Facebook Apologizes to LGBT Community and Promises Changes to Real Name Policy

They only crack down on accounts that have been reported by other Facebook users. So it's usually not a problem if you're not abusing the anonymity. Obviously there are minority groups who are more at risk of being maliciously reported, and it looks like that's the change here.

The test is whether you use that pseudonym in real life, where "real life" generally means "not the Internet". Note that there's an implicit judgement here that online interactions are fundamentally different from offline ones, which might not necessarily be accurate, but that's been part of Facebook's approach to social networking from day one.

I have no idea how'd you actually enforce this though. I can't think of a robust way to tell whether "Star-Lord" is how you introduce yourself on a first date or just your preferred pseudonym while playing video games.

I'm not sure that Facebook actually has that edge, considering that you can buy likes and accounts quite easily online.

If you believe that, you are buying into their marketing.

I have multiple @lavabit.com facebook accounts under false names I used for dev purposes that are still open and active. The email address doesn't even work anymore and they live on.

That isn't counting all the bots.

http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/30/startup-claims-80-of-its-fa...

:P

I doubt its really as high as 80% but I would bet if they saw 80%, its at least double digit percentage wise.

Especially since other companies use Facebook as part of their trust + ID platform, like AirBnB (https://www.airbnb.com/trust)

I get friend requests from fake accounts several times a year, and every German I know on Facebook uses a pseudonym. "Likes" can be bought for a cent. One of my longest standing friendships is with a pub (it's outlived the friendship with David Beckham, someone impersonating one of my lecturers, and a flatmate's cuddly toy).

I didn't have too many qualms about giving a P2P loan to someone with a real looking Facebook profile under an obviously jokey pseudonym.

I'm not convinced Sister Ray and her extravagantly dressed friends who actually use their identities are really in danger of bringing the system to its knees.

It's only a win for that community in the sense of demonstrating that they can make FB blink. In all practical senses it is meaningless. So far their scheme for authenticating pseudonyms is vaporware.

Meanwhile, I know multiple people who have had their pseudonymous accounts suspended in the past day.

- Your friends and family tagged you as someone else

- Your name is abnormal

- Your name is different on websites using Facebook Connect

- Your name is different in peoples' address books / phones

They don't know, they guess, based on some heuristic algorithm.

In Google's case, their algorithm informed my son that the name on his birth certificate is not a "real name", and forced him to pick another one (he kept his real name as his nickname, and chose his more popular middle name as his first name, keeping his real last name). According to http://www.babynamewizard.com/voyager, his real first name is the 280th most popular in the US. http://howmanyofme.com/search/ says there are nearly 10,000 people with his first name, and a bit less than 4,000 with his last name in the US. But Google says it's not his real name.

They won't necessarily know, but the consequences can be really, really shitty if you get flagged (correctly or incorrectly) for violating a real name policy.

Check out this blog post: https://stilgherrian.com/only-one-name/right-google-you-stup...

Australian guy has the full, legal name "Stilgherrian." Google+ eventually flags his account has having a fake name, and suspends him.

Now, imagine you have an uncommon name, and you've been using Facebook Connect to log into a bunch of sites. One day, your account gets suspended. Not only have you lost access to your social connections, but you've also been locked out of those third party sites. Because Facebook didn't think your name was "real" enough. That sucks for you, and it sucks for the businesses you were Connecting with.

If it was your real name, you may be able to provide passport scans and other documents to recover your account. If it was a pseudonym, you may be completely locked out.

It's also really, really fucking hard to make assumptions about what constitutes a name, unless you only want to do business with Westerners: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-b...

It's far easier, and more respectful, to give people the agency to determine what they should be called, and be done with it.

drag personas != standup personas, unless you're promoting your drag identity as a business (?)

I'd equate it more to simply having multiple identities. Some people know you as John Smith. Others know you as Sister Roma. When they try to find you on Facebook, maybe you don't want the two linked in any way. Why should John Smith be managing a business page called "Sister Roma" (or vice versa)?

Not just about drag personas – it's also about people who might be transitioning, but haven't legally changed their name yet.

It's about being able to choose how you appear to your friends, which is something that's perfectly acceptable to do socially (at least in progressive parts of the US).

The core of the issue is discrimination, threats of violence, and so on.

A comic would not face discrimination, attacks, etc. while the people affected by this FB policy could/would be affected negatively.

IMO, this is a key difference.

As a (presumably) gender-normative person, you can't be expected to "get this issue". But, hopefully, with a bit more knowledge you'll begin to get it and understand why it matters, and can genuinely put people in danger.

There are many parts of the world, including in the United States, where hate crimes against transgendered people are common. This includes cities that we like to think of as progressive and gay friendly. Trans people have been beaten, and even murdered, simply for being trans. So, to be trans in the US, and in many other places, is to live in fear that the wrong person will discover your identity, where you live, etc.

Further, drag personas may very well be the primary social identity of a person. Their friends know them by this name and identity, and may not know of any other. But, when they go to work, go shopping, etc., they may have very different persona that they keep separate from their social identity for their own safety and well-being. People can still lose their jobs for being trans. Trans people can be, and often are, treated very poorly by medical practitioners (particularly poor folks who have fewer options for their medical care). Trans people can be treated very poorly by the legal system in child custody cases. Likewise, trans people arrested for crimes often receive stiffer sentences than non-trans folks, and may experience discrimination and humiliation in the prison system. It is dangerous, on so many levels, to be openly trans.

