Tag Archives: identity

Open Letter to Google’s Larry Page

Video courtesy of Botgirl Questi

Dear Larry,

I don’t remember your handle in the days you were an active participant of the USENET, over a decade ago, when “web crawlers” and “search engines” were interesting mathematical problems to be tackled. To be honest, I don’t even remember my own handle those days. But what I remember very clearly is RFC 1855. Those days, we all abided by the Netiquette — or faced banning — and one of the rules, which everybody accepted, was 4.1.2, which states on its last paragraphs:

– Don’t badger other users for personal information such as sex, age, or location. After you have built an acquaintance with another user, these questions may be more appropriate, but many people hesitate to give this information to people with whom they are not familiar.

– If a user is using a nickname alias or pseudonym, respect that user’s desire for anonymity. Even if you and that person are close friends, it is more courteous to use his nickname. Do not use that person’s real name online without permission.

Privacy mattered in those days, even considering that the ‘net was such a small place (only 10 million web pages by the time you launched your first Google prototype! How many are stored on your servers’ memory these days? In 2008 or 2009, I believe it was over 6 billion pages). But there was a whole atitude that was part of being a netizen — a citizen of the Internet. And you and Sergey embodied that atitude quite well on the “Ten things we know to be true” philosophy for Google: namely, 1. Focus on the user and all else will follow and, more importantly, 6. You can make money without doing evil. The do-no-evil policy has been pretty much the trademark of Google over the time, and is still what makes Google and Google’s products and services unique: to the best of my knowledge, no other company has stated that so clearly and stuck to it for so many years as a fundamental principle in their business relationships.

Read More

Pages: 1 2 3

Identity crisis!

Fun days are ahead of us, as Linden Lab rolls out a much-awaited feature: the ability to change one’s avatar name at will, just like on every other platform, and to decouple the username (which is unique in the system) from the Display Name (which is what other users will see displayed on the screen), as announced by Jack Linden on the Official Second Life Blogs last week. Interestingly enough, the amount of drama it generated was almost as bad as the one surrounding the merger of the Teen Grid with the Main Grid — over a thousand angry comments were made on that article.

And not by the same people, either, so, no, it’s not a resident conspiracy attacking Linden Lab’s latest projects. This time, the biggest complains come mostly from all sorts of content creators. And this is where the issue is: avatar names, so far, have been unique, and that meant for the content creators (remember, live music and performing weddings are content too!) that one’s reputation is closely tied to a name that is unique. Remove that uniqueness, and all of the sudden the avatar name loses value.

To explore this further, we have to see some analogies on other platforms.

Read More

Pages: 1 2 3

Fake Avatars and the Duplicates Paradox: An Essay by Extropia DaSilva

In ‘A Tale Of Two Avatars’, Wagner James Au reports on the discovery that there are two ‘Hamlet Aus’ on the social networking site ‘Avatars United’. Like many things to do with life on the screen, a superficial consideration of this discovery leads to a clear-cut and simple conclusion: There is the real Hamlet Au, and then there is a fake Hamlet Au. However, again like so many things to do with life on the screen, this clear-cut and simple conclusion may not hold true in all cases.

Read More

Pages: 1 2 3 4

Obsessive about Real Identity?

What, I'm not real enough?!I had started to write this in mid-October but never finished it… and the database crashed at some point while I was in the middle of writing it, losing almost all of the article 🙁 In the mean time, the recent interest in this topic, as well as M Linden’s announcement that they would allow people to register avatars with their real life names, as well as Wallace Linden’s strange article on linking real life data to your avatar, seemed to make everybody write what they thought about this subject, even my dearest friend, Extropia DaSilva. At the same time, the world apparently is moving towards having all your life posted to the public at large with Facebook leading the way, and this is seen as a Good Thing... with only the Alphaville Herald disagreeing. To make things even more interesting, Linden Lab just bought the social networking tool Avatar United, a Facebook clone where you’re not forced to use real names to register and which supposedly will (one day, perhaps) link your profile with your avatar name.

So, well, I recovered what I could from that 3-month article and rewrote the rest… enjoy 🙂 (or not!)

The recent subtle push to increase enterprise and academic acceptance of Second Life® (even though we have to be honest here and remember that SL is 99% residential use, and will very likely always remain like that) has pushed the focus again on identity and privacy; more recently, M Linden’s comments that 2010 would allow people to register avatars with their real name, Wallace Linden’s strange article on real life identity, some SL forum polls, and Linden Lab buying Avatar United, pushed the whole issue back into the foreground — again. It looks and feels like 2007, when Linden lab started to introduce third-party age validation.

Not surprisingly, the stance taken by Facebook on “revealing your real self” might have been a strong incentive for Linden Lab to re-evaluate their policies. Or… perhaps there is more?

One of those reasons has been the push to validate Second Life merchants, in order to turn content theft into the much more serious crime of identity theft or credit card fraud, which — hopefully — will be a stronger deterrent and limit piracy.

The other reason, however, has been for long the “need” for businesses to have an idea with whom they’re dealing with. Also, a few have expressed the idea that relationships can only be formed if you know who’s on the other side of the computer screen. The latter, as said, is not limited to Second Life.

And there is a third reason, which is a bit more obscure and will probably happen “under the hood”. Again, we can point at Facebook and see what it entails.
Read More

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11