Global coalition to Facebook: “Authentic names” are dangerous for your users | Hacker News Reader

Global coalition to Facebook: “Authentic names” are dangerous for your users

eff.org

256 pointsDiabloD3254 comments

I wish the EFF and others who are against using real names would at least acknowledge the drawbacks of pseudonyms and the proliferation of fake accounts and fake names which comes with them.

The real name policy has huge benefits. I'm not constantly bombarded by fake friend requests like I am on Twitter, Skype, or any other platform which allows random usernames. Even more importantly, I can easily find the people in my life without having to go through an awkward song and dance. If I'm working on a project with someone, I can immediately find them and message them without worrying that it's some random imposter or some such.

Facebook is a platform designed for digitizing your real world relationships, not for accumulating thousands of "followers." There's a reason they limit you to 5,000 friends. People who are trying to disconnect their Facebook identity from their real world identity are not using Facebook the way it's meant to be used and should probably just leave it.

That being said, Facebook could definitely do a better job of making it easier for people to prove that a name is their everyday name even when it's not their legal name.

I fully expect to lose a lot of karma over this comment, but I'd love to hear an argument over why access to Facebook is a right together with your down vote.

> People who are trying to disconnect their Facebook identity from their real world identity are not using Facebook the way it's meant to be used and should probably just leave it.

Some people use their pseudonym (usually a nick name) in real life as well, except for work, and I think separating work from Facebook is exactly how Facebook should be used. (There's always LinkedIn for work...)

Another thing I see a lot in Germany are (heavily) abbreviated names, so that all your friends know who you are in their stream, but stalkers/your boss cannot find you as easily. Tellingly, my female FB friends are much more likely to obfuscate their names (and get blocked for it).

> I'd love to hear an argument over why access to Facebook is a right together with your down vote.

Complaining about bad policies is how public discourse works, no matter if one has a right to better policies or not.

> Tellingly, my female FB friends are much more likely to obfuscate their names (and get blocked for it).

This is the part of Facebook that's really creepy. As a guy who used to date around a lot, I was surprised by how well the "find user" function works.

You connect with someone on Tinder, and meet up in real life. You have no friends in common, no digital connection other than a week-old Tinder conversation consisting of 5 messages. Neither of you checks-in to the restaurant you met up at.

But when you type the woman's first name into Facebook (you don't know her last name), she will be the first suggested result.

I don't know how they do it. But they do it. I'm assuming geo-tracking of phones and noticing that you spent X hours together the previous night.

> I don't know how they do it. But they do it. I'm assuming geo-tracking of phones and noticing that you spent X hours together the previous night.

My boss and I were wondering the same thing after spending few days at client's site in another country, after which Facebook suggested the client as a friend to my boss, even though they never interacted electronically by means other than company e-mail. We thought about geo-tracking, but then concluded that it's more likely Facebook must have identified both of them were connecting to the same Wi-Fi network at the same time.

Somehow the Wi-Fi network theory sounds even creepier than geo-tracking.

Also in my example, I didn't usually connect to any Wi-Fi because I have LTE. But of course I don't turn off wi-fi when I leave the house so my phone still does network discovery.

Well, when you think about it they probably associate users who use the same IP address. From that perspective it's difficult to see how they could avoid using this data. It's like not noticing that two different people called you from the same number.

Does it now? By Wi-Fi tracking I'm thinking of SSID matching (which are public information), not pinging devices inside a single network.

Your data point about on-but-not-connected Wi-Fi supports both geotracking and SSID tracking. We need more data!

Facebook harvests a mountain of data about you when you use the new Messenger app. I swear the only purpose it has as a separate app is to be far worse than they think they can get away with the main Facebook app being.

It's probably from the messenger data that they correlated your proximity.

You know when websites ask for consent to share data with third parties? This is mostly how they do it. What you view on linkedin goes to fb and vice versa.

I had used a chat service only once to call some guys and the day after all participants were suggestions on linkedin.

To most of those free service a product is you and they monetize your graph in this way.

Then you have subsidiaries. You may gave not given facebook or messanger access to you contacts, but what anout whatsapp? Any app with access to your contacts may have sold them. And even if you have none the other party might, or even a third party.

> What you view on linkedin goes to fb and vice versa.

That's completely unfounded speculation, and I'd love to see any citation for it.

I'm inherently skeptical because for these companies their most important asset is their data. The idea that they would share that data willy-nilly with third parties makes no business sense.

it is indeed speculation, but at least anecdotal, not totally unfunded

http://www.interactually.com/linkedin-creepiest-social-netwo...

http://imonlinkedinnowwhat.com/2009/09/14/linkedin-people-yo...

there are quite a few instances of weird guess about the people you might know suggestions

of course the actual source is kept as one of their best secrets.

Neither of those links you shared provided any evidence whatsoever for LinkedIn and Facebook having a secret bidirectional data sharing relationship.

The far more intelligent explanation is that suggestions are, as LinkedIn repeatedly emphasizes, based on imported contacts. Note that even if you don't import contacts, the other person might have.

Try using Occam's razor before jumping to unprofitable conspiracy theories. (Again, why on earth do you think Facebook would voluntarily share data with Facebook?)

> Again, why on earth do you think Facebook would voluntarily share data with Facebook?

Because why not? Facebook isn't really competing with LinkedIn right now - the latter doesn't try to enter private life, and the former doesn't really touch work life much. Both could benefit from sharing data with each other - from better recommendations to creation of shadow profiles. I don't see how this is an unreasonable theory.

This is insanely creepy...

Another possibility is that your social graph might have more overlap than you realize, even if it's not very much, it could be enough to make them the 'nearest' to you in some way. At least some of the graph data can come from sources invisible to you (i.e. people looking at other people's Facebook connections).

Yes, that could be an option too, though in this case it would be surprising given that this was a new subcontractor of our actual client, in a place neither of us have ever been before. But I recognize the phenomena you mention; I sometimes see random people on Facebook with surprising amount of overlap with my social graph, even crossing the groups I consider mostly unrelated (say, a person is a friend with few of my buddies from university AND some other unrelated group of locals AND also knows that random person I met somewhere that lives on the other side of the country).

That does seem hard to explain. It's creepy sometimes to wonder just how much they can figure out from how little and where all the information siphons are actually located.

Honestly, I find it both empowering (oh the data I can find if I know where to look) and reassuring. Why reassuring? Because it reminds us that lies can and will be discovered. Some people like to think they'll get away with one but it's only a function of how much someone else cares. But reality is self-consistent and in the Great Web of Causality falsehood is just damage that needs to be routed over.

Conversely, lying is a malicious act. It'sdirectly sabotaging the model of the world and reasoning capabilities of other human beings, with recursive damage being dealt as that person propagates or reasons from false information. Unless placed in life or death situation (std::jews_hiding_in_your_basement), you really shouldn't do it. It boggles my mind how lightly people treat spreading falsehoods.

I think things will eventually come around once reputation in life is unavoidably attached to everything they say, though, but it might be messy getting there.

Could it be that she has searched for and found your FB profile before you searched for her?

> I don't know how they do it. But they do it.

A big avenue for this is phone numbers. If you have exchanged phone numbers or texted and either person has the facebook app installed on their phone they may show up on "people you may know"

This is almost certainly it. It comes from adding each other to your smartphones address book so a name shows instead of a number.

Do you have her number in your phone?

Sometimes yes, sometimes no. But I don't remember giving FB permission to view my phone numbers.

If you have the FB app installed it has access to your contacts.

Let me rephrase, I don't want it to have access to my contacts and did not realize that it does. Now that I know it likely does, I am discomforted.

At least on iOS it doesn’t, unless you gave it the permission yourself.

Hopefully in Android Marshmallow this feature is not again shot down just before release.

Granular permission control is one single thing I am waiting for in Android 6.0 because that is the only feature I wanted to root my phone for.

What does the FB app give you that the website doesn't anyway? I had no idea why I would want it on my phone when FB was pushing it on me.

Instant messaging :(

There are phones for which that may not be true.

It's probably due to the Tinder app being tied to your Facebook account.

I don't see the problem. A friend request is hardly that threatening. If you don't accept his/her fb request, how can he/she bother you?

It's not about the friend request per se, it's about being able to find people.

A large part of your FB profile is public. At the very least, I now know your last name. Maybe even your birthday.

In a lot of cases, that's enough to perform some light identity theft. Or I can find your exact address. Or I can find out where you work, or just see all the places you like hanging out at and so on and so on.

I don't want to be that easily findable by strangers, which is why I consistently use a "fake" identity online and offline. It's still me, everyone knows me as Swizec Teller, the name just doesn't have anything to do with my legal first and last name. And my legal name is purposefully difficult to tie with this identity unless you have certain background knowledge.

It's almost like computer security. One little vulnerbility might be nothing. But it allows someone to pivot to something else. Which allows them to pivot to the next level. etc. etc.

Except that at this point it's IMO worrying too much. Being afraid of having your name discovered is a bit on the paranoid side for most people. Hell, it's usually trivial to get that data off-line and dangerous people will likely target you directly.

By the way, some people don't even try. Few days ago I saw a girl on the tram carrying her CV in such a way it would be trivial to shoulder-surf her name, email, phone number, date of birth and home address.

That attitude changes when you get death threats sent to your email that mention your home address because your dad had a business disagreed with an unstable person.

Yeah, that happens irl sometimes.

The scary thing is that you don't know who will turn out to be unstable, and it can be someone you never even interact with who is just trying to use you to get under somebody else's skin.

Ouch. That sucks :(.

Still, problematic as it is, that's just bad luck. We can't all live in fear of evil strangers sending death threats to us. There is no way a normal person can reasonably protect themselves from an attack like this targeted personally. We need to empower the police to deal better with such cases.

> Still, problematic as it is, that's just bad luck. We can't all live in fear of evil strangers sending death threats to us. There is no way a normal person can reasonably protect themselves from an attack like this targeted personally.

I disagree. Protection of yourself is a multi-angle approach.

One of the very practical ways to not live in fear of evil strangers is to practice good online anonimity, pseudonymity and/or compartmentalisation.

Back when I first got regular Internet access in 1998, this was a no-brainer. Almost everybody did it, and even if you slipped up at first, it was often possible to just cover some tracks and start over with a new nickname.

I walked the web like that for years, until modern Internet made it a lot harder. I was forced to make some hard choices about my own privacy (and thereby automatically about other people's privacy too) versus the ability to stay in contact with certain (groups of) friends. Not for one-to-one messages, email still works fine for that in principle, and everybody still uses it. It's the group communications that were the real issue, forcing very hard choices on people that actually want to choose privacy. But I digress.

The point is, simple precautions like this used to be no harder than simple real-life precautions such as locking your door and not leaving your phone or wallet on the bar counter as you go to the toilet. Simple common-sense things such as not writing your street address on your key-chain label. Or in cases of "bad luck", if some creepy guy is being creepy, being able to safely tell the bartender, paying attention that he doesn't see where you're going as you leave, letting a trusted friend know where you are, etc.

