Tom Anderson gets it the wrong way round, and completely misses Siegler's point.
The question is not is why does Siegler care. He can reasonably expect to care: it's his photo attached to his personal profile and his photo is part of how he chooses to portray himself online. Siegler now knows that he cannot be himself on Google+, and now thousands of others know that they cannot be themselves on Google+ either.
The question is: why does Google care so much that about the minutae of how individuals choose to portray themselves while they face much greater problems related to the success or otherwise of their new social network?
Putting aside the spam problems that render Google+ at best noisy and at worse useless, if Google is so intolerant that it silently censors a hand gesture considered impolite in where their HQ is based, how else will they behave? Will they censor every gesture that might be considered offensive somewhere in the world (there are many)? Or will they remain purely focused on the North American hand gestures, and, by extension, North American culture and the limited audience that it brings?
There are public sections of G+ and private sections. If you have a private album limited to 4chan buddies or whatever with tubgirl, goatse, the lemon party, etc. and they took that down, I would find issue with it. But if you've got goatse as your public profile picture, that is an issue that Google has to deal with. I use those examples not because they are directly comparable to what Siegler put up, but because I imagine most of the people here on hn would find those images offensive.
When you're dealing with a really massive user base, you're inevitably going to have a lot of people that would find an image of a guy flipping the bird to be horribly offensive (their heads would simply explode if they ever saw goatse). Should you cater to those people? Where do you draw the line? Do you go with the U.S. Supreme Court's definition of obscenity? Siegler's picture is certainly not obscene, but it would certainly make a prude think twice about signing up for G+. I would rather not cater to the prudes of the world, but if Google wants every person with access to the internet on G+, then they'll have to offer some concessions to them.
So what if people are horribly offended? Let them be offended. It's not like anything bad will happen. "Someone flipped me the bird, I found it offensive and the next morning I had leprosy!" (Riffing off Steve Hughes, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cycXuYzmzNg watch this, it's pretty much my whole argument)
It's a finger for fuck's sake. It's not hurting anyone. If you're offended by it you really need to grow up and stop living in 19th century Victorian England.
Yes, pictures of dicks and gore is disgusting, but a finger? That's just childish, and reacting to that is also childish.
My point is that it's all relative, and from Google's perspective, something bad will happen--people won't use their service. Telling your potential users to grow up and act like reasonable people is not going to be a successful strategy when your goal is getting literally everyone with an internet connection to use your service. Lots of people are not rational, reasonable or mature. Personally, I don't find dicks and gore to be disgusting. It's just absurd to me. Of course, I understand perfectly well that other people find it disgusting, just as I can understand that there are a lot of people in the U.S. that find the middle finger to be objectionable (hey, maybe they aren't even offended by it, maybe they just don't want to explain what that gesture means to their kid, who then runs around flipping off everyone at their school [true story, I did that when I was about 4 years old]).
Almost any business that is targeted at a mass audience understands this and governs their products accordingly. If you find their censorship to be prudish and ridiculous, you can boycott them and use the Fuck You Network. I suppose if enough people boycott G+ for being unreasonably prudish, maybe they'll change their position, but judging by past performance, it seems like the prudes win these fights. Social networks are not like content distributors like HBO, that can appeal to a relatively small niche and be successful, for G+ it's all or nothing.
You've inadvertantly identified precisely what the real issue is: where is the line drawn? To you, it's at dicks and gore. Dicks and gore HAVE to be taken down!
Well, I've got news for you. Not everyone has the same threshold for tolerance of offensive material. Maybe the middle finger is devastating to me, but I love seeing gore. Who are you to tell me that's childish?
There are rules. Even HN has a set. If you don't like them, don't play.
The adult thing is to not be a child who thinks flipping the bird in his profile is something to be proud of. Siegler's little renegade act probably wouldn't work so well with the people who still think you can be a badass tech writer if he refrained, though.
MC Siegler and his fans are completely and totally allowed to share pictures of them fingering at each other (that came out wrong, but I'm leaving it for posterity) in private circles on G+, aren't they? But Google doesn't want it in people's public feeds.
I don't find it offensive--I do find it stupid in that sort of "oh, look at the Internet Tough Guy" way, but that's a far cry from taking offense--but at the same time I can entirely get why Google wouldn't be all happy and such with that sort of picture in folks' public feeds. Like it or not, there are some venues where you get to be a little civilized if you want to be out in public, and Google's decided that they have a bit of a dress code in their neck of the woods: shirt optional, pants optional, tie not required, birds verboten. Not a big deal; the total of this tragedy is pretty much that MC Siegler will have to resort to other methods than a bird in a profile picture to show what a trendy rebel with his fingers on the pulse of Technoeverything he really is.
