Facebook's real name isn't facebook


  • Grade A Premium Asshole


  • ♿ (Parody)

    Hate, I think.



  • @Polygeekery said:

    and have no idea :wtf: it is about.

    Really? I mean their points were a bit disjointed, but seemed very clear to me.



  • What were you confused about? Seemed clear to me.



  • @locallunatic said:

    @Polygeekery said:
    and have no idea :wtf: it is about.

    Really? I mean their points were a bit disjointed, but seemed very clear to me.

    Agreed. I disagree with the claim that "Facebook is a vital tool for community," but I certainly understand the point of the article.

    Summary: Facebook wants users to use their real names, for reasons mostly related to generating revenue. Some users have good reasons for not using their real name. These users get kicked off of Facebook.

    If I had a Facebook account, I would not want to use my real name on it. If Facebook forced me to use my real name, I'd leave and not return. Not that my opinion matters on this, since I've never had a Facebook account, and have gotten by just fine without it.


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    @HardwareGeek said:

    Summary: Facebook wants users to use their real names, for reasons mostly related to generating revenue. Some users have good reasons for not using their real name. These users get kicked off of Facebook.

    I got that. Sort of. There was so much meandering that I think I just quit giving a fuck by the time I got to the end.



  • @Polygeekery said:

    I got that. Sort of.

    If you got that, you got most of what was worthwhile about the article. The only other stuff worthwhile was reasons for/against using real names. The rest was rambling.

    I hate read-only mode. Eventually I'll be able to post this................................



  • Well there's the hypocrisy angle, that Facebook's HR department and all their employees were fine with his/her's name change, but the website policy is not. I thought that was significant.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @blakeyrat said:

    Well there's the hypocrisy angle, that Facebook's HR department and all their employees were fine with his/her's name change, but the website policy is not. I thought that was significant.

    I guess if you're going to insist on going by a random name not backed up by any legal / official documentation then you're going to have a lot of issues in these ID heavy days.

    :wambulance:


  • kills Dumbledore

    @boomzilla said:

    going by a random name not backed up by any legal / official documentation

    I don't remember Facebook asking for my driving license when I signed up

    @boomzilla said:

    It's not Linux's fault that Windows destroys data

    Sorry you use shitty buggy software


  • kills Dumbledore

    @boomzilla said:

    https://www.facebook.com/help/159096464162185

    Interestingly*, I could sign up under two different names that Facebook would consider valid. Until my marriage certificate combined them, there was nothing saying the two were at all related

    *not interestingly



  • @boomzilla said:

    I guess if you're going to insist on going by a random name not backed up by any legal / official documentation then you're going to have a lot of issues in these ID heavy days.

    The point is Facebook shouldn't care about "legal documentation", and Facebook's HR department (which HAS to) was still flexible enough to print employee badges with the name people wanted to be called, not the name on their "legal documentation".


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @blakeyrat said:

    The point is Facebook shouldn't care about "legal documentation",

    Why not? Why do you think they adopted this policy? To persecute people?

    @blakeyrat said:

    and Facebook's HR department (which HAS to) was still flexible enough to print employee badges with the name people wanted to be called, not the name on their "legal documentation".

    They accept things like nicknames derived from your actual name.

    I don't know the actual history, but I'm presuming this comes from cyber bullying stuff in order to prevent anonymous bullying, trolling, etc.



  • @boomzilla said:

    Why not?

    I think "why so?" has to be first demonstrated using the legal rules and procedures of the 3rd grade playground.

    @boomzilla said:

    Why do you think they adopted this policy?

    To prevent people from creating multiple identities to talk to multiple groups of friends, secondarily to (in theory) improve the quality of their targeted advertising.

    @boomzilla said:

    To persecute people?

    Not on purpose.

    @boomzilla said:

    They accept things like nicknames derived from your actual name.

    They didn't used to.

    @boomzilla said:

    I don't know the actual history, but I'm presuming this comes from cyber bullying stuff in order to prevent anonymous bullying, trolling, etc.

    Forcing people to use their real names is the cyber bullying.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @blakeyrat said:

    Forcing people to use their real names is the cyber bullying.

    Well said, @blakedablet.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Facebook's HR department and all their employees were fine with his/her's name change, but the website policy is not.

    Yeah, I wrote my summary from memory, and I missed that.



