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Comment by jrtashjian | Hacker News Reader

The only problem with forcing real names that I've recently encountered are family members who work in prisons. They use a modified name as to make it difficult for an inmate to gain knowledge of them and where they live. Personal and family protection in a way with the ability to still use Facebook to connect with distant friends and family members.

Anyone else run into this instance?

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That's a good example, but there are countless reasons why people cannot safely use their legal names in places like Facebook.

They can elect not to participate, and Facebook can elect to prohibit them.

Neither party really suffers any material damage, but it does frustrate some decent people.

I'd argue that people do suffer material damage by being blocked from using Facebook.

Could you elaborate?

Isolation from friends and family. Like not being able to go to your moms house because her neighbor might try to kill you and her if he discovers she is your mom.

The conclusion "no facebook = severe social isolation" (including being cut off from ones own family) only works under the assumption that basically everyone everywhere forgot how to socialize without "social" and that interaction without facebook is somehow impossible or at least hard. This assumption is maniacally and laughably absurd. I can not even fathom how the planet might look where such a statement might sound reasonable.

Although you're right that it's no impossible, it is much harder. It's like default values on software products. The easier something is, the more people will do it. Lots of things are harder without Facebook access, like accessing photos from a family member.

Being turned down for jobs for not having a Facebook account: http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/109ipi/no_faceboo...

It seems like it would be more sensible for them to use modified names inside the prison.

Of course, they probably don't get to choose what name to use in the prison.

Seems to me that guards using fake names should be a matter of course in prisons.

I think judges have more to fear than prison guards.

I think that both guards and inmates should be assigned fake names in prison, or addressed simply by number, to avoid prison interactions spilling out of the prison and affecting prisoners' families etc. Of course, the danger with this is that abuses within prison would become harder to track and account for.

I going to guess that referring to inmates by numbers would be widely criticized as inhumane by many human rights groups. It would be an uphill battle to keep something like that going.

Inmates are commonly referred to by their number in prison -- as far as the prison system is concerned, they're not 'Leland Highsmith,' they're A319445 -- it's tied to their phone calls, commissary purchases, meal records, medicine records, and health records.

I'm not entirely sure how it works inside, I just know the reason my brother-in-law has a modified name on Facebook. As for the inmates, they obviously all have numbers but any prison guard can look them up in the computer.

Fun fact: Portions of the numbers on an inmate's chest refers to things like the year they entered the prison, what number they are for the year that they entered, what they're in for and either how long or when they get released.

Or a corrupt prison officer who leaks the whole spreadsheet of every fake name : real name.

Sadly, safety concerns are not a concern of advertisers or the CFO.

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