Why I’m sitting at home crying on a Saturday afternoon
violetblue.tumblr.com
violetblue.tumblr.com
I stopped using Facebook a few years ago (don't remember when), because something trivial about the site annoyed me (don't remember what).
The author seems to have written many accounts of what a terrible company Facebook is, how LGBT people are treated appallingly by them, how they're starting in on refugees and how they're ruining privacy for everyone. And then jumped through every possible hoop in order to keep using their website!
Is she just confused about how boycotts work?
I don't think you read the entire article. Her goal at this point is to delete her account[1], which she cannot do until she regains control of the account. She's at a stalemate right now.
[1]"But now I just want out. I want my account deleted. I want the bullshit, inaccurate pages Facebook creates about me without my consent gone, too, but that’s just a bitter little joke for the ages, isn’t it? Facebook is just going to do whatever the fuck it wants to me. And to you."
"Facebook is just going to do whatever the fuck it wants to me. And to you."
Perhaps, I don't know what Facebook is doing to me. I didn't delete my account, I just stopped using it. It fact, I still get emails from them that are redirected to a 'facebook' folder that I haven't checked in a while.
I'll check now. Hmm 1,558 unread messages...ok...
Oh well, if it was important, they would have phoned or emailed or something :)
And she didn't jump through every hoop. She didn't upload her ID.
But obviously Violet finds it more beneficial to use rather than not. I know she has long had a web presence, so it's not that she's lazy (although this post is on tumblr? sigh...). Presumably being a writer/blogger/etc, there is a huge audience of people who will "follow" her since it's already in their "workflow", yet won't expend the effort to check a proper blog or learn about RSS.
But what she needs to do instead of crying, or perhaps after crying, is to get angry. Productively angry. This is the state of established webcrapps in 2015. This has been the inevitable result ever since "web 2.0" became a thing. This is why concerned hackers have been telling people to avoid webcrapps the whole time. Of course, many others sold their morals in lieu of money and social acceptance - it's so easy to use, even your parents can opt in to extra surveillance!
The tide is starting to turn as more and more people realize what they're actually giving up by living under the yoke of proprietary software 2.0. And it is going to take people who are "in it" to reverse the trend. Assuming she is willing to start putting in more effort, how exactly can she replace all these "convenient" sharecropper "apps" she's gotten used to with self-administered technology that preserves her autonomy - while still engaging the lazy people who haven't learned how to use a personal computer, and even encouraging them to make the jump to the free world?
One possible solution that comes to mind is publishing authoritatively on one's own platform, then syndicating to facebook/tumblr/whatever. Perhaps delayed by hours/days so that it's clear that the walled gardens are second class citizens. Make Facebook want your content more than you need them - similar to how unknown AOL keywords just redirected to .com.
For text this actually seems pretty straightforward. Other types of media (mobile pictures etc) are going to be harder because thorough development and advertising take money, and investors (especially VC) obviously aren't looking to fund anything that isn't a trap ready to be monetized. But that is what freedom costs - the alternative is to continue to abdicate your autonomy one polished UI hipster crapp at a time.
I say if you hate a website just don't use it. It's really simple.
In July 2008, Blue sought restraining orders against online critics David Burch (aka Ben Burch) and Nina Alter to prohibit them from e-mailing her, editing her Wikipedia page, or writing unkindly about her online.
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.
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?
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 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.
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.)
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.
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.
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.)
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 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.
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.
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."
If there's any way that she can just say she's herself and skip the security procedures on a regular basis, then they aren't security and anyone else can just do the same thing to skip the procedures, so they might as well not even have them.
EDIT: to people down-voting, how is her claim at all reasonable? there are lots of refugees that have been murdered in nameless graves. if anything, the whole "say her name" would suggest that people on facebook would be less likely to be murdered by a dictatorial state. but apparently since she doesn't want to be nice to facebook, they are literally acting as a conspirator to mass murder.
It also needs to provide a mechanism by which it does not gain and store additional information during the process of someone trying to opt out of their privacy free zone.
1 - http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-07-15/an-identit... 2 - http://resources.infosecinstitute.com/confessions-of-an-iden...
Well, your friends could vet for you too.
I don't think Facebook's failure to 100% accommodate all of the OP's demands is really a story. I'm sure Facebook has many problems, but this story is more about the author's problems than Facebook's.
