Google+ and being who we need to be

        I have had this blog for about 4 years now, so I would guess this makes me an established personality, but not established enough for Google+. I jumped into Google+ when it first went live, and enjoyed the way it worked and the people on there. Then the purges began, people started to disappear...gone from my time line.
People such as :-

GoSpeed Racer
Moggs Oceanlane  (restored then she deleted it)
Wizard Gynoid (restored)
Crystal Rehula has been banned twice

Then I jumped from  Google+ as I had seen on twitter that some people had lost access to Gmail and didn't want to lose access to my account. As my name is made up of fairly common words, but not actual names, I guessed the  BanHammer was coming after me soon.

I'm rather sad about it as Google+ had the potential for me to stay in contact with friends that aren't on other networks, and to deal with the information overload issue that comes from networks I am on.

Then Botgirl Questi got the ban hammer treatment, and she's not taking it lightly, and is giving it her best parody treatment:-

  

Then she had to go and talk to Google, as she does....

It's not just just Second Life personalities falling foul of the names policy.

Violet Blue has a few comments of her own and and has added her name to  My Name is Me

Ex-Google Employee Skud had her Google+ account suspended and has written a great post about it here.

Another post I enjoyed reading was by Danah Boyd  "Real names" are an Abuse of Power  the article itself is quite good, but the comments show a complete range from total agreement, to those who haven't a clue.

My Name is Me is a site that lets people explain in their own words why they have chosen pseudonymity for their online existence.

A lot have to do with issues of sex, religion, (or lack of), politics,Human Rights and to avoid abuse and misogyny. (If you don't that this is a problem, I refer you to my last post on Rebecca Watson, and the daily amount of abuse she gets)

In the last year, we have seen Twitter, and Facebook become the launchpoint for the biggest shake up in world politics since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Since  December 2010 there have been revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, civil war in Libya, uprisings in Bahrain,Syria, and Yemen, major protests in Algeria, Iraq, Jordan, Morocco, and Oman. Minor protests in Kuwait, Lebanon, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Western Sahara. We can also add the failed Iranian protests.


Remember how Egypt turned off the Internet, to stop the people communicating. I wonder how many people where using real twitter and Facebook accounts. If it had all gone bad in Egypt, well, you can be sure those people with the real accounts would be either dead or missing by now.

Using alternate names is nothing new, it's quite famous for writers, sportsman, actors soldiers:-

Mark Twain = Samuel Clemens
Lewis Carroll = Charles Dodgson,
George Orwell = Eric Blair
Mary Ann Evans = George Eliot
John le Carré = David John Moore Cornwell
Mary Westmacott = Agatha Christie
Dr. Seuss = Theodor Seuss Geisel
Tiger Woods =  Eldrick Tont Woods
Larry Niven = Laurence van Cott Niven
Andre Norton = Alice Mary Norton
Batman = Bruce Wayne
Elvira = Cassandra Peterson
Wonder Woman = Diana Prince
Banksy = ????

Much to my surprise I just discovered Porn Stars don't use their real names!!

The Electronic Frontier Foundation also support pseudonyms , and this quote sums it up best :-

As Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens put forth in deciding McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Comm’n 514 U.S. 334, 357 (1995),

"Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority. It thus exemplifies the purpose behind the Bill of Rights, and of the First Amendment in particular: to protect unpopular individuals from retaliation—and their ideas from suppression—at the hand of an intolerant society. The right to remain anonymous may be abused when it shields fraudulent conduct. But political speech by its nature will sometimes have unpalatable consequences, and, in general, our society accords greater weight to the value of free speech than to the dangers of its misuse."

EDIT:-
We now seem to have Spartacus standing up for some of us We will see how long this lasts.

 Lady Gaga is my name. If you know me, and you call me Stefani, you don't really know me at all. - Lady Gaga