabroke from an identity standpoint for me.
What I have found is that although I felt all sneaky thinking that I had gotten one over on google making them think my name was actually Cherish Hellfire, is if I want access to all of the services that I’ve signed up for over the years, now I actually have to be Cherish Hellfire. It doesn’t work out so well when my Google Wallet says Cherish Hellfire, and my ID says XXX X XXXXX. lol. How much does it cost to change your name in California? I guess the jokes on me.
Yes, that was my point too, re Youtube. Even if you agree to their big brother data collection policy they still don’t allow you to use context specific identities across services without multiple accounts or similar hacks. This has really diminished the value of google for me and I have started to look more seriously at alternatives for almost everything. Really considering moving to another mail service, which would be the biggie.
Well, there is always actually making our own servers, hosting our own email, using something like the paranoid android os on a phone with a bootloader we unlocked ourselves, teaching all the people we want to interact with online how to do it securely, and not interacting with anyone who uses Gmail, ever. Most of those things just take a little time and persistence, some Dogpile searches, and some of your pizza and beer money. I’m feeling pretty silly, kind of exposed, and full of pizza at the moment.
it’s a social media forum. not using facebook, i find it a very nice way to find people with similar interests in a place we can chat and share stuff. your mileage may vary.
Oddly enough, I’ve actually paid money to use forums that allow me to meet people with similar interests I want to share stuff with, and made plenty of friends through them. I can’t say my attempt to use G+ compared favorably with that, but as to whether it’s because G+ didn’t mention that part or simply that services where I’m the customer might serve me better than one where I’m the product, I honestly don’t know. Maybe it’s just that the sort of people who use Google+ aren’t the sort of people I’d ever want to chat with. What did you use for this before Google+ came along? Perhaps its just a case of it serving an unfulfilled need for you that others, like myself, had already managed to fill - that would explain why I’m so lackluster on the idea but you’ve responded so well to it. It’s hard to feel enthusiastic about something you’ve already got, and it’s worse when it’s pushed on you (and then you’re kicked out when you try to use it).
I’m also not terrible clear on the difference is between a “social media forum” and a normal old social forum. What’s the difference?
I’m still likely to pay more money to continue using them at this point than I am to ever give Google+ another try, since those forums have never insulted me or tried to force me to do anything I didn’t want to.
before G+ (and actually still concurrently with G+) i tend to use olde-timey email discussion groups. but those aren’t always timely enough for some topics i’m into (like various TV shows), or it’s hard to find an active community (like canning or making cheese) – and in G+ i’ve found very active communities for both those things. to be honest, i find some of the G+ communities very similar to BB discussion threads, so i guess that’s why i find it enjoyable.
Our friend, the honorable McDribblenuts, will find himself in some strife as his real name will already be claimed by me on account of its awesomeness.
Nikon has done stronger work in low light resolution and Sony is inherently less expensive and slightly more innovate that the two of them. And then there’s the whole “I have this stack of lenses from my dad that fit that mount” crowd which speaks pretty loudly as well.
I’m thinking this will go down better with me when they finally get their act together on YouTube log-ins. I had my system go down on me the other day, so switched over to a newer one. All fine and dandy, until I try to log in to my YouTube account, which predates G+, you know? My own (classical) music, so not even bait for trolling comments (not even bait for comments, period ).
No can do - they don’t log in against my YouTube user name, they log in against my Gmail account, which was never attached to my YouTube account (and I have no intention of hooking up the two).
So I either go through the rigamarole of setting up a dummy Google account and tying it to my YouTube account, or ditch my YouTube account.
Vimeo, for all its faults, is starting to look good.
).