I didn't mean to imply hail corporate completely fixed anything, at its worst it's unsubstantiated allegations.
Just pointing out that true names didn't inoculate Facebook, which doesn't even get as far as that problematic response.
That's why I said anonymity is orthogonal--that was my main point.
For example, anonymity is easier on HN, and I prefer our comments to FB. On the other hand, I'm not typing this on 4chan. There are dozens of other examples on the spectrum. Anonymity just doesn't seem like the determining factor for culture everyone makes it out to be. Maybe it has some impact, but it seems washed out by the typical culture of the group, driven by that group's interests, style, and tolerance of
(or preference for) obnoxiousness.
It's funny that was a Facebook scandal, while Reddit has movements like hail corporate trying to self-police dishonesty and manipulative behavior.
It seems like anonymity should be more of a driving force, but seeing both good and bad social media sites with each model, I'm no longer sure anonymity either preserves or inhibits culture... it might just be orthogonal.
Using and loving G+ and Hangouts to this day. I like how easy it is to get a group chat or a video chat going in the browser, and I like the increased control over sharing I have, especially relative to FB. (I can even share with people who don't want to log in because they hate the service. My FB friends cannot.)
I'm trying to sift through the complaints to see if they're relevant to me, but haven't had much luck so far.
1. Everything
Complaints on the order of "it broke everything" just seem hyperbolic and silly.
2. Nymwars
I think they should allow pseudonyms, but I don't blame the company for trying build something tied a little tighter to real world identities after fighting a decade long war against fraud and spam behind the scenes. I feel like it's within their prerogative to say they're building an identity service, because pseudonym based logins are already widely available. Faulting them for that choice is a bit like saying you don't like Gmail because you think email is stupid.
3. YouTube
Among the other major complaints is that they broke YouTube comments, ie, the worst den of inane and offensive comments on the internet since 4chan. Good for them, the team deserves a medal.
Probably the other tacit criticism is that Google launched a service that didn't immediately trounce all other social media sites, delivering everything for everyone. It's used by a mere 350 million people. It's been criticized for that number being only a third of its registered base, but that seems perfectly on track or better than estimates for other social media sites. Twitter's active userbase is probably roughly 20%, for example:
It's weird that a site with 350 million active monthly users is considered an embarrassing failure. I'm sure lots of services would be happy to trade userbases with G+.
It had a few cool features. It wasn't world changing. I feel like it hit some of the Segwey effect, a victim of its hype more than of its failings.
5. Aesthetics.
I feel this is the most inarguable complaint. Some people don't like the style of G+, don't like its approach to usability, or find its sharing system needlessly complex or confusing. By all means, these individuals should not use the service. I don't like the look and feel of Pinterest. I shouldn't use Pinterest. To each her own. I worry some authors subtly shift this argument from "I don't like the feel of it," or even, "My friends don't like it," to "It is a failure of design that no one should use." Seems a bit unfair.
I believe there are good usability guidelines, but I don't subscribe to the belief that there is a perfect one size fits all, that all implementations of any service will eventually converge to one platonic form. Competition is good because we all like different things, each find different styles more intuitive.
I'd be happy to consider other arguments, but so far allegations of the service's abject horribleness seem somewhat exaggerated.
I learned BASIC on an Apple II when I was wee, little over 20 years ago. I wrote little choose your own adventure games filled with silly puns. I've flirted with programming ever since, but never programmed professionally, and most coders I've met could code circles around me.
Years since I first started coding isn't very indicative of my skill level, but years I've been coding professionally (ie, zero) probably understates things too.
In a very loose sense, PR is the same algorithm universities use, evaluate quality of some content based on the number of references to that content.
It is definitely gamed in similar ways. I'm surprised we haven't seen professors hire SEO firms to help increase citation counts of their research.