No it doesn't offer 100% protection, but it helps a lot! Real-life precautions like the above are the "way a normal person can reasonably protect themselves" from these types of real-life attacks and threats.

Nobody, corporation or government, would consider making such real-life precautions harder to follow. Or if a corporation would leverage network-effect to turn such a real-life precaution into a social handicap or taboo, people would quickly ask themselves "wait, is this really what we want?", and as soon as the first victims fell, the corp would get a lot of flak for it.

I believe we should allow people to be able to afford the same sorts of easy-to-follow on line precautions, without forcing people to make the awkward choice between privacy (and sometimes safety) and partaking in social life without too much inconvenience to themselves, and importantly, their friends too.

I get it, but I think your examples are not equivalent. I agree that the real-life precautions you mentioned are easy to follow and important. But the equivalent of those on-line would be: not sharing your passwords (especially to bank and e-mail), not posting your home address on public forums, telling your trusted friend you're off-line so if they see any activity from you it means you've been hacked, etc.

The real-life equivalents to the on-line precautions you've mentioned would be not telling anyone your name, wearing masks in public, not leaving any trail of your activities, and relocating to another town if anyone accidentally discovered what's your first name.

Basically, I don't believe dangers on the Internet warrant such precautions for general population.

I also first went on-line around 1998 and in my part of the world, people were just playing around. Nicknames were created not because one needed them, but because mostly nobody asked for real names.

Well, on-line space and real-life space are very different. I don't think it's very useful to compare "equivalent" precautions by analogy like that.

The reason for that should be clear enough from the examples you gave. Some types of precautions are much easier, sensible or acceptable to do in one type of space than in the other, or vice versa. Some precautions are clearly ridiculous, or just don't carry the same kind of protection in the other type of space. In real life you also don't need to worry someone downloads a copy of your drink :-)

I didn't pick the examples because they have a clear and useful digital equivalent either. It was to demonstrate some other points: Sometimes we have to take precautions to protect ourselves, even if they inconvenience us, even if they do not protect 100% perfectly. And even if the dangers we try to protect ourselves from are clearly illegal, we still take the precautions because we don't expect the law/police to always be there and protect us before they happen. In fact, for real-life we generally prefer it that way, we don't really want to policeman at every corner, hovering above our every move, we want to be able to take care of ourselves, by ourselves. Because sometimes there is no one else.

I'm arguing that we should aim for a similar way in on-line space. Not by carrying the protections to their literal not-quite-equivalent real-life analogies, that would be silly. But to create a similar way of being able to protect oneself, in an (on-line) socially acceptable manner, without having to rely on the state (or a corporation).

I'm arguing that in on-line space, one of the options for precaution should be the ability to pick pseudonyms. They come much more natural to the on-line world than the real world, because on-line you're not attached to a physical presence. This is an advantage, you can't do it in real-life. It doesn't make sense to carry the analogy over, wearing masks isn't quite the same, plus it's not socially acceptable. There are of course many other on-line precautions to protect yourself against dangers, but we were discussing pseudonyms.

BTW a quick side-note, not directed to you in particular. I find that on HN there is a strong tendency to try and find real-life analogies for all sorts of cyber/digital on-line concepts. Often resulting in discussions that carry a metaphor way too far. "No it's more like trying to tie your shoes while your feet are in a locked safe, but your socks are the key ..." -- eh. My point is, in my experience, such kinds of analogies are only useful when trying to somewhat explain a technical concept to a non-technical person. It's not useful at all as a starting point to reason from, just because the analogy (mostly) holds as far as it's descriptive of the concept, doesn't mean the other properties of the analogy that you can reason from there are in any way predictive of the technical concept by the same line of reasoning. Isn't this called "leaky abstractions" in programming? :-)

I agree, we can't live in fear of that. And it's as sinple as making your legsl identity ungooglable.

Artists have figured out long ago that pseudonyms serve a purpose. These days we get sinilar levels of exposure online.

There are privacy settings for all of this... it's not forced in any way. Take the 5 mins to setup everything and it all works.

Except in cases like those noted in the EFF's documents, where FB will change your publicly listed information without your consent and remove your ability to change it back.

I hear this a lot but I dont get it - Facebook has some of the most robust privacy settings of any platform.

You can control exactly how much information you want the public and different groups to see. Also, most people who complain about public data are the ones who willingly share most of it in the first place without a care.

This is absolutely not true historically. I don't know what their privacy policies are now, but they have a track record of changing them with very little fanfare.

The most important thing is public vs friends. And they've always had those basic settings for a long time... so again not sure what the big issue is.

You can still just not put things online or not be friends with someone to protect yourself if you don't want to configure privacy settings.

They have responded to the criticism of their historical behavior and now only make changes with quite a bit of fanfare. They haven't done anything overtly evil related to privacy in a while.

"Facebook hasn't abused their users much in a while, so I trust them to never do so again ever" is pretty fucking slim for someone whose career or life could be endangered.

Exactly. I have been let go (with a good package, though) from a dream job over a single personal comment from a long-time friend, who happened to work for a rival company. "You're friends irl with NNN? Sorry we have to let you go, cannot have risks like this when planning this merger". Hello, depression.

It's possible to use Facebook in a way that couldn't endanger your life or career, depending on who you are. Obviously if someone is stalking you or something, that's a different story. But most people can just omit the information that they find to be sensitive and limit their friends list to people they trust.

> It's possible to use Facebook in a way that couldn't endanger your life or career, depending on who you are. Obviously if someone is stalking you or something, that's a different story.

It's the story in the article we're discussing, in fact.

> Obviously if someone is stalking you or something, that's a different story.

Yup.

Perhaps dont share information if your career/life depends on it?

That's a very different argument than "I dont get it - Facebook has some of the most robust privacy settings of any platform"

I can have different arguments - especially for different scenarios.

If it really is your life at risk, dont share on Facebook or online. Otherwise, use privacy controls. What am I missing?

First sentence of the fucking article: "Facebook claims its practice of forcing users to go by their 'real names' (or 'authentic identities' as Facebook spins it) makes the social network a safer place."

Second sentence of the fucking article: "In fact, the company has often claimed that the policy protects women who use the social media platform, even when faced with community advocates pointing out that the policy facilitates harassment, silencing, and even physical violence towards its most vulnerable users."

If Facebook claimed that its practice of forcing users to go by their real names endangered some of those users and it consciously warned those users about the danger of posting personal information on facebook, that would be one thing. But it seems like they are doing the opposite.

I'm really not sure what point you're making here. Everyone will be affected differently by these rules as subject to their scenario. There's no way to make a general statement by Facebook for their entire 1B+ user base.

I do believe for the vast majority it does make things safer but if YOUR particular situation is different, then yes, use privacy settings, or dont be on Facebook or dont be online at all.

All the blame here seems to be toward Facebook somehow exposing information when every single step of that information getting out there is completely voluntary and has a massive amount of privacy control available.

Failure to use the right service in the right way rests on the user, not the service.

"Political dissidents and abuse victims can't safely use Facebook" is the problem we're discussing. I take it your solution is "political dissidents and abuse victims shouldn't be using the internet at all"?

If using your real name gets you in trouble for X reason then what does Facebook have to do with it? Using your real name anywhere would get you in trouble.

So then Facebook is obviously not the right place for it if you need strong anonymity. Again, what is the blame on Facebook as if they came in and registered your name and profile by force? Choose wisely for your scenario, that's all I'm saying.

> Again, what is the blame on Facebook as if they came in and registered your name and profile by force?

Pretty sure you're trolling at this point, but if not google "facebook shadow user profile" and get your mind blown.

It's weird how you keep restating the problem and acting like you've actually described the solution somehow.

> They have responded to the criticism of their historical behavior and now only make changes with quite a bit of fanfare. They haven't done anything overtly evil related to privacy in a while.

That's great. Are you willing to risk your physical safety on this?

Should other people be willing to risk theirs? If not, what if they are part of your real-life social circle, but because of this they cannot join the private FB group-chat thing that happens to be the main mode of communication for this social group? What if they might have reservations discussing their reasons not being able to join?

Sure, but users who are legitimately concerned about privacy would be pretty foolish to rely on Facebook's settings, which was the comment I replied to. It's not like we're talking about behavior from 20 years ago.

To be fair, I don't think those users should trust any service's privacy settings. Facebook is almost certainly better than, say, Ashley Madison. But I think most of us would ridicule a "real names only" policy proposed by Ashley Madison, even though they haven't had a major privacy violation since their last CEO.

If you are legitimately concerned about privacy, why are you putting it on Facebook or online in the first place?

It's like everyone here wants to blame Facebook when it's actually less work to just not post anything.

No downvote even if I disagree. Once your platform begins to become ubiquitous (Facebook Messenger), it starts to have certain responsibilities, similiar to a utility but not quite that far.

Now I'm prepared for the downvotes, but I don't think its wrong to expect certain behavior from tech companies in certain segments once they reach a particular size.

A compromise would be to allow Facebook users to get verified (similar to Twitter's verification), and then groups and communities could exclude non-verified profiles by default while allowing those non-verified accounts that they'd like to on a case by case basis.

I think both of you deserve upvotes for presenting arguments from two sides in a civil manner.

Personally, I'm ambivalent towards the issue - on the one hand I really like the idea behind Facebook reflecting your real-life social graph, and I do fancy the ability to find someone by their real name. On the other hand, I had a fake account created for my IRC bot with personality that I meant to use both for fun and to optimize communication for a community, and I got really sad when that account got killed over Real Name Policy.

>both of you deserve upvotes...

Yes. I am as likely to upvote someone with whom I disagree for presenting a thoughtful argument, as I am to upvote someone with whom I agree.

Been argued a million times, but downvoting as disagreemnt is silly IMO--unless you just want groupthink or a high school popularity contest. But, if you want thoughtful discussion, then reward thoughtful comments.

Now, of course if I care enough, then I have a choice: I can either stop using HN, or I can try to get the government to regulate it. Heh.

> Now, of course if I care enough, then I have a choice: I can either stop using HN, or I can try to get the government to regulate it. Heh.

Hah, nice one. Though I thought as western civilization we've agreed long ago not to do that because everyone trying to regulate people they disagree with makes everything worse for everybody. Liberal ideals, or something. ;).

> Once your platform begins to become ubiquitous (Facebook Messenger), it starts to have certain responsibilities, similiar to a utility but not quite that far.

I think this is a decent argument. Facebook is pretty close to being a digital utility at this point.

But, a logical corollary of that argument is that if Facebook is a utility it's also expected for everyone to have it. Hence, it's fully okay for services to require Facebook access to log in (just as it's okay for companies to basically expect their employees to have a telephone).

So, which would you prefer: ubiquitous Facebook, with certain regulations keeping it in check, or a Facebook that you can readily opt out of because you don't agree with its policies.

