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Google Play reviews are all nearly you

The Human With No Name isn't welcome here.

It'southward a sad day for trolls and sock puppets: non only is YouTube encouraging users to post using their Google+ usernames, now Google is rolling out Google+ to its Google Play reviews too.

Existing reviews won't be affected, only future ones volition be "powered by Google+".

That ways no more anonymous reviews.

Hurrah!

There are lots of very good reasons why people might desire to stay anonymous online, just when it comes to the majority of content reviews I don't think they count.

With reviews, anonymity is often a tool for cowards and spammers, unethical developers and utter idiots, and the sooner information technology's scrapped the better.

The problem with reviews is that they aren't simply opinions.

They're recommendations, pieces of information that people use to guide their buying decisions - so if 99% of the reviews were posted by the person who wrote the app, or by people who have a vested interest in another way, then people are existence conned out of their cash.

Removing anonymity doesn't remove that completely, I know. For example, recent Amazon sock-puppet scandals revolved around named accounts, not bearding ones.

Simply if reviews are a free-for-all, and then you tin can cease up with what looks like drive-by reviewing, people spraying bile like bullets.

Removing anonymity might not terminate them, simply it adds a speed bump - and that bump's frequently enough to discourage at to the lowest degree some of the fakers, trolls and utter imbeciles. Worst case scenario? It just annoys them. I'm all for that.

Even if it doesn't finish all of the baddies, linking profiles helps usa punters considering reputation matters.

When someone'due south praising something to the heavens or damning it to Hell, you can run into what else they've liked or lambasted - and you can come across whether they've signed upward x minutes ago and this is their first review.

That information matters, considering it means we tin decide whether a review is worth paying attention to or if it stinks like a forgotten fish.

I'm all for online anonymity, but not in this case. If you're going to tell me how to spend my cash, I want to know who you are.

Contributor

Onetime lion tamer, Girls Aloud backing dancer and habitual liar Carrie Marshall (Twitter, Google+) has been writing almost tech since 1998, contributing sage advice and odd opinions to .net, MacFormat, Tap! and Official Windows Magazine as well as co-writing stacks of how-to tech books. "My task is to cut through the crap," she says. "And there's a lot of crap."