Saturday’s Google+ user account deletion purge plunged the new social network into a crisis of user trust. The community wants it fixed.
Saturday’s deletion of multiple Google+ user accounts spanned from well-known tech figures to ordinary netizens. It was ostensibly over Google Plus’ enforcement of using so-called “real names.”
Google+ remained silent, and combined with contradictory actions over the weekend it’s now a trust trainwreck, a growing PR shadow and a textbook-case community management nightmare.
Other social networks are now probably laughing into their morning coffee, while Google+ users are most certainly both furious and frightened.
Google+ is not warning users before deleting user accounts, and some people have reported being locked out of all Google services, including docs and Gmail.
Google+ has told some users they can now only use the names on their government ID’s for their Plus profiles. Currently the policy asks that your display name is what your “friends, family, and coworkers” call you. Requiring ID seems to contradict the stated policy.
Some users were able to find favor with Google employees off of Google+ and have their accounts restored. Privileged Plussers like celebrity Arianna Huffington got the immediate and personal restoration of her account by a Google+ Community Manager while others were told to seek help in forums or submit a request for review.
By Sunday, entire posts on Google+ became dedicated to documenting double-standards users witnessed.
Ex-Google employees were deleted. Writers, musicians, programmers and more were deleted. And if you elected to edit your name you needed to be very, very careful not to raise suspicion or you were flagged for deletion as well.
Sunday evening, people began tweeting that they were voluntarily deleting their Google+ profiles as a pre-emptive, “no thank you” measure.
Robert Scoble remarked, “Google is digging a deep hole here, not because of the rules, but because of how they are implementing them.”
But it is the concept of forcing users into identifying their legal names to the public as a requirement to use the social network that has people angrier at Google than I expected.
Google+ user Todd Vierling revealed that programmer “+antimatter fifteen” who created several extensions for Chrome and ChromeOS including “Cloud Save” and “CrOS Save” and “Surplus” for Google+ had his Google+ account suspended for - yes - using a pseudonym “to protect his personal identity and safety.”
Google+ has left users so in the dark that people are going out of their way to create solutions for Google Plus’ problem. Some are openly calling for Google+ leadership to be accountable and restore accounts.
There are now posts, threads, and even a Change.org petition to beseech Google to allow pseudonyms on services like Google+.
Page 2: [Why did Google let this happen? Can they fix a worsening disaster?] »
