Comment by jonesb6 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jonesb6 | Hacker News Reader

"This is reality. This is not theory. This is not assertions on Hacker News about how you must have something to hide if you want to keep something private. This is not about a man in a position of power and influence, who has industry privilege and respect for his wealth and status, at Google or Facebook saying that anonymity, or multiple online identities, demotes a 'lack of credibility’. We don’t care of you believe we’re credible, we just don’t want your willful ignorance to ruin our lives or get us killed. This isn’t about telling us that someone must have been targeting LGBT people that one time – because, wouldn’t you know, you seem to have a new reason every year. This isn’t about how many people were in your company’s Pride contingent, and it damn well isn’t about jerking around a group of drag queens – who cope with the suffering done by outing every day, and for fuck’s sake we’ve buried too many people we love – for one of your little press appeasement moments. This isn’t about YOUR beliefs, or what you think is best for us. This is about you making us live in fear. This is about the fact that you have had a chance to make it right repeatedly, and when faced with one kid saying no please don’t publish my birth name – you looked away, again. https://www.facebook.com/help/community/question/?id=1020470... "

I normally avoid tumblr like the plague, but I chose to read this post. I encourage anyone who reads this to view the full post to get complete context.

I thought it was raising some good points about Facebook's poor UX for account recovery.. until I got to this paragraph. I feel that while there may be many valid points to this article it is shrouded in certain biases and stigmas that dilute the overall positive message it was trying to make in the first place.

That link is strange. Person is using Facebook. They then voluntarily send Facebook their birth certificate and are bewildered and upset that Facebook used that info and corrected (read: edited) their profile? I really dislike Facebook but come on, you signed up for this. If you don't like Facebook's policies (and you shouldn't), then don't use it. What gives anyone the right to use someone else's service, then dictate how that service should work?

And even supposing we create some new privacy law, how would that even work? The right to identify with any name? That can't be signed away at all?

> corrected their profile

You're either unintentionally or deliberately making the extremely offensive implication that Facebook knows better than their user about what identity they want to show to the world. Facebook has no business "correcting" any field of a user's profile based on a birth certificate. They have no business asking for a birth certificate. And they wonder why people refuse to send them "government ID" when that's what they do with it.

Without even the slightest bit of hyperbole: this kind of screwing around with people can and does ruin lives.

I didn't mean to imply that and I've changed my comment to reflect edited.

I agree with you. Facebook should fuck off. Yet this is ultimately a big part of their platform, collecting data on users. This isn't much of a secret.

If your ID puts lives at risk, why send the original version to a third party with a reputation for being against privacy? If for whatever reason you decide you must deal with them, at least submit fake docs.

The birth certificate was not the only form of ID that person sent. Facebook outed the past name of a transgender person -- that's never ok, and it's a problem taken very seriously in the transgender community.

And yes, if you want, you could say that, well, trans people just shouldn't use Facebook, but given the position Facebook occupies in our society in practice, that's quite a statement.

Just as important, in cases like this, the damage has already been done -- potentially quite serious -- be the time the user might choose to abandon Facebook over the problem.

Forcing trans people to provide a bunch of ID to use the site, outing them to the world, and then saying whoops, sorry, but you can quit the site if you don't like it -- that's not ok.

And your basic attitude seems to be that trans people's own fault for being different from most people, so of course they should expect to see problems or to just stay off of common services if they don't like those problems. This attitude is part of the problem -- basic human empathy seems like it would require a more considerate attitude than that.

> Facebook outed the past name of a transgender person -- that's never ok, and it's a problem taken very seriously in the transgender community.

Why is that not okay?

I mean, if people want to change their names for whatever reason then that's fine, but that doesn't mean that everybody is obliged to pretend that your old name never existed.

If I were Hitler, living under an assumed name in Argentina, and somebody outed me as actually being Hitler, would that be okay? (Pick a non-Hitler but still criminal example if you prefer.)

Did GP really have to say "the past name of a non-criminal transgender person" to carry their point?

This is a company we're talking about. And the person in question doesn't seem to be a criminal. The name certainly wasn't outed because that person was a criminal.

I'm shocked by the atrocious quality of the comments in this thread. There's plenty to say about real name policies, yet all that people are coming up with are ridiculous strawmen. Disturbing.

Edit: Scratch that last paragraph, I didn't realize most of the nasty comments in the thread are in fact coming from you. You seem like a very unpleasant person to deal with.

Really? Trans people are criminals or even Hitler now? Ouch, that's pretty cold.

I have a lot of trans friends. Just hearing someone use their deadname (a common term in the community) can cause serious emotional pain. Having it broadcast to all their Facebook friends would absolutely be traumatic.

Look, if you don't like trans people or you think it's unreasonable to do them the "special favor" of calling them by their actual name, it's a free country and you are just as entitled to that point of view as you are to hold racist views.

I'm pretty sure that Facebook, on the other hand, would not consider it a positive to be widely known as transphobic. So if they are operating in a way that is hostile to trans people, the obvious options are for them to fix it or for trans people and trans allies to keep publicizing it until it completely blows up in Facebook's face. They would be smarter to just try to fix the problem.

It's overstepping Facebook's bounds. While legal, it's rather rude and just shows what a shitty service they are: don't trust them with your info.

At best, it's a mismatch between what Facebook thinks it is and what users are led to believe.

Though, in practise, it's doubtful that it's actually company policy to do this. It's most likely the result of crappy support departments, overloaded with tons of requests. (Users are mostly idiots, so most tickets are of poor quality, and it leads to being aggressive in "resolving" tickets, even when the user is fine and in the right.)

No, my attitude isn't anything about trans people.

Facebook is a bad force in society. It's known how anti privacy they are. So you choose to deal with them at your own risk.

I certainly would love for Facebook to be slapped down, somehow: I only desire bad things for that company. They should certainly be forced to change their policies and I enjoy seeing any pressure on them for that reason. And perhaps one day there can be a law somehow, though it probably makes more sense to allow people get to get a birth certificate with their new name as that'd be more general.

Meanwhile, if your ID docs contain such info, then perhaps maybe don't share them, maybe? Or just Photoshop your birth cert? I don't know anyone that'd give up their ID to Facebook in the first place, let alone if it was high-risk.

Ok, prefacing this: I don't use facebook, I dislike the website, I dislike the social implications of the website and I dislike the internal policies of the company in shit like asking people for ID.

BUT, quick reality check for a moment: for some people, "using facebook" is not a choice. I mean, it is ultimately a choice, just like wearing clean clothes is a choice or paying your rent is a choice. For some people, Facebook is the only channel of communication with some people they don't want to be separated from. For some, it's how they manage their social life, or there is some form of social pressure to use it and they're not in a position to say no easily.

And I'm sure if I don't add this little disclaimer, some pompous jerk will come correct me, tell me everything about how they were pressured to use Facebook but chose not to: Yes, you can do it, everybody can do it, but you're not in a position to tell other people how to live their lives when you are the person who knows the least about their lives. And funny that, THIS is the exact same problem GP quoted.

Facebook has a lot of power and that power is not being used responsibly. Defending that is appalling.

PS: This is not directed specifically to your post as I'm seeing this attitude in the entire thread. There's bubbles to pop here: Not everybody can just stop using facebook.

It's a very odd style of communication - extremely passive aggressive coupled with feigned incredulity.

Has anybody on HN ever brought up Eric Schmidt's quote to do anything other than bash it? Like "hey this guy is a real thought leader, we should listen to him."

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