Mois : août 2011 (Page 7 of 9)

You are not online when you are in front of a computer – you are online when your actions are being digitized and networked. Online is on-the-record. Offline is off-the-record.

The other day I posted a call for people who have had their accounts suspended by Google for name-related reasons to fill in this form. I’ve received over a hundred responses so far (N=119), so it’s time to start talking about the results.

MYTH: Google doesn’t care about ____. (businesses, teenagers, organizations, pseudonymous usage, disadvantaged populations, etc.)

The people who most heavily rely on pseudonyms in online spaces are those who are most marginalized by systems of power. “Real names” policies aren’t empowering; they’re an authoritarian assertion of power over vulnerable people. These ideas and issues aren’t new (and I’ve even talked about this before), but what is new is that marginalized people are banding together and speaking out loudly. And thank goodness.
What’s funny to me is that people also don’t seem to understand the history of Facebook’s “real names” culture. When early adopters (first the elite college students…) embraced Facebook, it was a trusted community.

Like watchdogs for chocolate Yet even if Google has to make some concessions in the end, talk of its predicament being the same as Microsoft’s in the 1990s is plainly ridiculous. By embedding only its own web browser into its Windows operating system, Microsoft deliberately restricted users’ choice in the hope they would become addicted to its products.
Google is also addictive, but in the way that chocolate is, not in the way that cigarettes are. People love Googling, but they can easily give it up. Google’s lawyers must be hoping that the FTC understands this crucial distinction.