> A compromise would be to allow Facebook users to get verified (similar to Twitter's verification)

I'm not sure I fully understand your proposal, but it actually sounds a lot like my opinion. It's not that I think Facebook profiles should be required to use their official legal name, just that they should use the name they use offline. Is that what you meant by verification?

> if Facebook is a utility it's also expected for everyone to have it.

How so? I am in no way required to live with running water and electricity in my house. Even things that are tangentially related, like my workplace requiring me to bathe and wash my clothes occasionally, don't require me to have the equipment to do so in my house.

Try getting a building permit for a residential dwelling without outlets or a bathroom. That might work in unincorporated territory where there is no municipal law, but not in a suburban neighborhood in the US.

Many workplaces will require that you are reachable by telephone. Pretty hard to do that without the equipment in your house.

The vast majority of jobs expect you to have a phone number.

I'm not sure how you would have a phone number without working with some phone service.

No but it's mandated utilities offer service unless you've done something very egregious.

No simple EULA denials.

> I'm not sure I fully understand your proposal, but it actually sounds a lot like my opinion. It's not that I think Facebook profiles should be required to use their official legal name, just that they should use the name they use offline. Is that what you meant by verification?

Yes.

What I don't get is why Facebook's users don't just disengage. Instead, Facebook is treated as some basic human right. Here, with some vague "responsibilities akin to a utility, but not quite that far". I mean, that really sounds kind of, well, made up. Who's defining these responsibilities?

In fact, Facebook is not a public utility, but a private company. And, unlike with a public utility, the public to which they are supposedly responsible aren't even their customers, but are their product.

This is not to defend them, and I'm not a Facebook fan. In fact, quite the contrary. I believe Facebook's entire model is based on the routine abuse of its users. That's all the more reason I can't understand why people who are uncomfortable don't just...stop.

For the same reason people uncomfortable with phone companies don't ditch their phones - added value + network effect.

For Facebook users (of which I am one), this service is an extension of our real-life social circles. We have (most of) our families, friends and colleagues there. Facebook Messenger is probably the primary IM for personal communication these days. You may dislike aspects of it, but there's no denying that Facebook is the best way of keeping the weak ties[0] (and turning them into strong when needed) that exists today.

We may bitch about the specifics, but the truth is - it enhances life too much to just leave it.

Ditching Facebook is not impossible though. The younger generation seems to be migrating towards Whatsapp and Snapchat.

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpersonal_ties

EDIT: Clarity

There are regulations around FB, as well as civil remedies for violations of their terms, privacy policy, etc. They lay out how they will treat users and are beholden to follow it, lest face civil (and possibly criminal) penalties. As a user, you decide whether those terms are sufficient. If the people with whom you communicate can't be convinced to communicate with you otherwise, then why would you have a right to demand that FB accomodate your preferences?

That's a sincere question.

And, honestly, we have more choices than ever to communicate with people. Personally, I refuse to upload my life to FB for their monetization. But, much as I dislike some of FB's practices (and its fundamental revenue model), I don't see why people believe they should be able to dictate nuances of their various policies as if Facebook owes them the right to use their service on their terms. If people think that that what FB offers is worth the price, then they are getting exactly what they paid for. If they don't think it's worth it, then they should simply move on.

You misunderstand me. My apologies for not explaining properly. I'm not saying people are entitled to Facebook; I'm saying if users use Facebook, regulations should be in place to dictate to Facebook how those users should be treated.

Corporations will take as much as they can, which is why regulations exist.

> I'm saying if users use Facebook, regulations should be in place to dictate to Facebook how those users should be treated.

As much as I hate what Facebook is doing, I don't think this is anywhere near the right answer. Besides, do you really think governments want to see less information collected, when having that information makes it so convenient for them to obtain?

> As much as I hate what Facebook is doing, I don't think this is anywhere near the right answer.

That's how regulations work. You dictate to a private business its responsibilities to its customers or users. I don't understand why that isn't the right answer (although Europe seems to do far better about this than the US).

> Besides, do you really think governments want to see less information collected, when having that information makes it so convenient for them to obtain?

This is a tired argument. The government is huge. Not every department is the NSA, nor is every department the FTC or FCC.

> That's how regulations work. You dictate to a private business its responsibilities to its customers or users. I don't understand why that isn't the right answer (although Europe seems to do far better about this than the US).

You should, at the very least, already know that this is not a universally held position, but rather one that many people oppose as vigorously as you support it. Without descending into politics, suffice it to say that doing so has no particular guarantee of solving more problems than it creates. Quite apart from the people who work at and run Facebook having rights, too.

People use Facebook voluntarily. "Facebook but not evil" is a viable business model.

People use lots of businesses voluntarily. We still regulate them. That's probably not going away.

Well, governments gave us TOR. So just because some parts of government(s) want to listen in, record and have available all the things -- this isn't universal.

Thank you for the clarification. But, you're still sort of implying that it's an entitlement by suggesting that they be regulated, and that's what I was keying on.

Because the choice exists to either accept their terms and use it or reject their terms and not use it. But, what you are saying is that you reject their terms but, rather than disengage, you insist on using it, but believe the government should forcibly change those terms to your satisfaction.

BTW, they are actually regulated to some extent. Among other things, they spell out what they will and won't do. If they renege, then there are civil and possibly criminal remedies available.

> Because the choice exists to either accept their terms and use them or reject their terms and not use them. But, what you are saying is that you reject their terms but, rather than disengage, you insist on using it, but believe the government should forcibly change those terms to your satisfaction.

How is this any different than unenforceable EULAs or employment contracts that overreach? You can ask me to sign something that violates the law; I can still use your service or become employed by you; that does not remove my protections granted under the law, but nullifies the parts of your contract or agreement that are unlawful.

But, no one is denying users access to the courts to test the enforceability of FB agreements. On the contrary, I am saying that it is precisely a remedy that is available to them if that is the question.

But, in most cases, those who demand regulation or otherwise take umbrage with FB's practices in the current context are not questioning the legality of their terms, etc. Instead, they are asking, for instance, that the government proactively force FB to change practices with which they do not agree, irrespective of any legal tests.

The article itself literally speaks to people being endangered by a FB policy. All of this begs the question: at what point is it simply not worth it? It's nearly satire that people believe FB to be so critical that not even personal endangerment will deter them from using it.

Using FB is neither a requirement for survival, nor a fundamental human right. If their policies are endangering your life or simply not agreeable, then there's no need to launch a crusade. Just sign out.

> What I don't get is why Facebook's customers don't just disengage.

Convincing all your friends and family to switch sites is not easy. Social networks provide quite a lot of lock-in. And while alternatives exist, they don't have the momentum, the audience, or the lack of friction.

Replacing Facebook is not primarily a technical challenge.

I don't have a Facebook account. Many of my friends and family apparently do. I manage to text, email, call, or visit from time to time. We have things to catch up on and talk about when we do, in part because we are not voyeurs into one another's life. Could you replace your online social network with more first communication channels? I don't intend to sound hollier than thou. I could be missing something amazing by not being on social networks, but I have not noticed it.

True. But, if the majority of people, including your friends and family, don't care, then is it really Facebook's problem?

And, if the relatively few people who do care still continue to engage despite their concerns, then is that an even clearer message to FB that it's not a real problem for FB?

My stepson tried to stay off Facebook. But then he started missing parties, not being part of evening conversations, had difficulties with groups at school, was missing out on his theatre group.

If you just ... stop ... you may find your social circle leaving you behind.

My sibling comment here is being downvoted for saying he needs closer friends. Maybe that's blunt, but if he is unable to maintain friendships without FB, then something is going on there that shouldn't just be accepted as normal.

And, if what you're saying is universally true for kids, or even nearly so, then I'd say that we (collectively, as adults) have failed them in strolling hand-in-hand with them into a world wherein personal relationships are not viable without a profiteering third-party intermediary.

It's getting downvoted because they jumped from "he was missing out on party invites and facebook conversations" to "he can't maintain friendships and should get new friends".

It's a bit extreme of a position.

Well, I don't think he/she said "he can"t maintain friendships". The suggestion was that he needed closer friends.

And, I think it's reasonable to question how close his friendships are if they are dependent on Facebook.

But, that's probably true of society in general, wherein we seem to be trading quantity for quality where personal relationships are concerned. And the generation coming up now has almost no reference point as to any other way.

Again, everybody is extrapolating. If I opt out of the communication mechanism all my friends are using, this is going to cause problems, regardless of how close they are.

He didn't join Facebook because he was losing friends, he joined Facebook because of the social friction NOT being on Facebook caused. This is both less coercive and more insidious.

I stopped when I was in school and didn't have a problem with any of these things. Maybe he just needs to find closer friends.

"You can choose to keep in touch with your circle of friends, get invites to their parties, and so forth; or you can choose to remain concealed from your violent ex-boyfriend. Pick one."

That's kind of a douchey thing to do to people, even if you're a private company.

I'm seeing this really late, but FWIW:

I'm no FB fan but, here, FB is not "doing" anything to anyone. They offer a service, and a social one at that. If people choose to use it to keep in touch with their entire social circle, then why is FB responsible for ensuring that no one has a violent ex-boyfriend, nosy boss, etc.?

If using FB will endanger your health, then don't use it. That's the missing option in your choice set.

BTW, this is what happens when people outsource their relationships to a profiteering third-party. No one seems to question the wisdom of that "choice". Instead they want to force FB to be something it never was or claimed to be.

> In fact, Facebook is not a public utility, but a private company.

Public utilities have been privatised, and are required to operate under strict regulation. Why not the same for FB>

Correction: FB is obviously no longer a private company. Still, being publicly traded is far different than being a public utility.

Real-name internet identities have some drawbacks compared to their real-world counterparts:

1. In real life its fairly easy (and I would say healthy) to have multiple "identities", say your workday exquisitely professional identity and weekend identity which enjoys goofy antics with friends. In infinitely googlable internet - not so much. I guess mitigating this is the idea behind google+ circles but I have never used them so can't say much.

2. In real life past events tend to diminish in significance after some time passes. So someone who had committed a misstep can atone himself over time. Not so on the internet - what happened on the internet stays on the internet ... like forever and also infinitely googlable. This is less relevant to the walled garden of facebook but relevant to the internet at large.

Considering the difficulties with friend requests - you are usually connected to the people you want to befriend through other means (e.g. in real life). So use that channel to communicate your pseudonym! I guess real-name policy had sense when facebook was being discovered by former classmates who wanted to be in touch over the internet for the first time but these days are long gone.

> 1. In real life its fairly easy (and I would say healthy) to have multiple "identities"

I don't know of anyone who uses different names for those identities. My family calls me by a nickname, but certainly all my friends and business relationships know my "real name." I imagine that's true for 99% of people: they name a name that they use with nearly everyone.

The rest of identity management is easily done on Facebook. My business colleagues see an entirely different version of my Facebook than my college friends: literally everything you post can be scoped to a particular friend list.

