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Comment by baby | Hacker News Reader

> Facebook’s account security is apparently based on its users knowing what every one of of its friends looks like (do you?) …

Well yeah. You're supposed to be able to recognise your friends in that test if it's really your account. I don't see what is the problem? I've passed these tests several time, you are presented with 6 different pictures for each friend (so it's hard to fail) and you can re-pass the test several times with different friends if you fail the first times.

I stopped reading after that. Why would I read about someone ranting about her fake facebook account being locked?

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It works well for the way a lot of people use facebook, and very poorly for the way some people use facebook. There's a baked in assumption that you only "friend" people who you can identify from their photos.

(This one isn't a fake account, it's a "professional" account, so she's "friends" with a lot of people that she only emails for work purposes and has never met)

For a hilarious example of how this can fail, a guy I used to work with has a facebook account for his pet bird. It is friends with the pet birds of lots of other people. I was present on the occasion when he forgot the password to this account, and spent quite some time trying to guess the names of birds from their photos.

Facebook has a fallback authentication mechanism of showing them some government-issued ID (which could have worked for Violet Blue, and not for my colleague's bird).

> This one isn't a fake account, it's a "professional" account, so she's "friends" with a lot of people that she only emails for work purposes and has never met

In fairness, I don't think this is a model that Facebook can easily cater to, given that the express purpose of their site is to map relationships between groups of people what know each other in real life, and to use that information to show them ads. Not saying that I approve of that, but it'll be pretty hard for them to differentiate between a fake account trying to scam people, and this person who can't identify her Facebook friends.

LinkedIn, or better still, actual email would be far more appropriate for such work related purposes and also not fall into the "real name" crap policy.

> In fairness, I don't think this is a model that Facebook can easily cater to

It's not a model they're asked to cater to, it's a model they break with a poorly-thought-out verification mechanism.

It's NOT ABSURD to be friends with people whose face you don't know. And I know a lot of people with HUNDREDS if not thousands of friends on facebook, most whose names they certainly do not remember.

Seems completely absurd to me. You are supposed to know what your friends look like (aren't they called friends?)

There's friends, and there's "Facebook friends". In reality people have thousands of different relations between people, and nuances to those relationships. Facebook has two-you're either "Friends", or "not Friends". Needless to say, this is a tremendously leaky abstraction. Thus, don't assume that because two people are Facebook friends, that their relationship in any way resemble friendship.

you're playing on words. If you add someone on facebook, it's because you know them.

> you're playing on words

The words we use to describe our relationships are important, and the fact that Facebook flattens them all down to two is a significant issue. Especially when we have people who don't understand that, and seem confused why people are "Facebook friends", but not actually friends.

> it's because you know them

Sure, but that doesn't mean I know what they look like.

> and very poorly for the way some people use facebook

It just doesn't seem very clever to me to rant about using facebook in a way it was not intended to be used.

It's never clever to blame the user for not using the product the way it's intended to. UX101.

they're not blaming her, they even asked her if she wanted some help.

To be fair it went on several tangents. I find it an interesting phenomenon that posters here who show support for the author/article gloss over the 80% that is a tangent about LGBT issues, migrant issues, sexism issues, and act as if this is a serious article and not just another tumblr rant.. I mean look at the title for crying out loud. I think I'm going to drop in a <insert social justice issue here> to all my posts so I get more upvotes and less criticism from now on.

United we stand against Facebook?

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