There is a person on Facebook using my exact (very rare) name, going to my exact university, living in my exact city, also happening to be gay like me.
However unlikely that this is just one gigantic coincidence, I would have been willing to let it slide if their public Facebook timeline wasn't filled with desperate pleads and public invitations to be sexually pleased in every possible bodily orifice.
Me and a dozen other friends reported the profile as impersonating me and it was denied literally 3 minutes later, which, I guess, is completely understandable considering I use a pseudonym on Facebook.
So what would be the solution? Changing my Facebook name to my real name and uploading a scan of some document to prove to Facebook that it is really me? Seems like too much to lose and practically nothing to gain (I'm not overly upset about the impersonator but I wouldn't mind them gone)
> So what would be the solution? Changing my Facebook name to my real name and uploading a scan of some document to prove to Facebook that it is really me?
Close your FB account, write a blog post and/or magazine articles about it, contact facebook and demand to remove this impersonator for slander and defamation.
Worse it'll probably be some punk kid (no money, no real consequences, etc) and you'll be left with nothing but giant legal fees.
If anything this is a clear indication that //allowing// real names online is insanity. The polar opposite of current policy should be in effect.
They're not even allowed to enforce it in Germany [1]: "Facebook may not prevent its users from using fake names, a German privacy watchdog said on Tuesday, in the latest privacy setback for the U.S. company in Europe." Note that said authority is part of the government (unlike, say, EFF).
[1] http://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-germany-pseudonym...
Similar to the right of getting all your data in the EU. They stopped answering requests and the government representative in Ireland (who is responsible) also stopped replying to emails. They'll give you all your data if you sue them, otherwise they just ignore the laws. With Dublin on their side, there's little the EU can do.
But what I do with the logged-in browser is influenced a lot by wether it is a community with a real name expectation our wether it is a pseudonym playground. The virtual place where we connect with people we meet while parenting our enjoying an expensive outdoor hobby provides infinitely more valuable targeting opportunities than the places we go to indulge in shamefully inappropriate jokes. Making the community better is not a pretext for pro-advertising features, it is a key pro-advertising feature itself.
And for many years a majority of my friend circle were people I probably never even knew the "real" name of - people in the demo/cracking scene where it was often common for people to introduce you by handle and group (e.g. say Strider of Fairlight, to take a "well known" example from the scene that I spoke to on the phone but back in the day but never met, who I can't for the life of me remember the real name of). Some of these people I'd meet in person regularly and still not use the real name of because their real name was not what people around us would know them by in that context.
My ex goes by three different names: Her "real" name from her passport. An Anglicized name that her immediate family and childhoold school friends uses, and a different Anglicized name that most of her work colleagues and newer friends uses. Many of them don't know the other names.
A lot of people have different names that are used in different contexts that are just as real as the others, just not legally recognised.
You are likely in a small minority. This is the difference between a social network meant for the general populace and one specific for tech folk.
Agreed. I'm a fairly introverted person and participate in a lot of online communities, but I rarely consider people I haven't met to be my friends. That just seems strange to me. I'd even venture to say that in the tech folk world that is a minority position. Most of the people I know need some sort of tangible validation to form a real friendship.
E.g. which name for my ex is most "real"? Her legal name? Using that would prevent most of her friends from finding her - it's not the name she uses. This is common for vast numbers of immigrants with names that are hard to pronounce.
> This is the difference between a social network meant for the general populace and one specific for tech folk.
Facebook is trying to be the one to decide how we should interact with our friends, and fails to understand even how names are used in real life, not just for "tech folk".
Also, I think it's unfair to pretend that real names don't make a difference. They're a big part of what makes Facebook different than MySpace, Twitter, or other social networks.
Well, they do need your name to link and correlate it with other data sources (like address books uploaded by people, offline data sources like data brokers, etc.) and use that to show "better ads" and make more money. The value lies in identifying related information with attributes like name, age, sex, location, preferences, check-ins, etc.
> Also, I think it's unfair to pretend that real names don't make a difference. They're a big part of what makes Facebook different than MySpace, Twitter, or other social networks.
Nobody is pretending. There are millions of people, not just a few exceptions, who use their real names and still engage in horrible behavior on Facebook. It's a misconception that "real names" makes people behave better or brings in accountability. It doesn't for the ones who harass others. On the other hand, using a real name exposes people to plenty of abuse online, like getting their profiles reported and deactivated because of Facebook's nonsensical rules and utter lack of any consideration for users, while bullies just go around shutting down people. Facebook is a great tool to shut people down whom one may disagree with.
Reading EFF and other sites' articles on Facebook's "real name policy" and the later rechristened "authentic name policy" would show the dark side of using real names online.
> Nobody is pretending.
Just because some people are willing to still troll under their real names does not mean it doesn't have a substantive impact on people's behavior.
Heck, I personally have seen the difference in my own activity on Reddit (where I'm anonymous) and HN (where I'm not). I definitely hold myself to a higher standard here, even when arguments get heated, because this is part of my professional profile (and Reddit is not).
You seem to be making assumptions based on how you operate in the world and attributing superpowers to Facebook where there are none. I know people with Facebook accounts where their real name is not listed anywhere on the profile or in communications they have with others. These people do not fill in things like email address, phone number, place of work and other data that can be linked with address book uploads by other users. The people in these people's friends list are ok with communicating with the "non-real name" and haven't snitched even when Facebook tried to get them to.
> Just because some people are willing to still troll under their real names does not mean it doesn't have a substantive impact on people's behavior. Heck, I personally have seen the difference in my own activity on Reddit (where I'm anonymous) and HN (where I'm not). I definitely hold myself to a higher standard here, even when arguments get heated, because this is part of my professional profile (and Reddit is not).
It's not just some people. I never said that all people who use real names behave badly on social names. But many do (as I said above, not just a few exceptions). Real names is a facade that Facebook uses to get more information about people, and does not influence bad behavior negatively in many cases. And your behavior and how you conduct yourself with respect to the use of real name or otherwise on different platforms is your choice. It has no bearing on what others do.
Not very. Assuming the demographic infomation is still accurate, that's the part they can sell.
Believing the line of reasoning that real names lead to better communities is like believing a blog post explaining why open office plans are uniformly better for worker productivity/morale/whatever.
At the end of the day there are probably some true believers, but they're just useful idiots to people with ulterior motives.
They get most interest data about you from within FB (what pages and posts you like etc.) and from pages across the internet you visit through like buttons embedded there (even without clicking them). So there's a lot of relevant meta data directly linked to your account and no need for them to know your real name.
[0] https://www.propublica.org/article/facebook-doesnt-tell-user...
Spam and fraud accounts are a rather big problem, and this is one way of raising the barrier for creating those. And yeah, Facebook surely has other motivation too, like not having your metadata scattered across multiple accounts.
But I still don't see how knowing your real name would make a strong difference to them. I have quite a few FB friends that use obvious fantasy names (mostly for privacy reasons I think), and they don't seem to be banned or forced to change it.