> Considering the difficulties with friend requests - you are usually connected to the people you want to befriend through other means (e.g. in real life).

Kind of, but it's awkward and unnecessary. I'm friends on Facebook with basically everyone I'm in class with, even though asking their username would be kind of strange. This nominal friendship is very helpful for quickly asking questions or interacting.

> In real life its fairly easy (and I would say healthy) to have multiple "identities", say your workday exquisitely professional identity and weekend identity which enjoys goofy antics with friends.

I think Facebook primarily targets the second one. Though personally, I find the whole concept of this type of multiple identities weird. Why should I present a different identity at work than I do in personal affairs?

And if your boss objects to your weekend parties, then (unless we're talking PR-heavy industry, you being in the spotlight) you should consider changing jobs. Caring about such issues is as sign of serious problems in the company.

> And if your boss objects to your weekend parties, then you should consider changing jobs. Caring about such issues is as sign of serious problems in the company.

It doesn't work like that. On PT I listened to an HR employee laughing to a friend about how great Facebook is for them. A story she told was of a recent job applicant, they looked up his facebook profile and found he'd posted some weekend party photos. She laughed about how you could "tell from the eyes" he was on drugs... "needless to say, he didn't get the job".

People in the real world are penalized when they don't keep work/play identities separate — especially beady-eyed people!

(Conversely, if my facebook profile ever fills up with cats and doctored photos of me climbing K2, or helping out at the local orphanage, you'll know I'm applying for a job somewhere with an HR department)

> Why should I present a different identity at work than I do in personal affairs?

In the tech industry, perhaps not so much of an issue. But, for example, I'm sure many K-8 teachers have a "work" self and a "weekend" self that don't (and/or shouldn't) mix well.

Right... I should have known this. Thanks.

I actually have a secondary-school teacher as a Facebook friend and she does in fact selectively publish things to different groups, because she has some of her students as friends on Facebook.

> Though personally, I find the whole concept of this type of multiple identities weird. Why should I present a different identity at work than I do in personal affairs?

Most people act more formally at work than they would otherwise. It's the same idea.

> And if your boss objects to your weekend parties, then (unless we're talking PR-heavy industry, you being in the spotlight) you should consider changing jobs. Caring about such issues is as sign of serious problems in the company.

If you have a secure job, or are important to the company, maybe.

Many younger people are not so secure in their jobs, however, or live in a highly religious area, or both. A Facebook user still dependent on their strict parents could also be ruined by a stray pic.

That's why privacy controls exist.

It's pretty easy on Facebook to restrict your social photos to only your social friends.

An interesting perspective on this from Japanese culture: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honne_and_tatemae

> Why should I present a different identity at work than I do in personal affairs?

Here's one: Gay people. There are many places where you can be fired for being gay.

> you should consider changing jobs.

That isn't always possible.

From your other posts you seem to have a very good sense of social responsibility, so I'm surprised at this comment.

Multiple identities are incredibly important to anybody in a minority that is threatened by their local mainstream culture. Black people in may areas (even today), gay or lesbian people in many parts of the world, and trans people just about anywhere[1] are some obvious examples. There are numerous others, which bring varying amounts of risk if exposed publicly.

These people are often forced to put on a facade when in public, to avoid the risk of being fired (only a few of these are protected classes), beaten, or even killed. The internet has created a space where these people can be themselves... as long as it doesn't connect back to their real name and identity.

Yes, leaving a job is a good way to avoid a bigoted manager, but that isn't an option for everybody. Your boss isn't the only threat, either: it wasn't that long ago that being openly gay could get you lynched in some areas.

This comes down to the basic concept of privacy. I recommend Dan Geer's definition[2] of privacy in light of modern technology:

    Privacy used to be proportional to that which it is impossible to observe
    or that which can be observed but not identified.  No more -- what is today
    observable and identifiable kills both privacy as impossible-to-observe and
    privacy as impossible-to-identify, so what might be an alternative?  If you
    are an optimist or an apparatchik, then your answer will tend toward rules
    of data procedure administered by a government you trust or control.  If you
    are a pessimist or a hacker/maker, then your answer will tend towards the
    operational, and your definition of a state of privacy will be my definition:
    the effective capacity to misrepresent yourself.

Real name policies are, de facto isomorphic with banning privacy. It is saying that people must never experiment with how they present themselves to the world. It's saying that anybody who fears repercussions if they act like themselves must stay in the closet.

It is nice to believe that we are past these problems. I'm often thankful that I have the privilege to live in California, which has been very accepting of diversity. Unfortunately, we haven't solved all of these problems, and they are not going to be solved in the near future. Sometimes an optimist or apparatchick insists that forcing everybody into the public so nothing is hidden and privacy no longer exists will somehow eradicate bigotry and discrimination. Well, bigots are often proud of their beliefs, and most people don't consider the consequences anyway; these problems are not solved by magical thinking.

[1] http://www.newrepublic.com/article/politics/magazine/90519/t...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nT-TGvYOBpI#t=2415

Let's call it temporary lapse of judgement... I guess I've confused the issue with my hate for bigotry. I just woke up and find the thing completely obvious - thanks to, in big part, your comment, and thanks to regaining the ability to generate examples in my head that I must have lost yesterday :(.

I guess part of my confusion stemmed from the fact that multiple identities on Facebook are hard and risky, so they become a pretty bad idea. Facebook seriously sucks for multiple identities, real-name-policy or not. You really need different accounts. Otherwise you need to get obsessive-compulsive about every privacy setting out there - who do you share with, who can view it, who can tag/mention you, etc. And then you lose anyway because one of your friends copy-pasted your post to a wider circle, or uploaded a photo with you and someone from the "wrong" side of your social graph recognizes it, etc. It's pretty much OPSEC 101 - the different lives you're having shouldn't mix at all because someone, somewhen, will screw up.

Also, you'd be surprised how broken the post range limits still are, if you know what to do (Facebook has significantly improved that over the last year or two, but there are still bugs).

> It is nice to believe that we are past these problems. I'm often thankful that I have the privilege to live in California, which has been very accepting of diversity. Unfortunately, we haven't solved all of these problems, and they are not going to be solved in the near future.

Yeah, this is what bit me.

> Sometimes an optimist or apparatchick insists that forcing everybody into the public so nothing is hidden and privacy no longer exists will somehow eradicate bigotry and discrimination. Well, bigots are often proud of their beliefs, and most people don't consider the consequences anyway; these problems are not solved by magical thinking.

I sometimes consider if what apparatchicks propose isn't in fact our best option. I usually refer to it as "privacy or progress, pick one", when pointing out the social and scientific benefits of the data we forgo when insisting on fighting every form of mass monitoring. Note, I'm only entertaining this thought - I'm not convinced yet either way, but the way the privacy discussion is today, the issue is terribly one-sided.

You mentioned bigots being proud of being bigots. This seriously worries me. I think the society could handle going (back?) to zero-privacy mode, but the more I think of it and see people being proud of their ignorance, the more I fear it would end in civil wars over really stupid things.

Most people have a partitioned identity. There is a side you show to your friends, a side you show to your colleagues, a side for your parents, for your significant other and even one for your kids.

An online persona is just another partition that whilst you may don't want to hide, you probably want to keep the intersection with most of the rest of the partitions to a minimum.

In real world there is a physical separation. All your contacts know you by your real name but only interact with a specific partition. On the other hand, in the virtual world, all your contacts will have to interact with your one online persona.

A pseudonym is an easy and practical way to have more than one online personas or keep your one persona limited to a certain group of people in your life. The people you want to interact with a certain part of your identity, are easy to reach; online nicknames are part of everyone's life. For the rest, they will have to search a bit more to find you and even then, they will be less imposed to take into account that part of your identity due to the use of a pseudonym.

What about people who don't want all of their real life relationships to be able to follow them online? For example, suppose someone has a restraining order against a stalker, so they don't want to be findable online. Does that mean they're "not using Facebook the way it's meant to be used and should probably just leave it"?

Online interaction has very different affordances than off-line interaction (for example, the ease of searching, the indefinite persistence of communications, etc.). Pretending that saying "Facebook should be just like real life" erases those differences is naive.

There's a cost to allowing pseudonymity, but there's also a cost to its lack, it's just that the latter cost is distributed very unevenly.

What about the people who do live single life, who do want their real-life relationships to follow them on-line? Why should we bow down and twist our system for the unfortunate minority that has a stalker problem?

There are ways to deal with those that don't involve designing the entire experience around the special cases. So someone has a restraining order against a stalker. Then it should be enough for them to be able to send a scan of this order to Facebook to mark themselves exempt from real-name policy. There is need for such a problem to influence the way most people experience the service.

Besides, what good does changing profile name do anyway? Even if you'd have a pseudonymous account, you still probably have your real-life friends added on Facebook. Any stalker worth the name will quickly find you by just browsing through friendlists of your friends (if you have a restraining order against him, it means he interacted with you enough to know some of your real-life friends).

You can't solve this problem by changing the service mechanics without ruining it for everyone. This is a kind of matter the police is supposed to deal with, and this in fact is an argument for more cooperation between Facebook and law enforcement.

"What about the people who do live single life, who do want their real-life relationships to follow them on-line? Why should we bow down and twist our system for the unfortunate minority that has a stalker problem?"

How would allowing somebody to use a pseudonym prevent you (and any others who want their real-life relationships to follow them on-line) from continuing to use your real-world identities?

> What about the people who do live single life, who do want their real-life relationships to follow them on-line?

Then they just drumroll use their real name?

Heck, they could have even used a more easily recognizable nickname... before this policy, anyway.

> If I'm working on a project with someone, I can immediately find them and message

Interesting, that is exactly why I don't use my real name on Facebook. I don't wont everyone I work on some project with to be able to find me and message me outside of the established conversation channels from within the project. And even less am I interested them to be able to learn about my private life.

All my friends do find me with help of the friend of a friend feature on Facebook and the Picture I have there. Everyone else should never try to contact me there, I will block them anyway.

It's easy to generate real-looking names, there are libraries to do so.

Requiring real-looking names therefore doesn't prevent bots.

If you're not being bombarded with friend requests by bots on Facebook that just means none of your friends have accepted a friend request from a profile with a picture of a young asian woman as its avatar (and an authentic-sounding name) yet...

You can validate your name on Twitter if you want to. You don't have to though.

Access to Facebook isn't a right (although in countries where it is the only net presence that may become more of an issue).

But Facebook's mistakes (and Real Names policies are a mistake) affect a lot of people, all of whom have the valid use case of "using Facebook as a platform".

So the argument is you're creating a false dichotomy between using Facebook to get "5000 followers" and wanting to use Facebook under your legal, European-sounding, name.

The valid use case you're missing is using Facebook under the name you generally go by without this being a problem if it's not a name Facebook thinks is valid.

Even I go under an informal version of my legal name - it's not the name on my birth certificate, passport, or bank account. So it's not my Real Name. And I'm not any of the groups that get hit hardest by this.

