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Facebook's Absurd Pseudonym Purgatory
An anonymous reader sends a story from a writer whose Facebook account was locked because somebody reported it as using a pseudonym. It doesn't, but Facebook demands a look at identification documents before releasing control over the account. Anyone whose name doesn't sound "real" to Facebook is at risk for this, and the social network doesn't even have a consistent stance on what an "authentic" name is. "Aside from the complexity of identity, the policy is haphazardly enforced at best. At worst, it’s dangerous and discriminatory, and has demonstrably and repeatedly been used to target people who often already are marginalized and vulnerable." Matt Cagle, attorney for the ACLU, says, "By controlling the identity of the speaker with this policy, Facebook has the effect of both reducing speech and eliminating speakers from the platform altogether. This is a particularly concerning move to the ACLU because forums like Facebook serve as the modern-day equivalent of the public square for a lot of communities.
I repeat, do not treat a private service as a public square. That's a horrible idea.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
"...forums like Facebook serve as the modern-day equivalent of the public square for a lot of communities."
Is there a way to identify these communities? Just trying to avoid areas of mass stupidity where Facebook somehow supplanted actual news outlets.
Those who feel Facebook is in the position of being a modern day times square have obviously never heard of a troll before.
Enjoy.
and have it tied to my business account. One thing I discovered Facebook and Especially Google are usless for anything business related with out paying up the ass for likes. Only reason I got a G+ account that I update once in a while is that it lists me higher than the other local businesses in search.
Probably in the next few months I'll abandon both of them usage wise and just keep them for search indexing.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
It's actually Professor Tekno A. Hogg, M.Pupp. (Cantab). Now that you know my full name, I'm sure you will take my opinions much more seriously, because free speech is all about who says something, not what is actually being discussed.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
I have two Facebook accounts, a real one with with my real info and another one I just use for playing games. I don't want to mix 'friends' from casual games in with my real friends. I used a pseudonym on the second account. Facebook just locked my second account this week and wouldn't release it until I sent in a photo of my driver's license. I consider that a huge invasion of privacy. I had be using the second account for a long time under the pseudonym. After receiving my driver's license they changed the name on the account to my real name (now no one in the games knows who I am) and they entered all of the data from driver's license into the profile. This is just a total mess which is going to cause me to use Facebook even less than I do now.
Yes. No one is forcing anyone to use Facebook, so don't! And as much as they would like to be a 'Public Square', or a utility, they are not. FB is Zuckerberg's joke on humanity.
Fair is fair -- why are celebrities allowed to go by their stage names?
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Who the fuck cares about Facebook?
Facebook is a despicable company that doesn't have even a basic level of respect for its users. This has been readily apparent to anyone who has been willing to look for the better part of a decade. You want to be a part of that? Go right ahead. Just don't act all indignant when they arbitrarily lock your account or sell the data they have on you to corporations or the government.
Furthermore, likening Facebook to a public square is just silly. Public squares don't fight for your clicks by targeting you with advertisements. Public squares won't track every move you make on the Internet after you leave. And, most relevant of all, public squares are places where it's perfectly acceptable to remain anonymous through the use of any pseudonym you can dream up.
I say let Facebook do whatever they want. The more egregious the abuse, the more likely another clueless user will wake up and boycott that shit.
I can stand up in any public square the US and give my opinion of whatever topic I want to. I don't have to provide my name to do so.I don't have to show my papers. I don't have to get permission from overnight billioinaires. I can simply tell people what I am thinking, and call myself Silence Dogood.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
I have an email username "nobody" at one of my own domains that I use for things that I don't want connected to me. It's a perfectly functional normal email account just like the ones I actually use, it just happens to be named "nobody".
When I was forced to sign up for a Facebook account for a development project that integrated with Facebook, I signed up using that email address. Facebook refused with a message that was tantamount to "ha ha no but really, what's your email address?" Fuckers, that IS a real fucking email address...
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
My friend, you have come to the right place:
Herbie Versmels
Harry P. Ness (and his sister, Ima P. Ness)
Hugh Janus
Jenny Taylia
Mike Rotchburns
Phillip Oliver Krevises
Tara McClosof
Stu Pidass
You are welcome on my lawn.
So what happens if you send them a (poor) scan of fake ID? You're not impersonating a real person, and you're not interacting with the government, so I don't see any actual legal consequences of this. Do any lawyers out there have any idea on this?
Dogshit, albeit in some small ways, is useful.
Just like the old AOL CD's.
Facebook is just the 21st century version of AOL, for that matter.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Or you could come in the middle of the night covering your face and put up signs and posters saying the same and come morning it will be there.
Let's stop pretending that all public places have no means or anonymity. Someone recently went around placing notes about some KKK group and candy on people's porches in my area. The candy I suppose was to entice children to read the notes if they saw them before their parents I guess.
Of course my porch was skipped. I have a couple very large dogs and signs saying "trespassers will be violated" and "hidden fence, dogs run loose on property".
The writer, Nadia Drake (as listed in the byline at Wired.com), doesn't explicate until almost the end of the article: it's not that FB is misinterpreting her actual name as overly exotic, nor is she using a stage or business name, but her account is registered as "Nads N. Nads". She justifies this by saying that her friends commonly call her "Nads" for short and that she also wants to avoid a stalker. That might be justified, but the fact that she buries it near the end of the article, after a whole bunch of support for actual minority and Native American names, makes it feel just a bit self-serving. I would argue that proper journalistic practice would be to front-load this information in the first or second paragraph.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
Clearly you haven't been modded into oblivion, but honestly, this is a dumb question. That's like asking, "Who the fuck cares about Google?"
Literally over a billion people care. And the advertisers care. And the shareholders care. There're a lot of people that care about Facebook.
Whether you like it or not, and whether you use it or not, to many people, Facebook is becoming all they know of the internet. For all intents and purposes, it IS the internet for a segment of the population. There are mobile providers that will sell you a plan that gives you virtually no data for free, but you DO get Facebook access for free. Facebook's Messenger chat service has something like 700 million users and is the single most popular chat application in the USA. We hear stories about the NYT doing a deal for instant loading articles and a share of ad revenue because Facebook is also becoming the place where most people read their news.
So yeah, LOTS of people care. YOU should care, even if you don't use it, because it's becoming the sort of behemoth that warps space around it. I hardly use Google's services at all anymore, but I definitely care about what Google is doing in the world. Most people with PCs and Android phones care about Apple and the influence it brings to hardware and mobile—even if they purport to hate every single change Apple brings to hardware or mobile. People that don't live in the USA definitely care what the USA is up to. There are plenty of reasons to care about Facebook and even weird things like this because they really do serve to show us the state of the internet today and give us hints to the future, or at the very least, what we DON'T want the future to look like.
People have been threatening to abandon Facebook for various minor transgressions every year that it's been around, and it keeps getting bigger. It's not going anywhere for a while.
I know someone who's real first name is "Fantasy" and FB wouldn't let her register an account. She had to change it to "Fantasie" instead to get past it.
This is a serious issue for many Native Americans and has been repeatedly "Facebooked" about over and over with little to no effect. Because many Native Americans do not have European names they get their accounts locked out. This is easily exploited by those who actively engage in harming Native Americans and others they do not like because of race.
leather-dog muksihs
Blog: @muksihs
I identify as as false name.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
Mark pseudonym accounts as such. Put the name in a different color of whatever you need to do. That way people who want to use it anonymously don't inconvenience those who want to know who people are.
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