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."

Comments

Everyone should post as Anonymous

[Anonymous Coward]

If you have comments you should post them as Anonymous... because we can.

Re:Everyone should post as Anonymous

[macbeth66]

I do that now, with all of my email. Of course, it comes across as garbled garbage to my friends. Not that they would notice the difference as the garbage I write in emails is only slightly less crappier than what I post on Slashdot.

Re:Everyone should post as Anonymous

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Everyone should post as Anonymous

[icebike]

The story was written by Qedward and posted by Soulkill.

How much more Anonymous do you need to be?

Re:Everyone should post as Anonymous

[icebike]

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'm way to memory challenged to keep track of my own world view, let alone that of the people who's posts I read or reply to.

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.

After all, isn't checking who posted something sort of running afoul of the Fallacy of Ad hominem?

That said, I tend to discount AC postings unless the subject matter is one where they might have a legitimate need to hide, so, in a sense I'm guilty of the same thing.

Re:Everyone should post as Anonymous

[firewrought]

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").

Re:Everyone should post as Anonymous

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm afraid if I'm ever asked about internet identities during a job interview and I answer Anonymous Coward I'll have a lot to answer for.

Re:Everyone should post as Anonymous

[Sir_Sri]

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.

Depends. If someone on fox news claim that that they aren't in bed with the Romney campaign, or that Obama is in fact a kenyan muslim I know they're likely to be full of their usual shit. There's far more information in the world than I can reasonable parse through, so you have to pick your sources you trust and sources you don't, or you'll spend your life doing research and never actually getting things done. That doesn't mean I completely discount everything fox news said, but I'll leave it to someone else to actual check their facts - after all, it was the national enquirer that broke the Monika Lewinsky scandal correctly in detail (despite the vast majority of their material at the time being completely made up nonsense).

Also, posting everything purely anonymously makes it hard to verify you're continuing a conversation with the right person, which does happen in the comments here occasionally.

Re:Everyone should post as Anonymous

[Zemran]

I do not bother with ACs either but icebike hardly gives away your identity as Facebook is asking for. I would not give my real name on Facebook and I think that anyone that does is an idiot. I would not want some fanatic to be able to track me down after I comment about some crazy's over reaction to that anti-Mohammed film. I do not tend to write flame bait but I often speak my mind and there are people out there that will kill you for speaking your mind if it is not the same as their warped perception of the world. Do you really think that they cannot find you if you put all your real data on Facebook as Facebook wants?

This is not about AC vs. pseudonym, they want you to put genuine data on your account that will allow people to find the real you in person.

Re:Everyone should post as Anonymous

[houghi]

Posting as John Smith, Adrian Cronauer, Samual T. Jameson or any non-fake looking name.
Interesting part is that my alias is more distinct then if I were be using my own name.
And look right here what happens when you use your own name and that name is Justin Bieber.

Re:Everyone should post as Anonymous

[nospam007]

"medium to get in touch with and keep track of long (and not necessarily so long) lost friends."

People who had their locker beside yours in high-school are not 'long lost friends', they don't need to see photos of your cars and kids nor need they to know where you live.

Re:Everyone should post as Anonymous

[TheGratefulNet]

the 'long lost friends' are forgotton and meant to STAY THAT WAY.

for a reason.

Re:Everyone should post as Anonymous

[Cali Thalen]

Evaluating the source is most useful when you don't have a good basis to determine the validity of the information yourself. This isn't as crucial as it was pre-internet, since it's not hard for most (?) people to do a little googling to find out more, but there are time where I don't care enough or don't have the bandwidth to find the background. In those cases, if I know the background of the source, I can sometimes easily decide if it's worth remembering or discounting out of hand.

I totally agree with AC posting, but as has been stated, most inflammatory AC comments will usually just get dismissed on the spot, which is perfectly OK since most are deserving of being ignored. The ones that are worthy of being read will stand on their own, and it's not hard for most (sane) people to know the difference.

