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October 21, 2011
 

Google And Facebook Are Simplifying Our Identities In Bad Way

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Written by: Eric Matzner

Google and Facebook are making us seem a lot more 1-dimensional than we are. They don’t allow us to share as we really want to share in an online identity. We are forced to flatten our personalities to fit their limited models. In my opinion, they actually have an economic incentive to disallow anonymity and pseudonyms because they can’t be tracked and paired with ads. This is essentially was Google+ deletes accounts that use fake names, because it wants everyone to only have one account and for that data to be associated with a google profile and all the other tons of data they have collected on you. Moot, the former owner of 4Chan is right in his rant agianst Facebook and Google and in his praise for Twitter. 4chan’s Chris Poole: Facebook & Google Are Doing It Wrong

Google & Facebook Are Eroding Our Options Google and Facebook are “consolidating identity and making people seem more simple than they really are,” Poole said. “Our options are being eroded.” Poole’s bottom line is that there’s a big market opportunity in this authentic, fluid kind of identity, which the big players are willfully abandoning. “You can incorporate identity without forcing your users to sacrifice something.” Poole believes a Web network can validate an account using legitimate services without forcing the presentation of that user to be an over-simplification. Creativity and self-expression are at stake, Poole says, and he’s particularly concerned about young people. Facebook’s new Timeline will lock people into their Facebook identities from birth. Speaking at Facebook recently, Poole told its developers that they set the bar for identity, but he has since realized he was wrong: we, the users, do. “We’re about to sacrifice something that’s valuable, and it’s special.” “I would ask us all to strive for this ideal when we design products, and as users on the Web, what we demand of services,” Poole said. “Facebook and Google do identity wrong, Twitter does it better, and I want people to think about what the world would be like if we did it right.”



About the Author

Eric Matzner




 
 

 
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