Curious as to how this had happened (I’ve gone out of my way to keep the two pretty separate), and more than a little angry that Google had taken it upon itself to rename me (without any warning and without my permission), I went to check my Google Profile–and found that the nymwars had finally caught up with me. “w.e. b.,” Google informed me, was not a valid name (though I signed my email that way for years, until I started using simply “-w.”); I could supply my so-called real name, or I could disable my Google+ account.

I chose to disable my Google+ account, and to delete my Google Profile. In the process of doing so, Google asked me why I’d made this decision. My response is re-posted below:

———————–
Why I Am Leaving Google+, in a nutshell:

b) Google’s underhanded and unauthorized (not to mention inaccurate!) substitution of my “real name” for my profile name in my outgoing email

I only know my friend Aestetix, for example, as Aestetix–but you disabled his G+ account because you felt this wasn’t his ‘real name.’ Countless others in my communities were suspended after that, and nearly all of them have stopped using G+. For a product (supposedly) designed to compete with Facebook, it sure seems as though the folks behind G+ have gone out of their way to ape The Social Network Everyone Loves To Hate.

The last straw, however, was discovering this afternoon not only that my profile had been suspended, but that Gmail has been substituting (what it thinks is) my ‘real name’ in my outgoing email instead of using the name supplied in my Google profile. Adding insult to injury was the fact that you not only did this without my permission and without any particular warning, you didn’t even get my “real name” right!

The name on my profile, and the name that *had* been attached to my outgoing email, was an accurate representation of the person authoring those messages. The name you decided to attach, cobbled together from data gleaned god-knows-where, is not a name I use–ever or anywhere. It’s not the name on my driver’s license or my car registration, and it’s not the name on my credit card or my bank statements; it’s not the name on my bachelor’s degree, and it won’t be the name on my doctorate. It’s not a name I’ve entered into any data field, either on a Google product site or on any other site. You’ve not only taken it upon yourselves to Name Me to anyone I email, you’ve gone and *misnamed* me. To insist that one’s legal name is the truest and most important signifier of identity is bad enough; to assume you know better than I do what my legal name even is is asinine, (almost) comically so.

In short, a social networking site that not only narrowly constrains how I can identify myself, but actively *misidentifies* me to the world, goes beyond being useless into being a liability. Because of the Names Policy and Google’s associated actions, G+ and Google Profiles are not providing me a service; they are doing me a disservice.

What can you do better?

First, recognize that for many folks, “connecting with people in the real world” bears no resemblance to using a full first and last name, not using initials or titles, or even sticking to one language (**see below).

Second, do your research, and acknowledge there are a lot of reasons this policy is a bad idea. A few of the many posts on the subject:
http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2011/08/04/real-names.html
http://www.jwz.org/blog/2011/08/nym-wars/
http://mashable.com/2011/09/19/google-plus-real-name-boring/
http://gigaom.com/2011/09/16/why-twitter-doesnt-care-what-your-real-name-is/

Third, if your company can’t be persuaded to see reason, revise your policy and at least be *honest* about why Google is clinging to the idea of “real names.” Your revised Names Policy should read something like, “We do not charge you money to use this service. Instead, we make our money by selling your information to advertisers and other companies. We’ve decided that your information will fetch a better price if it’s attached to the name on your driver’s license, so providing that name (or something from which we can extrapolate that name) is part of the price you pay, in personal data, for using this service. If you don’t like it, we don’t care: we’re making so much money off of everyone else that we don’t give two bits whether you use our service or not.”

Those three steps would be a good start.

Sincerely, and very certain about my identity as,

–w.e. b.

**[Far fewer people know or knew E. E. Cummings as Edward, W. E. B. DuBois as William, J. K. Rowling as Joanne, J. D. Salinger as Jerome, or J. R. R. Tolkien as John; more people know Cher, Mister Rogers, and Dr. Phil, or even Malcolm X, than know Cherilyn Sarkisian, Fred Rogers, Phillip McGraw, and Malcolm Little. Should I even bother mentioning Stefani Germanotta, Curtis Jackson, Eunice Waymon, Paul Hewson, David Evans, or Saul Hudson--whom you might know as Lady Gaga, 50 Cent, Nina Simone, Bono, The Edge, and Slash? There are many, many more pertinent examples out there; you get the idea.]

watch this space; more to come.