Maybe he could do it with a thoughtful, well-written, incisive arti...ahahahahaha. I made myself laugh. =)
>The adult thing is to not be a child who thinks flipping the bird in his profile is something to be proud of.
That's the adult thing for him to do. But the adult thing for the rest of us to do is mind our own business. If I start to start a conversation with someone but find their speech offends me, I walk away. If his picture offends you, just take him off your feed. No big deal.
No, the new "adult thing" to do is try to control what other do and say, so that no one ever has to experience the traumatic effects of being offended.
I think many people here are conflating offensiveness and propriety. You don't have to be offended by something to find it inappropriate for a service that you run. (I don't find profanity offensive, but I also don't find it appropriate for business conversation. I doubt Googlers find a bird all that offensive, but the people making decisions apparently don't find birds appropriate for public G+ feeds. Oh noes?)
He, and you, and I, have no inherent right to do whatever we want on a private service. Their house, their rules. Maybe he should start his own social network (with blackjack, and...). He can call it CrunchPlaid. =)
He's not on my feed. I don't use G+ and wouldn't follow Siegler if I did.
I don't really see many people not minding their business, though. I see a few (including me) saying "meh, it's Google's house, they choose the rules", and that's about it.
It's Google's social network that they give everyone for free, they can refuse service to anyone. I don't agree with the level of censorship personally (it's a little bit too PC), but I respect Google's right to run their website how they see fit.
Of course they have a right to run their website how they see fit. But we also have a right to talk about what they're doing, and make informed decisions as to whether we'll be a part of their social network.
It's a <insert whatever YOU find ofensive> for fuck's sake, so get over it.
The amount of moralizing over what people are "allowed" to find offensive here is amazing. If it were my network, I wouldn't give a rat's ass what MG was doing in his picture, but it isn't my network.
The adult thing would be to act responsibly in the first place. Simplicity describes that spirit best: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Or another sentiment is: would you do/show that to your grandmother (any beloved elder)?
So if it would in the slightest bother you, then don't bother doing it.
The MG criticism is over the top, as expected, since G+ is far more "public" out of the gate than previous networks it needs to be more proactive rather than reactive. As FB becomes more public they will begin to grapple with the same issues, it's only a matter of time...
Actually, Tom gets it right. It's called discretion. Use his public example, for instance. If you were, for example, a cross-dresser who loved wearing women's underwear - and only women's underwear - would that be tolerated by the general public if you were roaming around a mall?
"But this is who I really am, and it's how I want to portray myself in public!"
It's Google's playground, and you either play by the rules or suffer the consequences. You wouldn't berate mall cops if they had to remove offensive people from the premises.
I find it interesting that most attempts to support Google in this instances uses far more extreme examples to justify it.
I don't think anyone is insisting that there are no types of images that are so bad that it wouldn't be ok for Google to remove them. At least I haven't seen anyone claim so.
As long as that is the case, using examples that the vast majority would agree are worse than the one that was actually taken down just weakens your point dramatically.
If you were, for example, a cross-dresser who loved wearing women's underwear - and only women's underwear - would that be tolerated by the general public if you were roaming around a mall?
No, but one can disagree with both Google and the general public.
It's Google's playground, and you either play by the rules or suffer the consequences.
That doesn't mean we can't publicly disagree with the rules.
You wouldn't berate mall cops if they had to remove offensive people from the premises.
Mall cops don't decide the rules, they just apply them. It's different.
If I do that in public there are laws and elected officials, there are courts and ways for me to appeal. A clear and explicit notification is always given and if not I can sue. Most importantly, some things I’m definitely and always allowed to do are explicitly written down.
If you are in favor of Google treating their site like a public space then Google is doing very poorly.
The question is not is why does Siegler care. He can reasonably expect to care: it's his photo attached to his personal profile and his photo is part of how he chooses to portray himself online. Siegler now knows that he cannot be himself on Google+, and now thousands of others know that they cannot be themselves on Google+ either.
The question is: why does Google care so much that about the minutae of how individuals choose to portray themselves while they face much greater problems related to the success or otherwise of their new social network?
Putting aside the spam problems that render Google+ at best noisy and at worse useless, if Google is so intolerant that it silently censors a hand gesture considered impolite in where their HQ is based, how else will they behave? Will they censor every gesture that might be considered offensive somewhere in the world (there are many)? Or will they remain purely focused on the North American hand gestures, and, by extension, North American culture and the limited audience that it brings?