And the freedom they have is choosing the services they use as well. If a service wants you to use your real name and you don't want to, you don't use the service. That's the beauty of freedom, you are not required to use a service like Google Plus. Freedom is not that Google Plus is suddenly a governed body that has to adhere to some unwritten law that they cannot require real names.
You aren't required to use Facebook, you're free to use alternatives, but it's become so ubiquitous that having a Facebook profile has become necessary to participate fully in online life. (Think of the Facebook like buttons and "login with Facebook" options you see scattered all over the web, or TechCrunch comments, for that matter.)
To put it another way, why should people with legitimate reasons for using pseudonyms be forced into a ghetto? What kind of freedom is that?
but it's become so ubiquitous that having a Facebook profile has become necessary to participate fully in online life.
I must not be participating fully in an 'online life' then. When I look at my non-tech friends I do much more participating online than any of them do and they all have FB accounts and I do not.
I don't use Facebook. And whenever I go to a site that requires Facebook credentials to comment, I just don't comment. It does not bother me because that is a choice I made in not using Facebook as my online persona. But that is the truth to all this. I do not blame Facebook for their design of the service, I am the one to blame for not wanting to adhere to them. And I get to live with the consequences.
So you're saying that a Facebook account should probably be added to the list of Fundamental Human Needs? Because anything not on that list is a want, and you do not (yet) have a right to have your wants the way you want them.
Don't be ridiculous. I'm not saying having a Facebook account should be a right. I am saying that Facebook is being unreasonable in not allowing people with good reasons for using peudonyms: abuse survivors, academics, activists, artists, authors, bloggers.. see http://my.nameis.me/
It's obviously Google's right to set the rules. But it's also my right, and in my view, moral obligation to boycott a network which has such rule, even if I don't personally need or want it.
I've never understood this argument. Google Plus is free to do what they want, and we are free to say what we like about it. I have yet to hear a legal argument against Google Plus. What you call "unwritten law" is what other people call social norms. No one has said they cannot legally require real names, but that they should not require real names.
Leaving is not the only option when you don't like something.
Why would anyone start with siding with Google as their default position? Google Plus is not a finished product. When people complain about bugs or missing features for a new product they help to make a better product.
Or you could provide Google with some constructive feedback and some arguments and perhaps they change. After all they say they want feedback and that the service isn't gold master yet.
