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Comment by mortenjorck | Hacker News Reader

So if I don't have a Facebook account and I buy an Oculus Quest after October, does this mean I may have to submit a copy of my driver's license just to set up a piece of consumer electronics?

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You might not be able to use it even then. I deleted, not suspended, my Facebook account years ago and recently tried to create a new one because there was a Facebook group I needed access to. Created the account and a few minutes later it was suspended with no mention as to why and I was required to submit a photo of my driver's license to appeal the suspension. I did so and ended up waiting weeks before discovering that the account was now permanently suspended with no ability to appeal. No reason given. I literally did nothing between creating the account and it being suspended so I couldn't have violated any policies.

You need to submit a copy of your driver's license for a FB account these days??

If that is the case it would be harder to get a FB account than to vote in some states...

What do you mean? Are you aware of a long history, and continued attempts today, of voter disenfranchisement in the US?

I am but I am also aware that a functioning democracy requires that the people trust the polls. And one piece of that is verifying that those who vote are who they say they are (and are citizens of the country they are voting in).

So you're in favor of zero cost licenses and zero cost delivery of said licenses. If your means of identification or authorization to vote aren't free, then you're advocating for a pool tax, which is illegal.

I'm not sure if you realize that there's only a handful of confirmed cases of voter fraud in the US in decades. The current system, based upon an address registration and someone confirming their information at the polling place, has achieved this result.

It's almost like having access to a company's services is less essential than having a hand in your society's decision-making mechanism.

What happens when we privatize voting, too?

A further sacrifice of the needs of the people in favor of the whims of our corporate overlords? You don't even really need to vote; Facebook already knows you want to vote for Mark.

We will get something that will look like the 2020 election.

It's almost as though Facebook understands how important it is to verify you are who you say you are. A simple verification to certify that those in their system are authentic.

Facebook has a policy where they can arbitrarily ban you for failing to "prove your identity" if they believe your account does not use "the name you go by in real life." One of the ways they ask you to prove your identity is to send in a license.

Unsurprisingly, this ends up hurting all sorts of people who do not use their legal names online: people who have just chosen other names, people who want to avoid being targeted or stalked, trans people, etc. They've updated this policy to allow for some of these situations (https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/facebook-real-names-1.336...) but folks still get banned for failing to comply.

Man, where is the world of anonymity that I loved?

As soon as someone manages to get your account flagged as possibly using a fake name I think.

If they suspect you aren't who you are then yeah. Otherwise generally a phone number and email are enough. That's the price for Facebook, but it's good to be informed about what you're sacrificing.

I’m guessing the upside is that if you ever lose your password there’s an actual account recovery flow based on identity verification.

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