More importantly, if people tend to look at completely baseless AC posts (or other drivel) and jump on them like they were fact...well, now I can generally dismiss THOSE people as well. Helps me figure out which people have no sense of logic and can't be trusted to come to rational decisions or opinions.

Re:Everyone should post as Anonymous

[BasilBrush]

People who had their locker beside yours in high-school are not 'long lost friends'

You're right, they're probably not. But most people do have real friends that they've lost touch with over the years. Back in the days before widespread internet, where phone and the postal service were the only ways to keep in touch with friends that no longer lived locally, it was hard to keep in touch with more than a handful of friends. I'm back in touch with, and now regularly see several friends that I'd lost touch with for years before Friends Reunited and then Facebook came along.

Possibly for those people who's entire adult lives have been lived in the internet age won't understand this.

Now get off my lawn.

Someone please tell Facebook that

[Presto Vivace]

nobody ever won a war with their customers

Re:Someone please tell Facebook that

[Frac O Mac]

Everyone seems to forget that we aren't the customers, we're the product. This is all about increasing the quality of their data for their real customers.

Re:Someone please tell Facebook that

[bhcompy]

15? Nah. 10? Yes. Ribbons were a declaration of war.

Re:Someone please tell Facebook that

[joelwhitehouse]

Everyone seems to forget that we aren't the customers, we're the product. This is all about increasing the quality of their data for their real customers.

Exactly. Facebook has admitted that 80 million accounts are fake; now it needs to take steps to reassure customers that the eyeballs they've been selling are real.

Re:Someone please tell Facebook that

[dgatwood]

If, as they have said, their "entire platform is based on people using their real identities", then their entire platform is fundamentally flawed. No one should be forced to use their real identity for any purposes online, and the harder companies like Facebook try to force people to do so (and the more sites that use Facebook for authentication), the more backlash there will be against Facebook, and the more traction alternative services will get.

Re:Someone please tell Facebook that

[Anonymous Coward]

I have two accounts using the same name, birthday and background. I have 3 other accounts that are completely fake. I've had them for a couple of years and it doesn't seem Facebook is doing much. The 3 fake ones are just game puppets and no one knows who they really are anyway. I guess if it comes up they can all vouch for each other.

Re:Someone please tell Facebook that

[dgatwood]

Incidentally, none of Facebook's accounts are fake. They all represent an online identity. Whether those identities maps 1:1 to physical users or not is irrelevant. There are still actual humans using the accounts, viewing ads, contributing to the usefulness of the platform, etc. There is no legitimate reason for Facebook to be concerned about these accounts that do not center around fundamental invasions of personal privacy, such as correlating user behavior outside of Facebook with what they do and say inside of Facebook.

Re:Someone please tell Facebook that

[Anonymous Coward]

The beauty of facebook is that it has absolutely no value. I use it because it is there. If they boot me off, then it's no great loss.

Re:Someone please tell Facebook that

[Attila Dimedici]

Technically, Facebook recently became a public company.

Re:Someone please tell Facebook that

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone seems to forget that we aren't the customers, we're the product. This is all about increasing the quality of their data for their real customers.

Er, "Everyone"?

From the average 12-year old to the 85-year old Great-Grandmother, I have yet to run across someone using Facebook as a "customer" or a "product". They use it because it's free. They use it because it's cool. 90% of people on there don't even know their data is being sold, and therefore are absofuckinglutely clueless as to quality of data, or real customers.

People who sell shit for a living don't have a clue.

There is forgetting, and there is blind ignorance. Don't confuse the two.

Re:Someone please tell Facebook that

[hazah]

Might land you on a watch list though.

Re:Someone please tell Facebook that

[Stiletto]

In every transaction, there's a seller, a buyer, and a product.

If you're not getting any money and you're not losing any money, guess what you are...

Re:Someone please tell Facebook that

[Miamicanes]

No, "Hide extensions of known file types (Recommended)" was the first shot in Microsoft's war against its customers.

