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Comment by MartinCron | Hacker News Reader

My wife tried making a pseudonym Facebook account for helping me test FB integration on my site... Facebook refused to let her create an account with the name "Peaches Gnome"

Anyone out there who is actually named Peaches Gnome will need to prove it to Facebook. Imagine the troubles that the Zappa kids go through.

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I did the same thing two days ago for the exact same reason, with the name "Aleph Zadik", and it worked like a charm. Is there a human being deciding what looks like a real name or not, or is it algorithm-based?

FB started out when you had to give your "official" email address to sign up, which would usually be firstname.lastname@university.ac.uk (or .edu for Americans).

People who insist on using their "handles" are hankering back to the world where online and offline lives were mainly seperate. That just isn't true any more, it's as if you used a fake name in the phone book and wondered why no-one called...

I agree with you that using nicknames is hankering back to the "old" way, but I can't see why it wouldn't be possible anymore to separate on & off. Simply because a couple of IT moguls (Schmidt, Zuck and such) have predicted one future for us? We humans have enough talent and imagination to escape, distort and nullify those bleak predictions. AT least I hope so.

And yes, using a nick on FB means exactly this: you don't want anyone to call you. I simply don't want to network with my friends & family on facebook (better ways are available), but i needed access to the API ^^

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