[dan-k]

To me this article sounds more like evidence of an unhealthy sense of entitlement social media users are developing than a good argument against Google's policy. Not that there's anything wrong with the points the author makes about anonymity. I doubt anyone who's spent much time dealing with social media, including the Google+ team, would question the fact that anonymity provides a valuable service to society in many ways. However, that's completely irrelevant when it comes to the decision of what a particular social network (or any other kind of network, for that matter) should adopt as its identification policy. That's an issue that's about the type of community the team working on that particular product wants to have. Unless people were somehow forced to sign up for a specific service, the argument has no legs to stand on.

All it takes to see the problem with the author's logic is simple principles of supply and demand. If there is actually a significant demand for anonymity online that's not being met by the current services, another one will come along to fill that gap. In that case, the needs of those people are met, and they have no reason to be mad at Google. Otherwise, there wasn't significant demand in the first place, which justifies Google's decision not to accommodate it.

So, really what we see here is nothing more than someone whining because they are discovering that they have to use Google's service on Google's terms, rather than their own, which runs contrary to their sense of entitlement. In fact, they are the ones acting like there's a universal context; it's just that their universal context is one where they can be anonymous wherever they want without worrying about the consequences.

[gte910h]

I don't care so much about going by gte910h, I care that there aren't exceptions.

People put your information on social networks without your consent. If you're a battered ex-wife for instance, you have to participate to make sure your location isn't being giving way unawares (pictures with you in them with Exif data, "harmless" photo album tagging, etc).

Additionally, anonymity is important to many people in disliked groups (homosexuals, political dissidents), but the common law right (and it very much is a Right to change your name) to go by whatever name you want is very hard to exercise while under the purvey of your family. Many people are very much under the purvey of their family while in college.

So while you're of the age to be of formative years in the social networks, where you make contacts that help the start of your career, you literally have to piss off the family which is ostensibly offering some support and formally change your name from a non-European name to a European name if you want the best success when searching for a job (where it's shown non-european sounding names who are otherwise identical get fewer callbacks).