  • @boomzilla said:

    It really doesn't seem unreasonable to me.
    You are entitled to your opinion, but reading that reduces the probability that I will ever sign up for a Facebook account from about 1e-6 to about 1e-60.

    @boomzilla said:

    Why do you think they adopted this policy?
    According to that article, maximizing revenue — something something real eyeballs something something pseudonymous eyeballs something — I didn't really follow the "logic" behind the argument.

    @boomzilla said:

    I'm presuming this comes from cyber bullying stuff in order to prevent anonymous bullying, trolling, etc.
    So require real ID if and when that becomes a problem. If I want to post random drivel about, say, MLP (I don't), and I want to do so under a pseudonym because normal people think it's creepy for an overweight, middle-aged dude to like MLP (it is; I may be creepy for other reasons, but not that), why should that be forbidden?

    @boomzilla said:

    if someone reports you.
    Apparently, according to that article, that is a (somewhat?) common occurrence. If you disagree with someone, report them for using a pseudonym — they get booted, and you win the argument by default.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @HardwareGeek said:

    You are entitled to your opinion, but reading that reduces the probability that I will ever sign up for a Facebook account from about 1e-6 to about 1e-60.

    That's similar to my caring about whether you have a facebook account. There are several places where I use my real name and many that I do not. There are reasons for this. Facebook is a place where I interact with people I actually know IRL (plus others, but still...)

    @HardwareGeek said:

    Apparently, according to that article, that is a (somewhat?) common occurrence. If you disagree with someone, report them for using a pseudonym — they get booted, and you win the argument by default

    Yes, this is a thing on the internet.



  • @boomzilla said:

    Facebook is a place where I interact with people I actually know IRL (plus others, but still...)

    Which is why some have issues with the name restrictions that are enforced. As name is not a singular thing for many people, different ones for different contexts. The big issue is that the report for not a "real" name (note: facebook doesn't require name to be legal name, they specifically say they allow things like someone that goes by a middle name) isn't reviewed well so if it doesn't match legal name there are issues.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    A middle name is still part of your actual legal name (I know, there are definitions for certain contexts and signature requirements, etc, but that's beside the point).

    My name on there is my shortened "nickname" version of my first name. Which is acceptable.

    I don't know what "Zip"'s legal name is, but my guess is that it's something totally unrelated. Look, if you don't want to participate in a place that requires actual names then don't do it. Just stop being obtuse about it.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @boomzilla said:

    I don't know what "Zip"'s legal name is, but my guess is that it's something totally unrelated.

    Zippy?


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @PJH said:

    @boomzilla said:
    I don't know what "Zip"'s legal name is, but my guess is that it's something totally unrelated.

    Zippy?

    That looks related (and therefore acceptable to facebook) to me. Are you calling Zip a liar‽



  • @boomzilla said:

    Yeah, I imagine that they only ask for something when stuff is obviously weird or if someone reports you.

    Well I'm still a famous Soviet mathematician as far as Facebook is concerned. Long story.



  • @Maciejasjmj said:

    @boomzilla said:
    Yeah, I imagine that they only ask for something when stuff is obviously weird or if someone reports you.

    Well I'm still a famous Soviet mathematician as far as Facebook is concerned. Long story.

    I'm a character from The Silmarillion, and it hasn't asked me for an ID.

    wich would be rather hard to have, since most of the records got destroyed after the war of wrath



  • @boomzilla said:

    I don't know what "Zip"'s legal name is,

    If Zip is anything like this guy I knew in high school, it could be related to his legal name.



  • Zip is transgender. The article doesn't actually say so, but I think it's pretty apparent that the name in question is associated with the new gender without having (yet) a legal name change.



  • @boomzilla said:

    Why do you think they adopted this policy?

    Mostly cluelessness. That's usually why stupid policy gets adopted.

    And there should be no doubt at all that this policy could not be more fuct if it was made completely out of fuct tape. Facebook has no reliable way to determine whether or not a name you give them is "real". Closest they can get is suspending your account if somebody else reports you, and demanding documentation before they'll reinstate it. And if somebody DOSes you like that, and it happens that none of your real names - that is, the names you go by in ordinary life, the ones your friends and/or family and/or colleagues know you by; in short, the names Facebook says it wants from you - match any sort of official document, then it's No Facebook For You.

