Google+ Profile Name Debacle

Google's new social network seems to have an itchy trigger finger lately.

First people started griping that the search giant was deleting brand and company profiles. But to be fair, they did say they weren't going to support those pages, and that brand pages would be along soon enough.

Now, they seem to be randomly deleting the profiles of actual people, who happen to have a name that Google doesn't like.

Valleywag points out a few of the people (some rather well known in the online community) who have met the Google guillotine, ex Googler Kirrily "Skud" Robert, MuscleNerd,  sex blogger AV Flox, and the nerdcore rapper Doctor Popular.

Google's Community Standards terms merely state:

To help fight spam and prevent fake profiles, use the name your friends, family, or co-workers usually call you. For example, if your full legal name is Charles Jones Jr. but you normally use Chuck Jones or Junior Jones, either of these would be acceptable.

But beware, if Google doesn't think what your friends or family call you, is good enough, you could be deleted.

Google addressed this issue yesterday, offering remedies that are in the works:

- Giving these users a warning and a chance to correct their name in advance of any suspension. (Of course whenever we review a profile, if we determine that the account is violating other policies like spam or abuse we’ll suspend the account immediately.)
- At time of this notice, a clear indication of how the user can edit their name to conform to our community standards (http://www.google.com/support/+/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1228271)
- Better expectation setting as to next steps and timeframes for users that are engaged in this process.

Several of the mistaken accounts have been reinstated.

 Correction: Violet Blue's G+ account was not deleted.

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