Re:Someone please tell Facebook that

[deesine]

A hippie?

Re:Someone please tell Facebook that

[erp_consultant]

I think that Facebook is caught between a rock and a hard place here. If the fake accounts continue to exist (and if Facebook is admitting to 80 mil you can be sure the real number is much higher than that) then advertisers will continue to abandon the platform. But if Facebook continues to come out with policies like this then USERS will abandon the platform.

This is why I don't use Facebook. You start out posting a few innocent quotes and photos. Then maybe you add a questionable comment or two. Maybe a drunk college photo. Next thing you know it goes mainstream and HR drones start trolling profiles of prospective hires. Now you're got some explaining to do to someone you don't even know that probably has no business trolling your profile in the first place. But you've sold your soul to Facebook and now you can't get the toothpaste back in the tube. Those photos and comments live in infamy. All in the name of advertising dollars. Who reads those stupid ads anyway?

Re:Someone please tell Facebook that

[dgatwood]

Imagine if you picked up the local phone directory, and instead of what it has now, it listed names such as FantasyFairy337, OMGCATS88 and cutiecupcakes264. They are still real accounts, and calling the number will connect you with a living breathing person but what would your opinion of the utility of the phone directory be?

About the same as it is now. My employer's phone directory has my number, so if anybody from work needs to reach me, they can. If anybody else needs my number, they can bloody well ask me for it. Likewise, if I need to know somebody's number, I'll ask for it. Otherwise, my number is unlisted, and a lot of folks I know have unlisted numbers as well. Heck, half the folks I know don't even have a home phone, which makes phone books pretty close to completely useless.

I haven't looked up anybody's number in a phone book since I was... oh, single-digit years of age... back in the days when a cellular phone had a car battery attached and, generally speaking, a car attached as well. The notion of being able to trust everyone in town with your phone number is an anachronism from times gone by decades ago, in much the same way that being able to trust any random person to see your real name when they see you posting with your Facebook user on some random message board is an anachronism left over from the early days of the Internet, back before all the stalkers, crazies, and AOLers got on. :-D

BTW, get off my lawn. :-D

But in all seriousness, it's not that I don't trust Facebook to have my real name. It's that I don't trust the world to have my real name, and a lot of sites try to force you to use Facebook to authenticate yourself. The more sites I encounter that use Facebook for their authentication scheme, the less inclined I am to use my real name on Facebook. The more people make that call, the less practical it becomes to find people on Facebook, but then again, if you really want to know my Facebook handle, you could always ask me. In other words, no different than my phone number.

What Facebook really needs to do is to acknowledge that there's a privacy concern, and to allow people to set a fake screen name that will be seen by anyone who isn't on their friends list, or friends of friends, or whatever their privacy setting says. Oh, and to make it possible to provide that bogus information to app developers instead of your real info as well, for precisely the same reason.

I don't even mind people being able to look me up by my real name if they know it. I just want to be able to have a clear delineation between my online persona and my Facebook life or, to put it another way, plausible deniability. :-)

Re:Someone please tell Facebook that

[Viceice]

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.

Re:Someone please tell Facebook that

[DaveGod]

This is why I don't use Facebook. You start out posting a few innocent quotes and photos. Then maybe you add a questionable comment or two. Maybe a drunk college photo. Next thing you know [...]

FB privacy has moved on a bit. You can add "friends" then categorise your real friends as "close friends", then default all postings as being visible only to close friends. It does take a bit of care but you can leave your FB page sterile and devoid of anything remotely interesting. You can even add people as "restricted" so even if you mess up at some point they still never see anything.

Much to my surprise, this is actually my biggest problem with FB.