Transgender is recognized to be a real thing, and not a "disorder", by every major psychological and medical organization in the developed world. But, the popular opinion has not caught up with the science. And, so people who are trans have significant hurdles to leading a happy life free of being bullied, preyed upon, and generally having a lot more challenges than folks who identify as the sex of the body they were born with.

In short, saying, "Setup a business page for that persona or whatever." ignores the reality that trans people live with every day. Revealing that one is trans to the world at large dramatically increases the risk of being trans.

It sucks that our world and society is this way. Someone should be able to dress up fancy on a Saturday night, without fear of being beaten for it, fired from their job, risk losing custody of children, or be denied appropriate medical care. But, we don't live in a world where that's true. Those are the realities of being one of the most hated minorities.

Facebook's policy made it harder for trans people to exist in peace. So, the apology is warranted, and the clarification of the policy is useful. Though, I think it probably doesn't go far enough. And, I think their reasons for being so insistent have as much to do with the value of knowing someone's legal identity, as it does with their assertion that it is the "primary mechanism we have to protect millions of people every day, all around the world, from real harm."

Of course this is the top comment on this topic. Of course.

Bravo, HN.

> Setup a business page for that persona or whatever.

Yeah... this doesn't work very well. I'm not transgendered or gay but I have a fairly weird hobby that has some parallels. I dress up in an animal costume on the weekends.

My primary social identity is Epoch Wolf. Most of my friends (100+ people I'm in regular contact with) know me as such. I actually answer better to "Epoch" than my real name.

Facebook forces me to use my real name. My Epoch Wolf account was banned years ago. Because of this, my family, my church, and my coworkers have seen pictures of me dressed up as a pink lynx at a furry convention.

I don't have the option of not using facebook. If I want to keep in contact with my friends OR MY CHURCH, I need to use it. Church events are only posted on facebook!

The only reason this is tolerable is:

* I have a lot of self-confidence.

* I am a straight, white, cis-gendered male with a college degree working a white collar job.

* I have an excellent relationship with my parents.

* My pastor has been to anime conventions.

* My coworkers are younger people who also have their own weird hobbies.

* I don't partake in the sexual aspects of furry fandom that the media and 4chan like to make a big deal about.

Because me dressing up in animal costumes is the only weird thing I do, I can get away with it. Everyone I know sees me as a normal person with a weird hobby.

Far too many of my friends have been severely judged by their parents or churches for being gay or having a weird hobby. Some of them have been kicked out by their parents and others live with constant emotional abuse and struggle with crippling depression.

Sorry, this got a little rambly. If I had more time I would write a shorter letter, etc. Anyway, it takes a lot of things going for you to be able to openly participate in a sub-culture that's not well looked upon and having that being dismissed so lightly irritates me to no end.

I would expect spammers to choose names at random from a list of common first and last names. Though I sometimes see spam emails with "$FROM" in the From: field!

They talk about having a document, presumably by a respectable third party, with that name. I guess for 1337 names, having a conference invite under that name would count. Concert or stand-up flyers for a persona would make sense. I'm less sure about how to have street names written.

In middle school, a student's nickname was “Simpson”; it's hard to explain, but he genuinely looked like he had yellow skin, expression-less face and spiky hair. In a court yard of a hundred student, everyone knew instantly which kid was ‘Simpson’. No one knew his actual name. When he was part of a group of kids who attacked me, it felt really odd to make a report listing his name, even after the headmaster had shown me on the photobook that that was his civil name. I don't remember if his nickname appeared on the report, but I guess any documented evidence like that would work.

Believe it or not, there are still people in the world who are victims of violence, abuse, and/or hatred, for whom revealing their legal name, or allowing their online identities to be revealed in searches for their name, might mean putting themselves in unnecessary danger.

Says a person who did not register for HN with their full legal name.

What do you have to hide?

I come from an emotionally abusive family. Having them lie, ridicule, etc, were par for the course growing up. I've left them behind, however, have not changed my legal name for various reasons. Because of this, my family has stalked me, has lied about there being deaths in the family to try to get me to talk to them in order to continue their emotionally manipulative bullshit, and otherwise tried to pull me back into their petty gamesmanship. When I had a real name account on facebook, they had found me after a week to try to continue their crap. Being able to be pseudonymous is the only way I can keep in touch with people I actually care about, even with my family hundreds of miles away from me.

More people in real life know me by Epoch Wolf than by my real name. It's the name I've chosen for myself. It's also unique. No one else in the world had that name when I first used it 8 years ago.

It's my primary identity among my friends.

But, I don't want to change my legal name. It's easier to deal with my fellow americans having have a good, strong, and above all normal first name and a properly romanized last name with a european flavor. Being normal, white male with a normal, white male name is a Good Thing™ in most of America.

Also, my family would probably have their own objections.

Unfortunately most people are weak and have found no meaning of life outside of whining! Life is so damned short, names and labels are meaningless and irrelevant to your physical existence; they are distractions and of no purpose to our civilization. Fuck (excuse my French, but I just can't help it), even if we ban names and assign a random number to each of us, people will still whine if their ID lacks their "lucky number" or boyfriend's DOB, and so on! This civilization is going nowhere. God, please, secure-trash this universe and reboot!