Comment by wanorris | Hacker News Reader

Comment by wanorris | Hacker News Reader

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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.

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.

> 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.)

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