There would be no problem, perhaps, if Facebook allowed you to compartmentalize your relationships like you can in the real world, but it doesn't as far as I can tell.

In the real world, the fact that I need to communicate with my children's teachers has no bearing on the fact that I need to communicate with my co-workers, which has no bearing on needing to communicate with my family. I can use different e-mail addresses, different phone numbers, and even different postal addresses (P.O. boxes, say) for these separate groups, and people often do. This is most prevalent with e-mail, but not uncommon with phone numbers and I know several people who have a P.O box or two for some parts of their correspondence. On Facebook, these all get hopelessly conflated, which is great for Facebook but not necessarily great for users.

> I'd love to hear an argument over why access to Facebook is a right

If your child's teacher sends all communications via Facebook (which is true of some of them), then Facebook access becomes rather required just so you know when little things like parent-teacher conferences are and whatnot. Yes, the teacher shouldn't be doing that. Good luck convincing them.

> if Facebook allowed you to compartmentalize your relationships like you can in the real world, but it doesn't as far as I can tell

It absolutely does allow this, and it has for years. I can't find the name for the feature, but it seems to be called "Friends" on the left column. Maybe "friend lists" is accurate.

It automatically creates some lists for you based on your employers, schools, etc., and then you can create your own.

And I can present a different identity, including different name, to these different groups? My family knows me by a name that's not even in the same character set as the name that my co-workers know me by.

Just like my neighbor who's a teacher can have all her students see her as "Mrs. Jones" while her college friends see her as "Emily"?

I'm not talking about keeping my separate groups of acquaintances separate in my perception. I'm talking about keeping the separate "me"s that exist in other people's perception separate, just like I, and many other people, do in the real world.

You can't present a different name, but I think that's a pretty narrow use-case. For teachers, sure, but I don't see a reason for teachers to be Facebook friends with students.

You can certainly be searchable by names in different character sets. I have a Korean friend whose name on Facebook is in Korean, but you can find him by searching for "Henry" as well.

If this compartmentalization is so important, why not just make separate Facebook profiles?

> You can't present a different name, but I think that's a pretty narrow use-case.

In the USA (and increasingly UK), everyone calls everyone by their first name. This is not the case in many places. Why not let people be "Jim" to friends and "Mr. Smith" to co-workers? That is very common.

> But I think that's a pretty narrow use-case

Then you're not paying attention. It's a very common use case.

Did you ignore my pointing out that my family and my co-workers call me by different names? This is _very_ common.

> For teachers, sure, but I don't see a reason for teachers to be Facebook friends with students

I don't see a good reason for anyone to ever have a Facebook account at all. But many people clearly do, and Facebook is doing all it can to ensure that all real-life relationships are reflected in Facebook... but not actually making it possible to do that sanely. That's causing problems, and will continue to cause problems until either people realize that Facebook shouldn't be used for all their relationships or Facebook fixes their setup to work better or society in general radically changes how it's structured (and not for the better, in my opinion).

We can argue about which of these solutions is preferable, and which is more likely (I suspect the answers are different), but let's not pretend like the problem doesn't exist.

As for teachers being Facebook friends with their students, consider the situation in India, where Facebook is pushing for "internet access" that only includes Facebook. At which point, if you want to communicate with your students electronically at all, you have to do it through Facebook, since that's all they can do on the internet.

The situation in the US is not that bad, but again some teachers are using Facebook for their classroom communication (by choice). I agree this is a bad idea, obviously, for oh so many reasons.

> You can certainly be searchable by names in different character sets

It's not just searchability. It's also whether people seeing a message from you recognize who the message is from, say.

> why not just make separate Facebook profiles

You mean apart from this being explicitly against Facebooks's terms of service and the fact that they will shut down some or all of these profiles because they decide that the name on them isn't a real name?

Again, as I see it my options today are:

1) Lie about accepting the terms of service, deal with the fact that Facebook can arbitrarily shut down parts of my social interactions because it decides it doesn't like what some people call me.

2) Set up Facebook relationships in a radically different way from my real-world ones.

3) Just don't use Facebook for interacting with anyone I actually care about.

My personal choice is #3. Most people seem to choose some combination of #1 and #2, with a strong lean to #2. The EFF is claiming that this choice only has to be made because of some particular Facebook policies and users would be better off if those policies were changed so that the choice didn't need to be made (e.g. so that having separate Facebook profiles were actually an OK thing and not grounds for having all your Facebook profiles terminated).

Agreed. I run a small-town community website. Instituting a real-name policy stopped the trolling overnight: people behave much more reasonably if they know they might meet the person they're yelling at in the street tomorrow.

The key is that our site aims to be solely a resource for the existing community (where people relate to each other through real names), not a virtual community in itself.

I certainly wouldn't argue that the web should be real-name only, but nor do I believe everyone always has an automatic right to post on privately-owned websites using pseudonyms.

> I certainly wouldn't argue that the web should be real-name only

100% agreed. The vast majority of the web is based around pseudonymous interaction (even this comment thread). I love that about the web, but I also appreciate Facebook creating one place to foster those real world connections.

I would prefer to be able to explicitly set a pseudoynmous profile (name, profile picture, etc) in groups that we join (e.g., gaming groups, where FB is Super Awesome for out-of-game collaboration, but where not everyone needs to be able to see my profile picture or name).

On the one hand, one might say that this is using FB counter to its intentions ... but on the other, it seems clear that the ubiquity of FB chat, the excellence of many other things (shared discussion, etc), and the general stickiness that the platform has indicate that they want you to use it for as much as possible.

I'd love it if people who feel they are in danger can join communities, or even comment on things freely. I'd probably be happy even if such pseudonymous accounts were flagged visibly. As it is, many of my real-life friends in the SCA or in gaming groups __already__ create dual FB accounts (one for Real Them, one for their SCA or gaming persona), and it doesn't really inhibit trusted interactions with them. I'm fortunate not to feel I __need__ one, but I'd love to have my comments on some things (gaming forums, etc) be more in-character and less tied to my public persona.

At the same time, having real names hasn't seemed to reduce the abusive behavior that one sees (e.g. any political post, or Youtube comments) noticeably, because strangers are effectively anonymous.

That's an interesting idea. You have a good point: Facebook has developed a really powerful and sticky social platform. While they explicitly want the primary experience on that platform to be around real world communications, there's no fundamental reason that the technology couldn't simultaneously be used for digital communities.

I feel strongly that the communities shouldn't overlap (I do not want to see pseudonyms in my comment threads), but the idea of a parallel Facebook where alternative profiles can interact with alternative profiles is interesting.

> I certainly wouldn't argue that the web should be real-name only, but nor do I believe everyone always has an automatic right to post on privately-owned websites using pseudonyms.

For a lot of people, Facebook is "The Web". That's all or almost all they use. The less tech-literate ones don't even know "the web", they connect to Facebook. They get their news from Facebook. They communicate on Facebook. Everything they do online, they do on Facebook.

Like someone mentioned above, when you get big enough you start to have responsibilities. When your actions affect and your voice is heard by billions of people, you're no longer "some random privately-owned website"... you're a supergiant with the ability to affect the entire world.

The real-name local facebook group for my small town is a cesspool, so ymmv.

This reminds me of the meme of first world problems versus third world problems.

Essentially, you are saying that because it saves you some annoyance, it's a good tradeoff, even if that means that a few others face not annoyance, but actual existential threats of death, violence, imprisonment, dismemberment, etc.

http://violetblue.tumblr.com/post/130440543695/why-im-sittin...

Edit: and yes, participation in Facebook is somewhat optional, but there's a larger price to be paid for not participating than the price of any of the annoyances you mention.

And, in some countries, even making copies or photographing or scanning an ID is a crime. I’ll not commit a crime just to get access to Facebook.

I love learning random facts like this. Can I get a citation/link to where coping your own ID is a crime?

In Germany, making a copy of your own ID is probably legal but requesting a copy is illegal, as is making a copy if you are not the owner, with only very limited exceptions (e.g. some parts of government, for some financial transactions).

(Completely ignoring the fact that real name policies are legally dubious as well)

What is the price I pay for not participating in Facebook?

You might lose all online communication options with at least some of your friends. This is unacceptable to many/most people, hence why they join Facebook and end up perpetuating the effect.

So, if Facebook shut down tomorrow, we'd lose all online communication options?

Now you're just being argumentative. This kind of thing belongs on reddit, not here.

Just responding to a ridiculous level of exaggeration. You guys appear to be seriously arguing that there was no easy way to keep in touch with friends and family before 2004.

It's really not just about you, and what you care about. Other people may care about stuff you may or may not care about, and what they care about is valid to them.

To others, some things that may matter to them may include:

- Trackng down old friends

- Keeping in touch with friends

- Keeping in touch with acquaintances

- Staying aware of what friends and acquaintances are up to

- Keeping friends and acquaintances aware of what they are up to

- Fitting into social groups

- Staying aware of what their social groups of interest are up to

- Or more generally staying aware of cultural events, news, trends, and topics that are of interest amongst circles of people they are close to, or other circles of which they are members.

Facebook is a one-stop shop for a lot of these things. Sure, some or all of them are conceivably possible in other ways, but finding alternatives for all of them would involve significant expenditure of effort compared to just being a regular user of Facebook.

So before about 10 years ago when Facebook was launched, these things were only "conceivably possible", maybe with significant effort expenditure? Really???

Yep. It really was a different world before Facebook. Just one real and important example: I had lost track of many of my old friends and acquaintances, and am now in touch with them.

> I fully expect to lose a lot of karma over this comment, but I'd love to hear an argument over why access to Facebook is a right together with your down vote.

Effectively banning political dissidents and victims of abuse, stalking, and harassment from using the world's largest communication platform is a shitty thing to do. Mentioning "rights," or--the other popular approach--saying "it's their website, they can do what they want," is a non sequitur and dishonest besides. You're trying to imply that people saying "Facebook should do this" are actually saying "Facebook should be forced to do this."

Personally, I am more than willing to acknowledge that allowing pseudonyms on Facebook would cause some inconvenience, just as--for example--I acknowledge that allowing government organizations the control they want over data, crypto, and personal devices would, indeed, make it easier for them to catch some criminals. I would like you to acknowledge that some things are more important than those things.

(Do bear in mind, when you respond, that Facebook has reversed users' privacy settings with no notice before and reserves the right to do so at any time, and that "they probably won't do that again" is a slim fucking hope for someone whose life could be endangered.)

> I'm not constantly bombarded by fake friend requests like I am on Twitter, Skype, or any other platform which allows random usernames.

Really? I constantly get Facebook friend requests from pretty women in skimpy clothes with 6 to 10 friends.

This particular statement from the EFF is not in any way trying to convince Facebook that they shouldn't have a real names policy.

It's simply saying: Okay, you've got a real name policy. You should reform it in a few ways so that people can't use it for targeted silencing and harassment of groups they dislike.

It's also pretty overtly hostile to the existence of a real name policy at all.