See historically it was quite comfortable to be acquainted with someone, but not include them in things and not be included in their things. It just doesn't come up that either of you would include the other. You weren't hanging out on Saturday so of course you weren't included in the conversation or invited to the cinema or whatever. Friendship was an organic thing, you could lie anywhere between best friend and vague acquaintance and that relationship could vary depending on the circumstances - if you did happen to meet that day maybe you would be in the conversation and invited to join them to the cinema or whatever. It's pretty easy just to go around thinking maybe you two would be good friends if only the situation arose.

FB however feels more like positive exclusion. Like you're in the room but people are whispering and moving away to keep out of earshot. At lunchtime you can see your colleague, who "friended" you on FB and is generally very friendly, tapping away into their phone app yet you never see anything. It's much more in your face that you're not in their trusted circles and not really considered their friend. They have categorised you and that's that; there's nothing organic about it.

The worst bit is the feedback loop. Due to FB it's clear you're not in their trusted circles so you're more careful with them "in real life" - you either trust them or you don't - and life begins to reflect FB.

This is really quite a sad state of affairs for someone who is quite shy, a bit socially awkward but naturally likes people and tends towards being quite open.

Re:Someone please tell Facebook that

[gl4ss]

I got a real account.

and a fake account.

how else am I supposed to test facebook api's? by pestering my friends? fuck no.

Facebook snitches

[Anonymous Coward]

Get stitches.

Snitches end up in ditches

[alen]

In my case some of these people are expert army sharpshooters and/or former paratroopers

So no, I'm not snitching

Re:Snitches end up in ditches

[interval1066]

I'm not snitching

Are you kidding? I understand you get 10,000 "likes" for every friend you snitch on. Now that's real value...

id wonder if ....

[metalmaster]

John imsoclevercauseichangedmymiddlename Smith is targeted under this new scrutiny. There are probably 20-30 people on my facebook who do that.

Confession time

[Anonymous Coward]

My last name isn't Coward; it's actually Smith.

Anonymous is my real given name though. Life has not been kind to me ever since 4chan took off.

Please help us

[mtrachtenberg]

Please help us understand how people are using Facebook:

Is this your friend's real name?

Do you really like this friend?

Has this friend ever sent you any revealing pictures?

How much do you think this friend spends on entertainment? clothes? shoes? online services?

Please estimate the odds that this so-called friend might be a terrorist?

If you had to describe this friend to Facebook and the DHS, which of the following descriptions would you use: creative? avant-garde? obedient? disruptive?

Facebook appreciates your answers and respects your privacy. Thank you.

Re:Please help us

[Art Challenor]

The only reason Facebook would ask if someone were a terrorist is so that they can better direct advertising at them!

Re:Please help us

[Mashiki]

What kind of idiots are on Facebook anyway?

Well just remember those of us that are 'sane' and don't have an account, are apparently psychopaths now. So fuck'em. I'd rather be a psychopath, then I can get free room and board, along with happy-trip meds.

Re:Please help us

[Doctor_Jest]

Exactly! How can you advertise the right kind of bomb making material coupons without knowing who is and who is not a terrorist? I suppose trolling the "jobs" section Facebook profiles would help, but this is more targeted (no pun intended).... so the money saving coupons from "Jihads are Us" and "72 Virgin Megastore" go to the proper terrorists.

It's a win win!

Why stop at fake names?

[Bongoots]

Fake date of birth, fake profile picture, fake location details, ...

This could be a good little snitching exercise, but then Fakebook would lose so many under-13s* that their userbase would practically halve. And that's just tackling DOBs, let alone the other details.

(*I'm not condoning under-13s being on the website, only stating the fact that there are a lot of children who signed up with fake DOBs.)

Re:Why stop at fake names?

[Anonymous Coward]

Rule #1 for my kids: never ever use real information. There's a time and place for it, but not on Facebook or other 'social' and gaming website.

Facebook encourages snitch culture in general

[elucido]

Just look at how it's designed. It's designed to encourage snitch culture.
Let me make it clear, telling the truth isn't the same as snitching. Witnessing isn't the same as snitching. And helping the police isn't the same as snitching. Snitching is telling on your own side.

