Name Droppers

Google’s Facebook-like social network, Google+, has for the most part earned rave reviews. One policy, however, has made some people downright furious: Google forbids the use of pseudonyms. This requirement has helped keep the level of discourse on Google+ high, although skeptics wonder if the bigger motivator is the potential to help the company’s bottom line. Who knows what kind of data mining Google can do if it starts linking people’s real names to their online activities? Meanwhile, the no-pseudonym rule runs contrary to long-standing traditions in the online domain, where many people use names that are fictional–sometimes obviously so and sometimes not.

Google has decreed that Google+ members must use “the name they commonly go by in the real world”–a policy that sounds simple but leaves plenty of room for interpretation and faulty assumptions. The service threatened to suspend high-profile sex blogger Violet Blue but eased up after determining that is her real name. It also booted popular engineer Limor “Ladyada” Fried, then let her back in, albeit with “Ladyada” in a less prominent location on her profile. (And yet enthusiastic Google+ user 50 Cent gets to stick with his stage name.)

While Google’s policing has been particularly obsessive, its regulations aren’t wildly different from ones in place at Facebook. In January, that network shut down the profile of Chinese political blogger Zhao Jing, who writes–and had joined Facebook–as Michael Anti. Given that his other identity wasn’t exactly secret, Facebook’s move was akin to punishing Samuel Clemens for being Mark Twain. Google+, however, doesn’t seem to have a problem with Zhao’s using his nom de plume on its site.

The Michael Anti antics also served as a reminder that entire categories of people have good reason to keep their real-world identities distinct from their online activities. Dissidents in oppressive regimes are one example, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation and other defenders of anonymity often point to small-town gay teens’ adopting online pseudonyms to avoid the wrath of local bullies.

Of course, those bullies might crave anonymity too if it lets them do their thing without fear of repercussions. Spammers are also fans and are legion on Twitter, which does little to verify the identities of its users. And it’s no coincidence that the loosely knit federation of hackers accused of targeting major corporations, epileptics and the founder of the No Cussing Club goes by Anonymous.

In short, balancing the needs of the community and the desires of individual users is hard. Google declined to provide a representative to be interviewed for this article. But Google+ honcho Bradley Horowitz recently told tech publisher and pundit Tim O’Reilly that the company is attempting to devise a way to permit pseudonyms on the service while preventing their abuse. Here’s hoping it can figure out how to do that. Google+ is one of the Web’s more peaceful neighborhoods, and it would be a shame if trolls, spammers and other shady characters thought Google was putting out the welcome mat for them.