This is the latest from Google in their “names policy”
We understand that your identity on Google+ is important to you, and our Name Policy may not be for everyone at this time.
Kinda sounds like the owners of stores in the south who said their stores were not for everyone especially black people who didn’t have skin color they liked. It is a fundamentally discriminatory policy. If we don’t have the freedom to choose our own names in digital space and the freedom to maintain different identifiers across different social spaces we will end up in a very creepy world…Here is my TEDxBrussels talk.
You can find all my previous posts about my Google+ saga and the NymWars here.
I wrote this poem on my way back from Europe.
Occupy Your Identity!
It’s simple.
Be who you are.
Be who you are where you are.
Context matters.
Don’t let it be taken away from you.
We must Occupy our Identities in multiple contexts.
Many of us have different names in different contexts.
We must insist on the right to have:
- different personas in different contexts
- different names in different contexts.
- different identifiers in different contexts
If we lose these freedoms, we lose the right to free speech, in a free society.
Resisting the corporate urge to merge us down so that we can only have One Identity in One Context… when this happens, we will be living in Participatory Totalitarianism.
I don’t want that future.
If you don’t want that future… Occupy Your Identity!
– Kaliya
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