(no subject)

[seekingferret]

I've been enjoying using Googleplus immensely. I don't have much use for the stream feature, but I've seen a few interesting things on it. Dreamwidth/LJ offers a much more pleasurable social blogging experience for me, but a lot of my friends no longer use it, so it's nice to have deeper contact with them than facebook allows.

But more importantly, HANGOUTS. Hangouts are fantastic. I've met new people, I've talked with people I'd more or less lost contact with, I've played word games and read books with people. I discovered a virtual webcam program called Webcamstudio for Gnu/Linux yesterday and figured out how to stream my desktop, stream a .avi file, stream my webcam with an animation of flames that makes me look delightfully Satanic...

Hangouts is one of those rare technology features where you use it and say "Yes, this feels like the future." It's so casual, so easy to get into, and so useful.

So it's been frustrating to watch my friends see their accounts get suspended for 'pseudonymity', especially knowing that I am privileged enough that I can afford to not get into a fight over it. Because the truth is that the vast majority of the people in my circles on Googleplus know me as Ferret, but since it's clear that regardless of what the official policy says about "The name you are commonly known by", Western-style legal names are being demanded, I've used the name on my government ID.

I ought to join people like tablesaw or skud in the land of pseudonymous identification, suspension be damned. Allowing pseudonymity on G+ is the right thing to do and I ought to be standing up and adding my name as a datapoint as a person who finds G+'s current rules unacceptable, but I don't want to give up Hangouts.

Eh... I just changed my job description on Plus to "Technically it's a Ferret." so that shows up right underneath my name whenever anyone mouses over my name. It's my tiny way of showing moral support even though I'm too cowardly to show real support. And it's my favorite line from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. :P

Comments

[kindness_says]

Yeeeeah. I mean, I don't really use G+ so whatever and I don't know how suspension works or how it happens? but I'm using a "pseudonym." One that everyone in both my lives calls me, to the point a friend's mum booked me a plane ticket under it because she didn't know my "real" one.

[zandperl]

I ought to be standing up and adding my name as a datapoint as a person who finds G+'s current rules unacceptable, but I don't want to give up Hangouts.

I'm disappointed to hear this. As you know full well, there have been and are many other cases of bias historically and currently where privileged people were aware of the hardships faced by the disadvantaged individuals, but were unwilling to risk losing their privileges to help. Those privileges can be being allowed to use your birth name, knowing that your accent will not prevent you from getting a job, being allowed to get a job in the first place, or living without fear of dying every day.

Most fights for equality do require those in privileged positions to lose some of their privilege. A successful fight here though would not require any of those with privilege to lose anything.

[seekingferret]

And as you well know, I'm a conservative and a gradualist when it comes to social change. I believe in picking battles, not in fighting tooth and nail over every cause that presents itself.

I've declared my support for the cause of pseudonymity on Google+, I've sent feedback to Google, but I'm not going to risk my account over the opportunity for people who actually need to use pseudonyms to have access to yet another social network. It is an injustice, but it's not a major one. And comparing it to job discrimination or assault does the cause of fighting against more serious social ills a disservice.

[silvergirl42.livejournal.com]

Every time I log onto G+ and see "So-and-so is hanging out with Such-and-such!" I want to join but then I realize I'm topless. Perpetual toplessness: it's the cross I bear. :(