{"id":12362,"date":"2013-11-19T18:39:57","date_gmt":"2013-11-19T17:39:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/?p=5802"},"modified":"2013-11-19T18:39:57","modified_gmt":"2013-11-19T17:39:57","slug":"google-plus-accuses-me-of-impersonating-myself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/2013\/11\/google-plus-accuses-me-of-impersonating-myself.html","title":{"rendered":"Google Plus Accuses Me of Impersonating Myself?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here\u2019s a timely reminder of on some core web principles, such as \u201calgorithms can be stupid\u201d and \u201cdon\u2019t rely too heavily on free services\u201d\u2026.<\/p>\n

Earlier today, I wanted to share a video link to one of my Big Data videos, so went to my channel at youtube.com\/user\/timoelliott \u2013 only to find the following ominous message:<\/p>\n

\"this-channel-does-not-exist\"<\/p>\n

Uh-oh! All my videos gone, unobtainable — what did I do wrong?!<\/p>\n

Well, it turns out that your YouTube account is linked to your Google+ account, and something, somewhere went haywire at Google+.<\/p>\n

The site suddenly suspected me of \u201cimpersonating myself\u201d and suspended my account until I proved my existence, by providing links showing a \u201csignificant community that knows you by this name\u201d, an uploaded passport photo, or links or scans of articles.<\/p>\n

While I’m waiting for the review, I\u2019m persona non grata<\/a> on both Google+ and YouTube, waiting for a process that can apparently take days*:<\/p>\n

\"google-plus-profile-suspended\"<\/p>\n

I\u2019m guessing that the culprit is simply an algorithm that checks the application of the Google+ \u201creal name\u201d policy, and decided that my name didn\u2019t sound \u201creal\u201d enough (Yes, Timo is my real first name \u2013 it\u2019s Finnish. I\u2019m half Nordic).<\/p>\n

In this case, the only \u201csuffering\u201d should be the a few less YouTube videos watched. But as Google and other services become ever-more essential in many people\u2019s lives, it\u2019s a chilling reminder of how much power these companies have \u2013 power that will only skyrocket in the future with technologies like Google Glass and face recognition.<\/p>\n

\"you<\/p>\n

The real problem with these procedures is their \u201cdelete first, appeal after\u201d nature (doing it the right way around would require much more expensive human intervention \u2013\u00a0 which would disrupt the existing business models, and so isn\u2019t going to happen any time soon).<\/p>\n

I\u2019d ask for your help to vouch for me, but there\u2019s no obvious person or link to send such information to. There\u2019s a certain irony in a company that is at the bleeding edge of \u201ccustomer analytics\u201d being quite so casual with its own customer service (although, of course, I\u2019m more the \u201cproduct\u201d than the \u201ccustomer\u201d, since I only \u201cpay\u201d with my eyeballs on ads promoted by the real customers).<\/p>\n

Another delicious irony is that even a cursory Google search of my name returns thousands of results (photos, articles, presentations\u2026) that constitute a “proof of my existence” that would be MUCH harder to fake than an uploaded scan of my passport photo:<\/p>\n

\"google-plus-account-suspended\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The moral of the story is \u201cbe wary\u201d \u2013 especially of \u201cfree\u201d services.<\/p>\n

Now, I just hope to be able to do a Google Hangout in time for my next SAP Big Data Chat about Data Science<\/a>\u2026<\/p>\n

* UPDATE: Thankfully, it took less than 24 hours: “Hello.\u00a0Thanks for sending us your appeal. You’re right: your name does comply with the Google+ Names Policy. ”<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Google Plus says I’m impersonating myself… what moral to take from the story? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5798,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[14],"tags":[504,534,1156],"class_list":["post-12362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-thoughts","tag-free","tag-google-plus","tag-youtube"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/this-channel-does-not-exist-1.jpg?fit=690%2C310&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3X9RF-3do","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12362"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12362\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}