Behind the Facebook DRAG QUEEN CRACKDOWN: 'Anonymity soon!' Facebook is reportedly planning to release an app that will allow its users to hide their identity behind anonymous profiles. The apparent policy shift comes just weeks after drag artists in New York complained that the free content ad network was forcing them to ditch their stage names on the service. However, it's more …
At last someone is doing something to stamp out this terrible canine epidemic.
...after they shut down my account.
They won't open the account again until I provide them with identification (eg a passport) in the name of the account.
However, since I never had a passport in that name, I do not have such ID to give them.
And as a result, they will not unlock my account.
I am getting very frustrated with Facebook over this and am not getting any helpful response other than repeated replies of "Please provide an acceptable form of ID that matches the account. Sorry for the inconvenience." no matter how many times that I created the false name to protect myself from abusive threats.
Sorry, but no sympathy mate. You gave them away all that data and now it's theirs to use or misuse as they please. Learn from the lesson and be careful what you post online in the future, and where.
With a bit of luck, you might be able to persuade them to delete your account if there is anything in there that bothers you now that you can't get access to it. If you are a EU resident, you stand a reasonable chance of success.
No sympathy here either. FB said my last name wasn't real and wanted docs, so went elsewhere. I don't need their shit.
It's like people that make it hard to buy things from them. There are always competitors willing to take my money (or personal information, as the case might be)
Please choose from the following list of reasons why you wish to be anonymous?
* abusive spouse
* illegal activity
* don't trust the man
* actually care about privacy
* other
You have chosen Illegal Activity.
Please specify the type of illegal activity you are involved with
* drugs
* sex
* financial
* immoral behaviour
Thank you.
You are now Anonymous. We will not provide any information to third parties about your activity.*
*except for governments and registered multinationals who might wish to do business with you.
"Their site their rules. Use a site which doesn't care about who you are."
Ah yes, forgive me for expressing an opinion which is critical of their rules. I shall apply your argument to everything from now on that I disagree with. I was going to complain about detention about trial in some countries but now I shan't because it's their country, their rules. etc.
I can see a way this could work fairly easily from their perspective. You can have a pseudonym account so long as it is linked to a real one. The link would only be known to Facebook (and admen and law enforcement) so they still fulfill their legal and monetary obligations whilst allowing you to be anonymous to the rest of the users.
It doesn't help if you want to be anonymous from 'the man' or add brokers but then facebook probably isn't interested in your business. It would however work for those with stage names or those who simply do not want to be found by other members of the public.
Um, I skipped over this in the subsequent "FB is evil" stories, but is the central premise actually true in the first place? FB may be (trying to) force people to use their real names for their personal profile, but it already has mechanisms in place for "public persons", businesses, etc to have a page/profile. Your personal profile is for you to network to your friends, these other pages are for you to interact with fans, promote your business/product/band/whatever.
It also means an actor can use their real name for their private profile and their actor name as their "public figure" page which is one example of supposed hypocrisy that was levelled at FB. Similarly a politician can have two profiles. This is all within the existing rules of FB so did I miss something in the story or has it been glossed over in the interests of a good ruckus?
This does not address the issue of transgender individuals who may endanger themselves but the story doesn't seem to be about them.
No I was wondering how many knee jerk reactions I'd get from people who obviously don't know FB offer a way of doing things and who despite JDX saying the exact thing that I did seem incapable of actually checking things out .
Surely it would be simpler to identify those people doing the bullying or whatever and simply block that account and all accounts set up using the same references?
Pseudonyms are the standard on the internet and have many useful, legal and un-nefarious purposes. Journalists often go under a pseudonymous by-line, authors have pen-names, musicians and actors have stage names.
use my real name on the internet/facebook to stop my employer looking up to see if I post firable comments about the mouldy old scrooge.
Also it stops to morons I work with from posting abusive crap to my facebook page.
Strangely, all of my facebook friends know my real name because most of them have met me in reality....
And it will be a cold day in hell I install zucky's personal info slurper on my phone
They can't do that on iOS, Facebook will ask for permission, you just have to say no. I realize that on Android you have to approve permissions at install time and apps will/may refuse to install if you don't give them all the permissions they want, but that's something you have to take up with Google. As for your phone number, I'm pretty sure Facebook can't get that either.
Regardless, if Facebook slurps all your contacts off your phone you have no one to blame but yourself for letting them do so! Why anyone would use SMS through a Facebook app I have no idea, but I suppose if they built SMS support into Messenger they'll catch plenty of clueless people.
Facebook has finally made an eminently sensible exception to its claimed[1] "real name policy" for drag queens, yet it remains happy to apply this policy to Chinese political dissidents who risk their lives — at least potentially — by criticizing their government and its policies.[2]
When will these hyper-puritanical Nazis come to their senses and realize that the only sane policy — and the only way Facebook can be fair and evenhanded in the application of that policy, in all cases — is to let users use whatever name they wish?
.
[1] See above re Mark Zuckerberg's dog.
Some churlish souls might object that the dog is — presumably — using its real name ("Beast" — or so we are told!), but I strongly suspect the reality is that some human being who already has a Facebook page in his or her own name is also making posts in the dog's name. Thus maintaining at least two separate accounts under at least two different names.
Remember this when reading what the Facebook mouthpieces say about people using false names or multiple accounts.
.
[2] I thought I first learned of this from El Reg, but apparently I misremembered. I could find no pertinent articles using the site's search feature. But this piece from The Guardian will suffice as an introduction for the unfamiliar:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/mar/09/chinese-blogger-mark-zuckerberg-dog
Microsoft knuckled under to the ChiComs some 5 years earlier, shutting down Michael Anti's blog. See, e.g.:
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/09122008/profile3.html
Granted, "Michael Anti" has suffered great inconvenience rather than death, but there is little reason to doubt that the PRC could and would take him out should he become too annoying.
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