But if she's gotta use it just submit fake ID. Scan your license or passport, and edit information. This works fine and there is nothing wrong with it.
Complaining about their security policies... Eh I'm gonna guess that FB engineers probably want to protect user accounts as that's in their interest. It doesn't help them to lock users out for no reason. FB is a private company, and, as much as I dislike them, they can do whatever they want, including requiring ID to login.
Though, I'd imagine you could file a lawsuit to force them to delete your info, if they refuse to do so without ID. But that'd probably leak your ID in the process.
Facebook is a public company. I'm surprised anyone reading HN would have missed their rather high profile IPO.
I don't think it changes the point of my comment at all.
A "public company" or "publicly traded company" is a company traded on the stock exchange.
A "state company", or "publicly owned company", or "public sector company" is a company owned by a government and not traded at all.
The terms here are a regrettable accident of history, which often confuses people.
Know what would help this person with whatever problem that they are having? Getting to the point.
I have the 2SV thing set on my account, so haven't seen the ID challenge in a long time.
They might also have data that shows people often get email compromised at the same time. Or that picking out faces works better (faster recovery?)
Mind: that likely puts you solidly into fraud category.
Twitter I expect to be a place where I am following strangers. Facebook on the other hand.. I am very much surprised to see that she could not identify people that she has 'friended' (the 'all black people look alike' Facebook bug aside). Why click 'friend' if you don't actually know the person?
Again, I understand that is not the whole point of the article but it is worth mentioning that Facebook has been pulling this stuff for years and for her to get ticked off about this stuff now seems a bit ridiculous.
Perhaps someone is a relative in another country? Someone who you've never seen in person, or maybe you met for a few minutes, 30 years ago.
That's the situation with me. I created a Facebook account years ago but never used it. I recently logged in again to contact a particular individual. I had 13 friend requests pending. Which I accepted, even though I didn't "know" the people.
Those people were my cousins in another country, and their spouses, and their children, etc. Other members of my extended family interact with them, even though I don't.
So should I refuse their friend requests? No. Facebook is for more than friends that you can identify. It's a way to keep in (loose?) contact with distant relatives.
I'm sure there are plenty of other reasons why people "friend" people they don't "actually know". The real world isn't as simple as you suggest.
Is this really an accurate interpretation of FB policy?
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?
(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).
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.
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.
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.
It just doesn't seem very clever to me to rant about using facebook in a way it was not intended to be used.
Diaspora was a valient effort, but sadly, appears quite doomed (I was an early fan and user).
There really is nothing _a priori_ wrong with the centralized system, PROVIDED said system/operator makes strong Privacy / Data Sovereignity guarantees from the word go.
There's also the issue that client nodes, under any model, also require security updates and practices. The universal P2P model really isn't far from that, and certain auto-updating models seem arguably preferable to present offerings.
Mirimir might like a Facebook account, but then he doesn't have a phone or government ID. So he's just shit outta luck. He could maybe get some usable fake ID. But Facebook isn't so easy to trick with online mobile numbers.
But then, who needs Facebook?
Edit: I'm agreeing with the author that Facebook can't be trusted to keep disclosed information private. My point here is that the only reliable strategy is to avoid providing true identity. And Facebook makes that virtually impossible.
Violet Blue is lucky because she has a platform and her problems will get notice. Everyone else just deals with their life quietly, and we the public don't get a good grasp of the problem.
And it works out great for most of us.
Want to deal with facebook? Use facebook. Don't want to deal with facebook? Don't use facebook. Not that tricky.
Only thing I'd question is that she's had to "bury" a lot of people due to FB and that there's such a dangerous threat to her safety from this. It could be true (especially in years past or in shitty countries) just seems extraordinary and should have citations. I'd be surprised if FB tricked users into revealing personal information, got them killed, and wasn't sued like crazy.
This isn't central to the post or anything, but uh, is this really that uncommon...?
Social media relationships are not equivalent as your offline friends, relatives and acquaintances.
I can honestly say I wasn't aware of that mode of usage. It seems alittle counterproductive, though I suppose you can always depend on Facebooks feed ranking to not show you posts from all the randos.
I don't like Facebook, but in this case, I'm glad FB didn't cave in and give Violet Blue her account back--just because 'She has a friend at FB'. I don't like inside special favors.
2. Your reading comprehension has failed you. Several different people at Facebook offered to do her inside special favors and she chose to decline that because she doesn't like that kind of thing either.