    I believe they did at one point have some kind of Real Name Detection algorithm, but that could only ever have worked about as well as that automatic gender assigner we all laughed to scorn here a few months back.

    In the unlikely event that I ever acquire a Facebook account, I will be joining the legion that is Cranston Snord.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @flabdablet said:

    Mostly cluelessness. That's usually why stupid policy gets adopted.

    While it may not be, this answer is indistinguishable from a clueless answer.



  • @HardwareGeek said:

    without having (yet) a legal name change

    Does the Home of the Brave and the Land of the Free not have the same thing Britain and Australia do, where you can completely legally call yourself anything you please as long as you're not doing that to defraud people?


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @flabdablet said:

    Does the Home of the Brave and the Land of the Free not have the same thing Britain and Australia do, where you can completely legally call yourself anything you please as long as you're not doing that to defraud people?

    Like...you can sign leases or take out credit or something? Or just have people call you a different name?



  • @flabdablet said:

    Does the Home of the Brave and the Land of the Free not have the same thing Britain and Australia do, where you can completely legally call yourself anything you please as long as you're not doing that to defraud people?

    In the UK you can take out a home mortgage as "Fred Flintstone" as long as you're not trying to defraud people?

    Either their definition of "defraud" is extremely generous (to the lender), or you're a filthy liar. Because I believe that not one millisecond.

    If you're just talking about what name you give at Starbucks or your jet ski club, the US has absolutely no laws relating to that whatsoever.



  • @boomzilla said:

    @flabdablet said:
    Mostly cluelessness. That's usually why stupid policy gets adopted.

    While it may not be, this answer is indistinguishable from a clueless answer.

    Then pray reveal unto us all, O Mighty High Priest of all Enterprise that is Free and Holy, the true plan of the blessed Zuckerberg (pbuh)?


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @flabdablet said:

    Then pray reveal unto us all, O Mighty High Priest of all Enterprise that is Free and Holy, the true plan of the blessed Zuckerberg (pbuh)?

    I don't know. But I know that you asserted it was clueless and stupid and fuct without addressing the reasons behind it. Your point about DOSing is legit, but that doesn't mean that it outweighs other things.

    And the point about DOSing is just as legitimate for falsely reporting abusive / spam accounts. Are you saying that a policy to report those is bad, too? IOW, you haven't addressed why requiring a real name is worse than not.



  • @flabdablet said:

    you can completely legally call yourself anything you please as long as you're not doing that to defraud people?

    Yes and no, I think. You can call yourself anything you want in daily life. However, good luck getting, for example, a bank or mortgage company to loan you money under your assumed name, and there are some situations in which positive identification is legally required for tax or other purposes. For example, identification is required when opening a bank account to aid in preventing money laundering (as well as tax reporting if it is an interest-bearing account).

    Can you, say, open a bank account with the name you use if you present ID for your legal name? I don't know, but even if it is legal, I rather suspect the bank isn't going to friendly to the idea.



  • @boomzilla said:

    you haven't addressed why requiring a real name is worse than not.

    Because many, many people have more than one real name (in the Facebook-specified sense of "real" - that is, a name that other people know you by), for a range of good and sufficient reasons.

    @blakeyrat said:

    In the UK you can take out a home mortgage as "Fred Flintstone" as long as you're not trying to defraud people?

    If you need official identity documents to back up your new name, there are form-submission hoops you have to jump through to get them, but in Australia this is a purely administrative process; no court is involved. Costs about $100 in my home state of Victoria.


  • FoxDev

    @flabdablet said:

    Because many, many people have more than one real name (in the Facebook-specified sense of "real" - that is, a name that other people know you by), for a range of good and sufficient reasons.

    /me raises her hand

    that's me.

    I have two disjoint names.

    Accalia, and The-name-on-my-driverspetdrivers-license

    there are a few people who know both names, but largly i am one or the other, and even among those that know both i have a strong preference for one or the other from them.

    this annoyed facebook to no end, and still bugs G+ (although they did finally change to allow "common use aliases" or whatever they're calling them these days)



  • I don't do this new fangled corporate self-surveillance social media stuff. Does G+ allow you to set up an account using any one of your names, or does it require you to disclose that all of them refer to the same human body and then keep your selves separate using circles?