The problem with Facebook itself is it doesn't care about ethics or the risks associated with making everyone stalkable. Facebook is a stalker friendly application while at the same time snitch friendly. That combination isn't a good mix. For example if you have a friend who has a stalker maybe you shouldn't reveal their last name on Facebook even if you know it, and maybe you shouldn't tell Facebook whether or not they are using a pseudonym.

On the other hand maybe they shouldn't be on Facebook.

Facebooks product, customers, and suppliers

[DragonWriter]

Everyone seems to forget that we aren't the customers, we're the product.

While its true that Facebook's customers are those purchasing ads, the rest is not quite right.

Facebook users are suppliers, not products. Their attention is the raw material for the product, which demographically targetted advertising.

The utility (in the economic system) provided by Facebook's system to the users is the payment from the product vendor to its suppliers.

Re:Facebooks product, customers, and suppliers

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Nope, sorry, that doesn't make a conveniently dehumanizing enough sound bite to repeat ad nauseum whenever the poster needs a quick jolt of smug self-importance for not using Facebook/Google/etc. You'll have to do better than that.

This. "You are not the customer, you are the product" may have been a really insightful observation once upon a time. Now it's become just another sound bite.

Re:supply chain

[sconeu]

Ask Apple.

Re:supply chain

[flaming error]

And Wal-Mart.

How many accounts do you have on Facebook?

[macbeth66]

And of those, how many bear no resemblance to you?

I have six accounts in all. Only two are even remotely real. One has all the usual crap, the second is scrubbed for use with potential employers. The other four were used for varying purposes where I did not want to contaminate the real thing. I am about to create a seventh, just to see how outrageous I can be.

God, I hate Facebook.

I got a similar request.

[mosb1000]

I got a similar request asking if one of my female Facebook friends was really female. It's a strange question too, because she's not the kind of person you'd expect this question for. She's always posting pictures of cupcakes from Pinterest and pictures of her nephew and things like that. I wish I'd taken a screenshot of it, it was a lot like this question. I responded in the affirmative because I didn't see what kind of harm it could do. I've never heard of someone getting kicked out of Facebook for listing inaccurate personal information or anything like that.

I can understand why they'd want to get rid of "fake" users. I don't think their interest is in eliminating pseudonymity, but rather in eliminating spammers. I think they're thinking if they show you something like this for something they suspect is a fake account, it will you cause you to question whether or not you really know the person and to report them as a spammer if you don't know them. I'm thinking of those friend requests I get with pictures of attractive looking women I've never met. If you accidentally accepted one you may be unwittingly letting spammers abuse Facebook's system, so I can defiantly see why they'd want to get rid of those accounts.

Re:I got a similar request.

[mosb1000]

Why would they care about spammers?

Because they devalue the Facebook brand. They call into question the authenticity of Facebook add clicks, and they pollute a users news feed with irrelevant information.

There is no content on facebook.

I don't know what you mean by that. There is plenty of content on Facebook. It has pictures of friends, notes, links to web articles, events, company information and lots of other content, much of it is original content as well.

What do you get out of it?

It lets my friends share things with me without actively working to share them with me specifically. All they do is post it to Facebook, and I can see what they posted. It's incredibly useful for staying in touch with friends who live in other parts of the country or world, but it's also useful for sending invitations to events and sharing photos with my friends who are nearby.

No, you sit there and look at stupid fucking crap from people you might know, and run around the internet clicking like on shit because you are a sheep trained to peck at a button for pointless rewards.

It's largely up to the individual user how they use the site. I would suggest that simply because you see no value in it doesn't mean that it is useless for everyone.

Obligatory Facebook-CIA-Onion

[Penurious Penguin]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqggW08BWO0
I think the epiphany comes when one watches it and doesn't laugh.

Misleading blurb

[barakn]

Facebook is not "clamping down on pseudonyms" and /. should be ashamed for posting a story that suggests it is. The questions Facebook sends to users are used for statistical purposes and are not used to punish those using pseudonyms. Pure FUD.

