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Facebook Wants You To Snitch On Friends Not Using Their Real Name
Qedward writes "Freedom to go under a pseudonym is, miraculously, one freedom to survive the security lock-down of the previous decade. Now Facebook wants to change this. James Firth shows Facebook is clamping down on pseudonyms, with an interesting screenshot of being asked whether a friend is using their real name."
Anonymous is good, no doubt, but I'd say that pseudonyms are often better because a pseudonym, even if they are personally unknown, helps set context. Comments on issues which are complex often can't realistically be partitioned to be exhaustive in themselves. For some people here, at least, I'm familiar with their basic worldview from their other posts, and their comment or argument can placed in that wider context for deeper consideration, at least implicitly.
I want to keep both, and at least in terms of productive discussion of topics upon which all parties don't already agree, the 'net will be dead to me the day these are lost.
I suggest it's sort of intellectually dishonest if you evaluate a posting in a certain way based on who posted it rather than what was posted. Ideas should be evaluated based on their content rather than their source.
Learning to evaluate ideas directly, without being influenced by one's preconceptions about their source, is a skill that we should all learn and value.
However, it is also valuable to evaluate sources and their presentation of ideas over time, because some sources are more accurate/insightful/relevant to particular knowledge domains than others. And that's important because we evaluate (or should be evaluating) many, many ideas continuously. Authority is not the ultimate source of truth, but it can be a shortcut to it.
A source also has a reputation to defend, and this encourages (some of them) to be more careful about what they say. I suggest that this why you discount AC postings... no reputation is at stake.
Unfortunately, some people are shockingly poor at source evaluation. They'll forward anonymously written emails that are thinly disguised political agit-prop, then turn sour when you send them a link to snopes ("that's not a reliable source").
-1, Too Many Layers Of Abstraction
You raise an interesting point about having a 'fake' name to show the world, and what is your real name.
I'm Chinese, so on my bank accounts and official documents, I have the romanised version of my name in mandarin.
In day to day life however, everyone calls me Nicholas. My co workers, clients, friends, etc. and that is also the name I use on facebook. About the only people who know my name in mandarin are my immediate family, and entities I need to enter into contracts with.
To be sure, Nicholas is by no means fake or a pseudonym. My parents named me as such, and I have answered to that name all my life. Google me and you will turn up a lot of stuff i have put online over the years, pictures of parties, videos, random nonsense on forums etc. But searching official records for that name is going to turn up a lot of people who arn't me.
So back to the topic at hand, maybe what facebook is concerned with are name that are pure fiction/fantasy, after all, my name would pass the 'fake' test in the article as i have built an identity around it, but it's not my official name.
Sometimes I wish I was a plumber, then I'd know how to deal with other people's shit.