  • @flabdablet said:

    in the Facebook-specified sense of "real" - that is, a name that other people know you by

    Which is the important part of their policy. I understand that legal name often maps to that with some wiggle (like @boomzilla's mentioned shortened form of first name) so using that to try and block things having to do with cyberbullying or whatever is a good idea. However the article that started this is about how there are edge cases facebook is missing and complaining about it. It's just a call to refine the edge case handling.

    The company may not find it worthwhile to do this rather than some other feature, but it is a trade off that could at least be acknowledged.


  • FoxDev

    @flabdablet said:

    Does G+ allow you to set up an account using any one of your names, or does it require you to disclose that all of them refer to the same human body and then keep your selves separate using circles?

    NFC honestly. i've never given Google The-name-on-my-driverspetdrivers-license as my name. as far as my online presence there is no The-name-on-my-driverspetdrivers-license only zuulAccalia



  • @locallunatic said:

    I understand that legal name often maps to that with some wiggle

    Monty Python's Flying Circus - Raymond Luxury Yacht – 00:43
    — Tride



  • @flabdablet said:

    If you need official identity documents to back up your new name, there are form-submission hoops you have to jump through to get them, but in Australia this is a purely administrative process; no court is involved. Costs about $100 in my home state of Victoria.

    So... identical to the process in the US, then.



  • I do mostly the same thing, though I don't really consider Choonster TheMage my "real name" unlike the author of the article.

    In particular I have both a Facebook and Google+ profile for Choonster TheMage. I haven't had any issues with this, but the fact that I avoid both sites wherever possible could be a major contributing factor.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @HardwareGeek said:

    Zip is transgender. The article doesn't actually say so, but I think it's pretty apparent that the name in question is associated with the new gender without having (yet) a legal name change.

    And thus--for Zip in particular, this problem has a simple resolution: a legal name change. I realize that won't work for everyone, but if everyone important to you knows you by your new name, just get it changed already and help move on to your new identity.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Choonster said:

    In particular I have both a Facebook and Google+ profile for Choonster TheMage. I haven't had any issues with this

    The other thing is, quite frankly, unless someone rats you out or the government comes knocking, fb/g+ don't care, generally, if you use a psuedonym. I have two fb accounts; one with my real name, and an alt for games. The alt, I've had for like 3 years with no problem. But I also more or less don't post anything with it, and it's only got about 4 friends.



  • @accalia said:

    still bugs G+ (although they did finally change to allow "common use aliases" or whatever they're calling them these days)

    The name associated with my account is an obvious :fu: to their real-name policy. If they ever notice and shut down my account, the only loss is my YT viewing history and access to age-restricted videos, neither of which I care enough about to cry over.



  • @HardwareGeek said:

    The name associated with my account is an obvious :fu: to their real-name policy.

    That isn't uncommon. Look at one of the comic book groups and see how many big name characters are members.


  • Banned

    The saddest part of the article is that Facebook account is some big deal for Zip.

    Also, instead of calling FB tech support and saying something along lines "hey Rob, it's Zip, remember me? Good; now get this fucking lock outta my account TYVM", she preferred to write up yet another online rant about how oh so opressed the LGBTWTFs are.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @FrostCat said:

    And thus--for Zip in particular, this problem has a simple resolution: a legal name change. I realize that won't work for everyone, but if everyone important to you knows you by your new name, just get it changed already and help move on to your new identity.

    Facebook seems to be making some sort of accommodation for at least some people in Zip's situation. But, yeah...if you want to go by a different name...do it.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    In the UK you can take out a home mortgage as "Fred Flintstone" as long as you're not trying to defraud people?

    Yes. You absolutely can.

    Identification in the UK is circular - your name is what you say it is.
    Changing it can be fiddly, but as an adult, all you actually need is a bill with the new name on it, and all flows from there fairly easily.
    Women have been doing this for hundreds of years, men started doing it more often recently.

    The detail that isn't generally known is that you usually need to let the bank know other names you've been known by for the credit check.

    If you read Crown/magistrates court case summaries you often see "also known as".


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @lightsoff said:

    Yes. You absolutely can.

    Only if that is your (current) actual name.

    Otherwise good luck passing the Experian/Equifax checks on that mortgage application...

    @lightsoff said:

    Women have been doing this for hundreds of years, men started doing it more often recently.

    The only options that don't involve a deed poll are:

    • Women keeping their own name after marriage
    • Women taking their husband's name after marriage

    Specifically, men taking their wife's name does require a deed poll.


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