Re:what else did you expect

[hawguy]

I used to read many a stories in which a young girl will get free drug from a neighbor. After she is hooked, he will only give if she takes off the shirt and then if she takes off her all clothes and so on. By this time, the girl is so much hooked to it, she will do anything. Facebook is just like it. You get it for free. Next you are asked to remove your shirt, next all your clothes and next.... I am happy, I don't have facebook account.

Sorry, that doesn't work with Facebook. When I gave the cute girl across the hall my Wifi password so she could check her Facebook, she refused to take off her shirt (or any other item of clothing) for me.

Re:Anonymous is my real given name though.

[TaoPhoenix]

That would actually be an epic thing to see. It would make for a beautiful legal decision "you can't change your name to one that causes social confusion". The Artist Formerly Known As Prince could submit an amicus brief on it too.

Re:99%... okay 90% u$ers polled don't care.

[BlueStrat]

Facebook users don't care, and get angry when you try to eduucate them. They think I'm crazy,, but mostly I post inane rubbish just to keep the data miners off kilter.. Spam away!

Just don't post anti-big-government opinions and Canadian rap song lyrics if you're a military veteran, or you could get the "Soviet dissident" treatment, and get thrown into a mental ward without warrant or due process.

http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/citizen-warrior/2012/aug/22/can-government-detain-you-over-facebook-posts/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/29/former-marine-facebook-sue-fbi

Thankfully for Raub, someone caught his detainment on video and it went viral. What if nobody had taken video? Would he still be doing the "Thorazine shuffle" and drooling on himself in a tranq'ed-out stupor in some mental ward doing a real-world remake of Jack Nicholson's role in "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest"?

Scary times we live in.

Strat

Nein! You must show us your papers...

[mschaffer]

Nein! You must show us your papers...
Nobody said Facebook was a democracy.

Always feels good to stay away from FB

[mattr]

Another good reason to stay away from Facebook.
I have an account that I idiotically once made to join a group to get notifications.
That group is gone but then an idiot from my school 30 years ago put connected me to people from then.
I almost never log in, and I tell people I don't like Facebook when they ask me if I'm on it.
For some reason even intelligent people seem mindless on FB.
I recently saw a publicly available discussion thread on the well, an interview with charles stross and cory doctorow iirc and others.
It was a really refreshing and considered dialogue over a week, it was great and after reading that it makes me almost physically ill to think of FB and the way it analyzes you and your friends and then hooks this spying apparatus into a targeted advertising engine. A typical asshole idea by another psychopath billionaire.
I have sometimes found it useful to get more insight into the activities of a person or company but I do not contribute to FB.

My False-Tag Fake ID Group Is Deleted

[retroworks]

After a similar discussion on Slashdot, a year or two ago, I was inspired to post a group photo from the 1800s and invite all my friends to "false tag" themeselves. It is part of my "digital camouflage" campaign. Nature doesn't really evolve invisibility very often, camouflage and false data is much more common. After reading this post I went to see if my "false tag group" was still on facebook.. and found it has disappeared. But I won't give up. "camouflage" is the answer, not anonymity. We need more bad data on Facebook. False tag a friend today. http://retroworks.blogspot.com/2010/09/simpler-ideas-cookie-camouflage-digital.html

Its not repeated often enough

[Burz]

...given the number of automatic SPAM appeals to join Facebook that service generates.

PS: I'm glad this story made you uncomfortable enough about your insidious 'investment' in FB to lash back. FB must really be pouring on the charm these days for its critics to be labeled 'dehumanizing'. LOL!

Simple:

[BrokenHalo]

This line, buried in TFA (!) says enough:

That, ultimately, is what lies behind this kind of thing: Facebook wants to make money. If it knows exactly who you are, it thinks it can make more money from you.

This should be obvious enough, but sometimes the obvious needs pointing out:

Facebook can't make any money out of you if you don't use it.