The very first line sets the tone of hostility:

> Facebook claims its practice of forcing users to go by their "real names" (or "authentic identities" as Facebook spins it) makes the social network a safer place.

The piece they link to emphasizes that the "EFF continues to believe that the best solution is simply to get rid of the 'real names' policy entirely."

I didn't downvote you, but I'll play devil's advocate and make an argument over why access to Facebook is a right.

In the normal course of events, a non-government company is free to decide who it does business with. But there is a case to be made that this changes if society reorganizes itself so that use of a particular service is no longer optional.

For example, insurance companies would a priori be free to decide who they do business with. Except that it's illegal to drive without liability insurance, and in some places, either because of the physical fact of distance or bad town planning, it's effectively mandatory to drive if you want to be a functioning member of society. Therefore in some jurisdictions, you do actually have the legal right to buy insurance.

There are social circles these days in which you effectively cannot participate without having a Facebook account. There is therefore a case to be made that Facebook is obliged to either make sure people aren't excluded from having accounts, or set up some kind of federated system whereby you can participate in Facebook circles from some other social medium.

I myself don't use Facebook, so I don't have a dog in that fight either way, but I think it's a valid argument.

> People who are trying to disconnect their Facebook identity from their real world identity are not using Facebook the way it's meant to be used and should probably just leave it.

The way Facebook is "meant" to be used is to maximize their revenue from data mining.

This is clearly not something we, the users, should be caring about.

> That being said, Facebook could definitely do a better job of making it easier for people to prove that a name is their everyday name even when it's not their legal name.

How is that even possible? There's no authority for "proving" nicknames, and I highly doubt Facebook is going to bother hiring judges to evaluate non-standard evidence. Not when it's easier, and more profitable, just to demand everyone's legal name.

> but I'd love to hear an argument over why access to Facebook is a right

Why not flip it around, and ask why Facebook has the right to demand our real names? In some countries, at least, it's seeming that it doesn't. <http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jul/29/germany-fi...

> The real name policy has huge benefits. I'm not constantly bombarded by fake friend requests like I am on Twitter, Skype, or any other platform which allows random usernames. Even more importantly, I can easily find the people in my life without having to go through an awkward song and dance. If I'm working on a project with someone, I can immediately find them and message them without worrying that it's some random imposter or some such.

This sounds like a little inconvenience. Hypothetical, at that. I use email and at least half my contacts have some made-up username that doesn't relate to their real identity. It works very well. I'm not so familiar with Skype, but how do "fake friend requests" work on Twitter? You decide who to follow, and that's it. The list of followers is not a very useful source of info and never was, even without bots, you can't know if that old friend in your followers list even uses Twitter regularly.

But the real question is, I don't believe for a moment that (the possibility of) a little inconvenience should in any way weigh in against the certainty of real physical danger that is happening right now to (I don't have the numbers but I'm sure it has to be at least) 1000s of individuals. I mean this side of the argument is very much not a theoretical or hypothetical scenario. There are many, many people on FB with abusive exes, with or without restraining orders, or perhaps parts of their families that they don't want to know certain aspects of their lives in fear of being ostracised (sad as that may be). You hear about these cases all the time, and you can expect that's only a fraction of the cases that actually speaks out (for obvious reasons).

And on the other side, you may get a little spam.

And on the other other side, we should all just get off Facebook, but that's another topic.

> I'm not constantly bombarded by fake friend requests like I am on Twitter, Skype, or any other platform which allows random usernames.

I don't see how "real name policy" would prevent that. What's stopping people from creating fake accounts with real-looking names?

> I can easily find the people in my life without having to go through an awkward song and dance.

But maybe some of those people don't want you to find them? And if they will want you to find them, they will let you know of their username.

> Facebook is a platform designed for digitizing your real world relationships, not for accumulating thousands of "followers."

Yea, nice, but that is irrelevant to the real name policy. I can very well digitize my real world relationships without using my real world name. People that know me in real world, know me on Facebook by my nick, even if I don't use that nick in real world.

> And if they will want you to find them, they will let you know of their username.

That's not true in practice. I'm friends with tons of people in my school who are basically passing acquaintances. We don't know each other well enough that asking for a username would be normal, but it's helpful to have a readily available channel to ask things like "hey, what was the assignment for econ?"

Likewise, I am actually "following" some of my real world friends on Twitter. But it's always a song and dance to remember what their username is when I want to write to them.

Your arguments seem to be based in a theoretical version of how the world works, not how modern social relationships actually function.

> That's not true in practice.

Well, looks like your practice differs from mine then. Whenever I had to cooperate with someone, I'd ask them about their e-mail, username or any other form of contact, so that I would have a "readily available channel", as you say. I don't see how asking for a username would not be normal; to me it's as much normal as asking for a name.

> But it's always a song and dance to remember what their username is when I want to write to them.

I don't use Twitter, but there are many places where lists of known people are kept - e.g. contacts on my phone or known e-mail addresses; and somehow in neither of such places I have trouble finding the right people; it is a feature of such lists to let me tag specific usernames (be it phone numbers or e-mails, to stick to these examples) with descriptions which sound familiar to me. These descriptions don't necessarily need to be real world names either - often it is easier for me to tag someone with a word describing shared interest or place I know them from, rather than using their real name, because often their last name would look completely unfamiliar to me anyway.

> Your arguments seem to be based in a theoretical version of how the world works, not how modern social relationships actually function.

On the other hand your arguments seem to be based on the narrow view of how your social relationships function, completely ignoring much wider spectrum of "modern social relationships"..

> I wish the EFF and others who are against using real names would at least acknowledge the drawbacks of pseudonyms and the proliferation of fake accounts and fake names which comes with them.

Facebook's Real Name Policy isn't actually effective. I've got ~15 accounts with fake names [but "real sounding" in that they are real names].

> The real name policy has huge benefits. I'm not constantly bombarded by fake friend requests like I am on Twitter, Skype, or any other platform which allows random usernames.

That isn't related to the real name policy, sorry. If it was, I wouldn't have ~15 accounts with different names.

> People who are trying to disconnect their Facebook identity from their real world identity are not using Facebook the way it's meant to be used and should probably just leave it.

I've successfully done it and each account is a silo by interest.

It isn't hard. :/

> People who are trying to disconnect their Facebook identity from their real world identity are not using Facebook the way it's meant to be used and should probably just leave it.

One of the problems with how Facebook is currently implementing it's "real names policy" is that it is not accepting people's real world identity, because FB only accepts certain things as "proof".

For example, trans people often get stung by this.

These discussions remind me of the debate over caller ID in California. California was one of the last states to have Caller ID.

On the opposing side were battered women's advocacy groups arguing that Caller ID would make it impossible for a woman to hide her location from her tormentor.

See http://www.nytimes.com/1993/03/15/nyregion/popularity-of-cal... for a general discussion about this.

the most vehement opposition has come from advocates for battered women and other victims whose safety might depend on being able to call help lines or domestic-violence shelters anonymously. One Caller I.D. option lists numbers for calls that have been made as well as for calls received; thus an abusive husband, for example, could tell if his wife had called for help. And if such a victim has left home, Caller I.D. might help the abuser track her down if she or her children called. 'A Step Backward'

And among the groups that wanted it were, you guessed it, battered women's advocacy groups who argued that Caller ID would put an end to harassing phone calls!

Both sides gave tearful testimony to the California PUC.

I don't see the similarity. Where are the disadvantaged and at-risk groups arguing that Facebook's name policy is a good thing?

One of the best commentaries I've seen on the matter of "authentic" or "real" names policies comes from Yonatan Zunger, chief architect of Google's Google+ social network.

I've had plenty of disagreement with Google and Yonatan over many aspects of G+, and have given both the company and him much grief on multiple counts, including Real Names (Google's varient of Facebook's policy), though I'll also note that Yonatan's generally heard me out quite patiently. But his comments strike me as wise and hard-won, painful knowledge:

https://plus.google.com/+YonatanZunger/posts/WegYVNkZQqq

In practice, the forced revelation of information makes individual privilege and power more important. When everyone has to play with their cards on the table, so to speak, then people who feel like they can be themselves without consequence do so freely -- these generally being people with support groups of like-minded people, and who are neither economically nor physically vulnerable. People who are more vulnerable to consequences use concealment as a method of protection: it makes it possible to speak freely about controversial subjects, or even about any subjects, without fear of harassment.

That's quite an evolution of opinion. I respect Yonatan deeply for both conceiving of, and publicly stating it.

Not to trivialize his opinion, but I always thought it was a wide spread notion that not allowing anonymity will lead to only "politically correct" or "harmless" opinions to surface.

I made the same argument when one of the Norwegian newspapers I somewhat read regularly (online) started requiring full names in the comments sections. The comments sections are now completely boring and predictable, and any really important but sensitive issues that would really need a minority voice in the debate are just not debated at all.

At least not on a civil level. There are always those who blurt out anything even under their full name (although possibly fake), but these tend to be the same people who are not really able to articulate a sensible and constructive argument for their case.

Personally I have opinions I would not like to link to my real name, since I need to work for a living in a place where we have customers and such...

The "Facebookification" of public discussion -- steering to safe topics and views -- is one that's been noted.

There are reasons I use this identity for my own more probing (though not most provocative) commentary.

FWIW, despite the "chief architect" title, IIRC Yonatan Zunger didn't actually join the G+ project until well after the initial launch. That is to say, the real name policy predated his involvement. I suspect he was always opposed to it.

I suspect that myself, and there's a discussion I've had with him since.

As with other of his observations on human behavior generally, Yonatan's take here is both perceptive and nuanced. I have discussed with him (on G+) the point that it took so long for him to state this, his reponse being that Google itself never suggested he shouldn't, but that he wrote this when he felt the time was right. My sense is that there's self-censorship going on, and yes, I self-censor myself (under various identities, for various reasons).

Regardless of when he joined the project, Yonatan's used G+ heavily over the past four years or so and seems to have a pretty good sense of its strengths and weaknesses.

I use Facebook as a developer using a completely fake but real looking identity. I have to have a developer account because of my job. Otherwise I wouldn't touch the site with someone else's bargepole.

Thank you http://www.fakenamegenerator.com

If that account gets blocked then I'll just have to create another fake one.

Why not use actual Test Users for development? https://developers.facebook.com/docs/apps/test-users

I believe you're required to have a real, verified account in order to create and modify test users, and I think there are certain features that are blocked for test users.

More generally, to access and edit app settings.

I think what GP is saying is that you need a Facebook account to get a developer account, so they create fake identities to attach to developer accounts.

Why not create a second account for work under your real name?

I don't think they have a real first account. They only created an account at all because they needed it for work, and they didn't give it any real information because they didn't want Facebook to have it.

Correct.

I don't want a personal or work FB account that has my real identity. I don't want to share my identity with FB period. I consider it toxic. This is personal opinion, but by having an account with a real identity, I am consenting to Facebook spying on me and my friends. The application is a leaky sieve, and it is designed to follow you and your habits around the web.

