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Comment by ryanhuff | Hacker News Reader

Or change your name to an alias.

I recently tried to do this. Facebook actually will recognize if a name sounds "too fake" and reject it, saying that you can only use a real name.

https://www.facebook.com/help/112146705538576

Facebook is just shooting themselves in the foot. Instead of accommodating for it's users it wants its users to accommodate for facebook. These decisions are just silly and a slap in the face to anyone who wants a shred of privacy.

> Facebook actually will recognize if a name sounds "too fake" and reject it

Not all fake names! About six months ago I went to interview on-site at Facebook. I have two Facebook accounts, a legacy from before testing accounts were actually available on the platform. One's my real account, the other is under the name of 'Johnny Appleseed'.

When you arrive at Facebook you check-in using the e-mail address you've been using to communicate with your recruiter. What I didn't realise was that Facebook's systems then automatically look up that e-mail address, and pre-populate your visitors badge with information from that account.

So the upshot of this was that for the rest of the day I was 'Johnny Appleseed'. Given I was interviewing for a iOS role this raised a few eyebrows with my interviewers. The receptionist told me this happens a lot for software engineering interviews.

Wow that explains something I've been wondering about for a while. I interviewed there a few months back (using an email address not tied to a Facebook account) and all of a sudden I started getting emails about how I had joined Facebook using that address, and hadn't added any friends. I guess if you don't already have an account, they make one for you?

>Instead of accommodating for it's users it wants its users to accommodate for Facebook.

No, they are absolutely accommodating for their users -- and their users are advertisers. That is THE problem. Facebook Inc's #1 priority is making money (like all for-profit enterprises), and therefore their #1 priority is to make advertisers happy.

Why should advertisers care if you incorrectly 'spell' your name? All Facebook should care about, to support their income, is engaging real users - real names or no.

Advertisers want engaged, affluent users. Affluent users don't like getting trolled or harassed (supposedly). Real names create accountability, reducing trolling and harassment (supposedly). An application of the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory, if you will.

I used my middle name as my last name.

My name became incredibly generic when I did this, so bonus points for unsearchability.

That's interesting, I recently had a friend change his name to something analagous to "SunBurned".

I thought it was bizarre, and maybe just temporary, but it's there, and since I have my contacts merged in my phone, I have to remember to search for SunBurned rather than his name when I want to text him.

My name is very unusual, so unusual that other family members haven't been able to sign-up with our surname for the three or four years as it's "too fake".

>Facebook actually will recognize if a name sounds "too fake" and reject it, saying that you can only use a real name

They say they will, but I've had a ton of friends change their names to obviously very fake names that Facebook has allowed, including "Sauce Money" (a rapper).

Would this work? I think Facebook might not discard your old name, and might still let people search by all the names you've ever entered.

We can also clone some Arabic, Chinese, Russian, Japanese or Indian names.

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