Therefore I use a fake but real looking FB account purely so I can access developer functions, since I am forced to have a real account to do so.

I highly recommend people read this if they also have doubts about Facebook, their business model and your value to them as a user: http://saintsal.com/facebook/

I was recently kicked off of Facebook for lack of an "Authentic Name." Humorously my name was my legal name.

Getting kicked off of Facebook was the best thing to happen to my productivity and mood. My only frustration is that there are several people on Facebook I have no easy method of giving alternative contact info to.

And in fact illegal in Germany and probably a hell lot of other places. I wonder if that gets enforced anytime soon.

I'm sincerely curious ... how is a social network like Facebook, which is built around connecting you with your real-world friends and acquaintances, supposed to work if you can't require users to identify themselves in a meaningful way?

The little "people you may know" widget is really useful, because it shows me names I recognize from my offline life. If it's just a random stream of pseudonyms and online handles, there's no way I can find my long-lost friends and former co-workers and classmates.

I know several people online by pseudonyms only. If I wanted to add them on facebook I'd add their pseudonym. I also know people who don't go by their real name in real life. I know John's that go by Sean. I know Richard's that go by Dick. I know another Richard that goes by Greg. I suspect that 95% of his friends don't know his "real" name is Richard. I also know 2 Cyrils that go by Rocky and I suspect only their very closest friends and family know their real names are Cyril the 3rd and Cyril the 4th.

I honestly don't understand why this matters to facebook. In the best case people make multiple accounts. One for friends and family, one for business, one for their sexy side, one for their hacker side, whatever. Now facebook gets to claim 4x the people and advertisers can better target ads to each account for each situation.

> I know several people online by pseudonyms only.

Facebook is explicitly designed to primarily be a platform for "real world" relationships, not digital connections with strangers. There are plenty of other places on the web to talk to strangers.

> I know another Richard that goes by Greg.

Then that's the name he can and should use on Facebook. Facebook's policy is not that you have to use your legal name. It's that you should use the name you go by in everyday life, not a pseudonym you invented for online publishing.

>Facebook is explicitly designed to primarily be a platform for "real world" relationships

Good thing the developer can't control how people decide to use their software. I don't understand this obsession with wanting to force people to not use a pseudonym and only add friends who they know in real life. How does it affect you negatively to know that others use the service in a different way than you?

> Then that's the name he can and should use on Facebook. Facebook's policy is not that you have to use your legal name. It's that you should use the name you go by in everyday life, not a pseudonym you invented for online publishing.

Your statement contradicts Facebook's actual policies in practice, which in many cases attempt to mandate the use of a name backed by government-issued ID.

If you read some of the linked documents, they admit that their process isn't currently perfect and are working on finding better ways of verifying identity without depending on government IDs.

...and in the mean time their current process continues to shut down the accounts of people who are using their "authentic" names but don't have proper documentation. It's disingenuous for them to be calling this an "authentic name" policy when they have no intention of enforcing it as such.

People have been complaining about this for years and FB has yet to actually change their policy. This is a company that has "Move fast and break things" as a motto, and you expect us to believe that they cannot move fast with updating a company policy doc?

What's the measure for a "real world" relationship? Many people seem to use "I've met this person" as a criteria for adding someone one Facebook. But meeting someone doesn't necessarily mean you know their full name (neither does it mean that they want you to know it)

Also, how do you prove to Facebook that this is "the name you go by" if they challenge it?

> Many people seem to use "I've met this person" as a criteria for adding someone one Facebook.

That seems like a pretty solid filter for me.

> But meeting someone doesn't necessarily mean you know their full name

Which is why Facebook's policies and technology is so great: I can easily find and add a new friend who I just met even if I don't have their last name yet.

> neither does it mean that they want you to know it

I can't plausibly imagine any real world scenario where I would willingly share my first name but not my last, but maybe that's just because my name is pretty identifiable.

> Also, how do you prove to Facebook that this is "the name you go by" if they challenge it?

That's the difficult part, and what Facebook is trying to find a good answer to.

Yes I know quiet few people from the pre internet days and I remember their handles but not their real names.

> I'm sincerely curious ... how is a social network like Facebook, which is built around connecting you with your real-world friends and acquaintances, supposed to work if you can't require users to identify themselves in a meaningful way?

"Hey, Steve, what's your Facebook name?" "Goku35179." "Cool, I'm friending you."

If your long-lost friends and former co-workers and classmates do not choose to be findable, that should be their decision to make. But that was always only a secondary use case for Facebook.

You're being obtuse. Ask your friend their facebook name or send them a friend request + message rather than requiring the service to verify with certainty that they are who they claim to be. How is it supposed to work? Exactly how it has for the majority of users for 10+ years. If your long-lost friends and former co-workers and classmates wanted you to find them then they would make it easier to do so.

You can require users to identify themselves in a "meaningful way," even in the way that they go by to some of their friends and acquaintances. People aren't arguing that. The point is that the name that they go by doesn't have to have any relation to a _legal_ name. (You'd be surprised at how many people you know whose legal names are different than what they go by in real life.)

The little "people you may know" widget is really useful

It seems to be quite useful for generating spam-mails, I'll give it that...

I'm convinced these are the primary reason that gmail added the tabs to its interface, so we could all ignore the "Social" tab.

Well, they're not using the name you know because they don't want you or other casual acquaintances to find them.

It seems like this sort of privacy control could be put in place without resorting to pseudonyms.

For instance: you register using your real name/"authentic identity", but you select a restrictive privacy option that says that your profile won't show up when people search for your name on Facebook; nobody can friend-request you; and all your posts and other info is visible to friends only.

Voila, you now have a private profile, but the people whom you are friends with on Facebook don't have to create a user script that replaces your pseudonym with the name they actually know you by.

Do you trust facebook to respect all those settings in the future, or are they likely to implement a change to the system that defaults everything open? What about selling it to advertisers and other organisations?

I'm quite comfortable with the pseudonyms of my friends. Some of them are known by pseudonyms IRL, and one or two have names that don't match their ID but are the name they use in life and at work. More women than men; pseudonymity is a useful defence against ubiquitous harrasment.

You do know that for some years you could find people by phone number, even if they were hiding their profile from search?

And for Facebook’s Caller ID this API endpoint is still existing.

I'm pretty sure that you can already do all of this. I can't currently find the option to entirely de-list from search, but I thought I had it on before.

You can de-list pretty much all information about you - without a publicly visible profile picture and your current location (city/country), you're pretty much impossible to find among others who share your first and last name. And yes, Facebook has enough users now that if you live in a big city, it's likely you'll find a few people sharing your first and last name in the same city.

Unless you have a very uncommon name, or live in a smaller city. I live in a 280k city and everyone with my last name in the phonebook is related to me, and on Facebook only me, my sister, my uncle and my cousin have an account.

My full name exists less than a dozen times on Facebook in all of Germany, and the name does not occur anywhere in the world outside of northern Germany.

This is quite an issue.

I know many people with highly distinctive, and, in a surprising number of cases, entirely unique names. Some rather surprisingly.

Name plus city plus one other piece of data (approximate birth date, school(s) attended, former employer(s), a few other associates/contacts, profession) are very often enough to uniquely identify an individual, even with an otherwise common identity.

> (approximate birth date, school(s) attended, former employer(s), a few other associates/contacts, profession) are very often enough to uniquely identify an individual

Yes, but you can set all of those to private and thus effectively delist yourself from Facebook Search. The only thing that really has to be public nowadays is your name.

While I sympathize with the underlying sentiments of this, I have to disagree with what it actually says. If the EFF were really trying to help users, it wouldn't be trying to get Facebook to change; it would be trying to get users to stop using Facebook. The problem is not that FB needs to improve its name policy; the problem is that we have a single centralized social network for everybody. What we should have is a way for people to build their own independent social networks, so that someone who wants to be able to connect online with friends while avoiding their creepy ex can do so. Why isn't the EFF pushing for that?

It's to decrease the perception of click fraud.

Facebook's real name policies have to do with how people perceive the plausibility of the numbers reported for their a-la-cart paid advertisement customers.

This policy doesn't actually decrease fake shell accounts. It's an intentionally ineffective ceremonious anti-fraud campaign.

Facebook knows that third parties conducting click and follow fraud for paying advertising customers brings them a lot of money.

They came up with a policy that gives the perception of combating it ... actually closing real human accounts. However, all the fake bot accounts are and have always been named like "Jane Doe" and "Bob Smith" ... they remain untouched.

What's the effect? The paying customer thinks that Facebook is making an effort to combat fraud but in truth they have every interest in keeping the fraud around and creating a false perception that things are changing - like the oil and tobacco companies; like nike and nestle; like fast food - like every other billion dollar company ever.

You don't amass $30 billion by being an honest Joe.

I hate Facebook, but I think they are right about this policy.

If you're a person at risk due to many of the issues described here, you don't belong on Facebook. If you're a domestic violence victim avoiding a dangerous person "liking" the wrong thing or somebody's innocent repost can put you in danger, pseudonym or not.

The transgender situation is similarly tragic, but it's an issue that trans people run into when presenting ID to buy beer as well. We should get states to provide some sort of transitional ID or something.

So if you're the victim of abuse or a member of a persecuted minority, you should hide at home with your shame and not participate in the social aspects of society?

What is this, the 18th century?

You claim to only be suggesting opsec, while ignoring that such extreme opsec (aka, not participating in many aspects of society) wouldn't be necessary if Facebook didn't insist of removing privacy (aka "the effective capacity to misrepresent yourself").

The power of the internet is that it lets you publish what you want, when you want. This should enable people to act like their true self or seek the support of others. Facebook seems to think that these are bad things that need to be prevented by forcing everyone to id themselves.

Blame Facebook for creating this hazard instead of blaming the victims for wanting to participate in social activities like a normal human.

I'm stunned by the defenders of this policy I'm seeing here.

Not singling you out in particular this is for everyone who doesn't seem to get it due to youth, lack of experience, very privileged life, complete inability to empathise, I'm not sure what exactly in each case but it's ugly at times and Hacker News seems to be ground zero for a lot of this stuff.

I suspect like many things I see on here there is a huge lack of life experience informing opinions.

Luckily on HN you don't have to use your real name so these immature opinions won't come back to bite you as a well adjust adult with life experience.

> defenders of

> everyone who doesn't seem to get it due to youth, lack of experience, very privileged life, complete inability to empathise

> huge lack of life experience informing opinions

> immature opinions

That comment was very mature.

Who are you to judge me?

If you are a domestic violence victim, you need to think about opsec while your tormentor is walking free. Sorry if that offends you, but preserving you and your children's life and health is more important than futzing about on Facebook. For extreme cases, states like New York actually provide state managed postal mailing addresses to prevent inadvertent disclosure by banks or other companies. This is a real issue that I take very seriously.

My employment contract features an ethics clause that leaves me personally vulnerable even in some fairly benign circumstances, so my Facebook page consists mostly of "happy birthday", pictures of my kids and community events. Does that suck? Sure, but my career is more valuable to me than Facebook commenting, and unfortunately I can be subject to the whims of thin skinned people.

> preserving you and your children's life and health is more important than futzing about on Facebook

Not having Facebook may cut you off from your support network.

> If you're a person at risk due to many of the issues described here, you don't belong on Facebook.

Including the "issues" of: being a "Native American...using traditional Irish and Scottish names...[being a] LGBTQ [Facebook] user"? Including the "issue" of just having an unusual name, like Violet Blue?

This is online. We shouldn't HAVE the same tragedies of discrimination as someone buying beer. We definitely shouldn't be promoting requirements that increase the likelihood of those tragedies.

> We should get states to provide some sort of transitional ID or something.

The fact that identification is difficult to change for transgender individuals is an enormous fractured problem. Also consider that Facebook is used around the world in various political climates. Even in the state of California it is necessary to go through treatment and get a doctors note and pay several hundreds of dollars and wait several months (You can forgo the doctors note if you're willing to publish it in the local newspaper a few times).

> The transgender situation is similarly tragic, but it's an issue that trans people run into when presenting ID to buy beer as well.

That is different than a name you are seeing in front of your face, every time you say something. Imagine trying to talk to a friend and cringing every time you see one of your own messages.

I don't think Facebook advertises that it's a horribly bad service for domestic violence victims, etc. If they did, this policy would be more justified.

Isn't it kinda obvious the long game of facebook is to become the single globally mandated identity service? Governments will contract with them to maintain your official citizen ID records. Game over.

I can't imagine the government mandating something like that. I haven't used Facebook in four years.

I can't, either, but it's an interesting thought in a twisted dystopian kind of way...

One of the investors in FB held a previous position at the CIA's investment company.

https://www.corbettreport.com/meet-in-q-tel-the-cias-venture...

You should read "The Circle". It is basically that and more.

The book was awful in all the right ways.

It was a perfect example of SV employees "going native" and surrendering their entire sense of self worth over to the desires of their employer. It tracked the ways startups indoctrinate naive employees into to their cults of personality pretty accurately. Company as Godhead. If the protagonist drank any more koolaid she would have become the koolaid man herself. After all, without that external sense of approval, you are worthless. One for all, and all for the billionaires.

It's a case study in trojan horsing your way to the top though. Company offers shiny service X, but with nefarious capabilities (surveillance, tracking, blackmail) nobody considers, because, hey, shiny selfies!!!

I found The Circle entertaining.

As an argument against Facebook (or Google,Amazon,etc) it just sets up a strawman. Not realistic enough. That politicians can be pressured into 24/7 live streaming is ridiculous. The Circle has no serious opponents, while in reality there are more powers which would acquire or destroy Facebook if they attempted something like that.

You may be a little oblivious to how Facebook has "like" buttons, which are also javascript tracking beacons, on basically every site online. Well, "Facebook" doesn't have them there, the site owners include them willingly, serving up the privacy of their users in exchange for "engagement." Billions of tracking beacons spread around the Internet give Facebook a real time click-by-click bread-cumb trail of almost your entire thought process and Internet experiential reality (reminder: use uBlock Origin with everything enabled).

Google has the email of probably over a billion people. Sure, there are safeguards to prevent employee naughtiness (supposedly there are now, after years of "lol, i'm a sysadmin and i'll read the email of my ex" abuse), but if they wanted, they could do a lot of damage and there's nobody capable of stopping them.

Heck, let's not even include google analytics. Sure, they say there is a "corporate firewall" between the global analytic record of every web user alive and the rest of the company, but we just have to trust them.

Trust Google. Trust Facebook. Trust VW. It's only software created by and data retained by for-profit corporations in constant competition who must meet growth targets or else the market will punish them. What could go wrong?

(Amazon doesn't have a bird in this fight.)

Old quote (from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUXh-GPa5dI&t=36m00):

"In some respects, it's pretty clear that we are sleepwalking into nightmares. Absolutely. And the most distressing thing is how hard that is to explain to anybody.

The way in which people will give away their personal details in much the way as in the child history books about colonialism. You had native chieftains who handed over mineral rights in return from some baubles from some canny imperialist. All that stuff is happening but it's very hard to explain to anybody."

I was ready to stop reading The Circle after a bit because it was so over-the-top. However, as the book went on, I found that it kinda worked for me if read as a deliberately and wildly exaggerated cautionary tale parable of sorts--rather than as serious speculative fiction. Still wasn't enamored with it but possibly worth a read.

I've only heard of the issue from the LGBTQ stance, and I'm not very clear here. But I'm wondering, for these people, why not just legally change your name?

Take for example Germany: Photocopying your ID is a crime, and changing your name is impossible (unless you get a court verdict that there is an actual need for you to change your name).

So Facebook’s Real Name policy forces me to get a court verdict and commit a crime? Great...

Legally changing one's name ranges from "a pain in the ass" to "impossible", depending on jurisdiction and the contexts in which you have used your previous legal names. It is also generally part of the program for trans* people to spend a period of time living as their gender (name, clothes, etc.) before more permanent (medically and legally) steps are taken.

Are you British? Because outside of the UK, changing your name is much more difficult than just printing off and signing a piece of paper.

> why not just legally change your name?

Well, what if you're not fully out of the closet yet? What if you're a teenager in a very religious household?

You guys should really understand the policy before ripping on it. There are tons of other ways to have your name verified. https://www.facebook.com/help/159096464162185

I think you misunderstand. The only way for me to verify my authentic name as a transgender individual if I understand the page correctly is for me to go and take out a magazine subscription (to match with my mail and another non-matching photo ID). The other identification options are all required to match my legal name.

Pseudonymity is a double-edged sword; it enables people to hide from abusers online, but it also enabled a lot of online abuse (Twitter is rampant with the stuff, not that Facebook is immune). I don't know which side is right, and I wish that there was some way to combine the best of both but so far nobody's struck that balance or even really come close. But if that balance is struck, I don't think the sort of stridency the EFF is engaging in here is going to be part of the solution.

TheLastPsychiatrist explains expertly why the whole form of this argument is wrong in a post questioning Randi Zuckerberg. It's well worth reading, especially if you are considering the benefits of opting out of Facebook (and I strongly recommend you jump in, the water's find :) http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2014/01/randi_zuckerberg.html

I've supported everything EFF has done so far but this is a really bad idea. Have people forgotten the chaos of MySpace and other social networks before Facebook?

I wish to God that Google+ had done the right thing on names during their five minutes of relevance. They might have actually lasted as a viable Facebook competitor.

Google needed Facebook to have a MySpace moment to open the door but their insistence on real names, binding all of your accounts (Gmail, Youtube, etc) to your Google+ account and Google's history of unceremoniously dropping support for services if they under-perform kept me and millions of others from going there.

There has to be some sort of middle ground, where people who need to mask their identity for various reasons can be allowed to without tipping the scales towards platform abuse. This doesn't have to be a black or white issue.

FB simply needs to figure out a fair way to validate identity but allow a user to use a sanctioned alternate identity. I think this is what the EFF action is really about

Facebook beat all other social networks because it is the best at connecting people who already know each other. And its most effective tool to connect these people is its search functionality whose effectiveness requires that all its users use their real name. It is unrealistic to expect Facebook to risk its very existence just because the EFF demands that it do so.

People just need to stop using Facebook. Join Twitter and be Happy #JackIsBack

"I don't make the rules, I just pick which rules I follow"

How do you get blocked? I changed my account to a ridiculous name and I know a couple of people that have changed their equally ridiculous pseudonyms multiple times. Maybe they only block you if you have a real-sounding name?

I don't understand why people feel entitled to use Facebook in this way. Facebook is a place to communicate with your friends and family, not a publishing platform.

If you want to write anonymously, then get a free account on any number of other platforms that are designed for anonymous publishing.

This petition strikes me as painfully naive. It should be obvious to anyone that Facebook's user data is what makes it a multi-billion dollar company. That data is worth fuck all if it correlates to superhero names and cat pictures as opposed to real people.

I dislike real name policies, but I do want the problems with using real names to be fixed if possible.

How does EFF get it's funding? I feel like they should be given more credit for what they are doing.

https://supporters.eff.org/donate

I don't understand why people make anything of "real names" policies. They just want the users to have real looking names. They don't actually have any way to force real names. So it's a non-issue.

There's no oppressed person in a police state signing up for Facebook that reads a EULA and concludes "well, Facebook said I have to reveal my true identity, I guess that's the way it is."

They can and do enforce the real name policy. If they suspect your name isn't real (via algorithm or user reports) they will freeze your account until you send them scans of government ID confirming your name. I have a friend with an unusual name, and she's had to go through the process twice thanks to harassers flagging her.

"thanks to harassers flagging her"

This is a fairly significant and under discussed problem. Rush Limbaugh is probably safe from harassment... that dude commenting in some political group is not so immune. This creates an interesting chilling effect.

Because many people have had accounts disabled or names changed back for trying to change their name.

Exactly! I have a similar policy at the community I operate. Members have to sign up with a real-sounding pen name. I'm very flexible on that too. All that means is you can't sign up with a pen name like "CRaZzE BlOgGeR". I don't care if your pen name is your real name or not--it just can't sound like a dumb made-up internet username. And yet people still email me daily, enraged that they can't sign up for a professional online community with the pen name of "BitterDoll SweetBear".

This kind of policy goes a long way towards the perception of professionalism at any web site. You're probably not going to take a person named "Spazmo Jones" as seriously as you would "Amy Wong". It's a sort of broken window theory.

(And yes, all of the examples above are pen names people actually tried to sign up with!)

> This kind of policy goes a long way towards the perception of professionalism at any web site.

Does it, though? Looking at HN usernames, some are clearly names (mine, yours), and many are probably not (patio11, JupeterMoon, hackuser, on__3, to use some from the comments of a neighboring thread). I don't think this detracts at all from the professionalism of the discourse here, nor from the perception thereof.

Similarly, I wouldn't weigh the professionalism of a hypothetical StackExchange user differently if their usernames were 'SparkleMermaid', 'ArmadilloRocketeer', or 'Iheartpython' -- I notice the content of their writing before I notice their name. Heck, the sandwich-themed name of your company shouldn't make one pre-judge the communities you've built, or the perception the work you've done to build them.

Am I that much in the minority that I don't care if your username is your initials + favorite 3 digit number, your real name, or a reference to your favorite Star Trek episide? Is this because I grew up in a time when handles were either assigned-by-name or completely made-up, depending on what system you had joined? Maybe it's the influence of having been a lurker on Slashdot and HN, where clever nicknames were commonplace, yet one's choice of nickname nearly never was the basis for judging value of contributions.

If that was what Facebook did that would be fine (I think it's silly, but it doesn't have any real downsides, so I don't care), but it is not.

Did you read the post?

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