Last September, there were reports that Facebook was banning users who were not "authentically themselves" -- i.e., creating accounts with patently artificial names. Presumably this policy would include Facebook accounts based on Second Life avatar names, but I wasn't aware of any SLer who fell under that interdiction. Until, that is, I read this latest blog post by the avatar known as Danton Sideways. He created an FB account with that name, only to get an "Account Disabled" message when Mr. Sideways logged in today; a helpful FAQ that informed him, "Your account was disabled because the name it was registered under was fake", and "Facebook is built around real world interactions. Operating under an alias detracts from the value of the system as a whole."
The social network's concern over alias-driven fraud and other abuse is understandable, but this policy seems wrong-headed for several reasons, avatars entirely aside.
What about Facebook users living in authoritarian countries, who could benefit from the network, but need to protect their identity? Or people with real world social circles who mainly know them by their nicknames? If they were to ask me, a better policy would allow users to take pseudonyms, as long as their account had a significant number of friend connections to other Facebook accounts. After all, if a large enough number of people are willing to validate your pseudonym, doesn't that pretty much prove it is part and parcel of your real world interactions?
And here's the thing: Danton Sideways is hardly the only Second Life avatar on Facebook. Offhand, I'd guess 10-20% of friends in my own FB network exclusively use their SL avatar name and/or profile photos, to represent themselves. So if this is a consistently enforced policy, more suspensions are to follow. Then again, that might just be a benefit for competing networks. Plurk, for example, not only allows avatar names, but in the user profile, has Second Life as a selectable country.
there is an Sl version of face book, simple but effective http://www.secondlifenetwork.com/
Posted by: Loki Eliot | Tuesday, May 12, 2009 at 12:53 AM
A friend of mine, also SL last name Sideways was also deleted from Facebook recently. I wonder if the FB staff goes through SL last names, and can remove them in one swoop.
It's a shame that Facebook is doing this.. and doing it in this way. Just a swift deletion without any recourse.
However... I suggest that if you have a fear your FB page may be deleted, change your main page to your real info, and then set up a fan page for your avatar. You can function and communicate with Facebook via your own avatar's fan page also.
Posted by: Doubledown Tandino | Tuesday, May 12, 2009 at 02:30 AM
This is really sad. Facebook is going to miss some revenue by turning away avatars - SL is a pretty big, varied user group with a lot of profit potential. I find it disappointing that they can only think in black and white terms of "real" and "not real", without realizing that there's a big wonderful grey area of fantasy and reality, where people are actually more likely to be themselves than when they are the person behind the keyboard.
Posted by: Arwyn Quandry | Tuesday, May 12, 2009 at 05:50 AM
We have lots of social networking avenues to interact as AVs. I think we should leave Facebook for the flesh and blood.
Posted by: Valentina Kendal | Tuesday, May 12, 2009 at 06:21 AM
The SL user base is relatively small compared to the number of users that like Facebook *precisely* because it expects people to use their real names. That's also what sets it apart from MySpace and other similar sites where using nicknames and avatar names isn't against the ToS, so I honestly don't see a FB policy change regarding name requirements coming up in the near future. Whether you like it or not, using your avatar name on FB can get your account banned at any time.
Posted by: Alja | Tuesday, May 12, 2009 at 06:26 AM
Facebook...facebook...isn't that the teeny-bopper vanity site that used to be so hot?
Posted by: Arcadia Codesmith | Tuesday, May 12, 2009 at 07:07 AM
This is why I don't ever log in to FB anymore. Why keep up the profile if it might vanish at any moment.
Incidentally, why do many actors, authors, rappers and musicians get to use an alias on Facebook and we don't? That hardly seems fair.
Posted by: Tateru Nino | Tuesday, May 12, 2009 at 07:35 AM
I reported the same in February with Wizard. (http://sorornishi.blogspot.com/2009/02/fake-pride.html) and she's started a group called Fake Pride.
Facebooks loss is KoinUps gain..... stupid.
Its just data-mining anyway...
Posted by: soror nishi | Tuesday, May 12, 2009 at 08:05 AM
The problem with the SL social networks is that they lack the connections with non SL-users, which I feel limits their utility some.
Posted by: Tateru Nino | Tuesday, May 12, 2009 at 08:29 AM
Suddenly, MySpace becomes potentially useful again . . .
Posted by: CyFishy Traveler | Tuesday, May 12, 2009 at 08:36 AM
Let's see, Facebook has no problem with holocaust deniers, but bans photos of mothers breastfeeding as obscene, and cancels the the accounts of SL avatars, but not of music industry celebrities using pseudonyms. None of that pesky integrity for them.
Posted by: Thoria | Tuesday, May 12, 2009 at 09:08 AM
My main SL Avatar had a Facebook entry almost two years before I deigned to open up account for the "real me"!
Posted by: BTRIPP | Tuesday, May 12, 2009 at 09:21 AM
Hamlet, network validation is a terrific solution. It works for atomic-world celebrities with stage names, why not for us?
I'm surprised, though, that nobody's mentioned the "Facebook For Avatars," Avatars United. The founder, Chrish Mureaux in SL, has created a networking product specifically to our needs, and especially useful for those of us who have presences in more than one world.
You're all welcome to friend me there: http://www.avatarsunited.com/en/avatars/second-life/worldwide/the-world/sophrosyne-stenvaag
Posted by: Sophrosyne Stenvaag | Tuesday, May 12, 2009 at 10:46 AM
Avatars and Humans cannot be segregated: we started a petition group on Facebook to draw attention to this issue and pursue a more sane solution for Avatar/humans. We do not ask celebrities to only use their legal name, why should avatars be forced to?
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=805374
Posted by: In Kenzo | Tuesday, May 12, 2009 at 12:11 PM
It serves better to the death of facebook, I just can't see myself logging in anymore, its just a pain to use, unfriendly and driven by goals that almost seem like there is a bigger evil act going on (Data Mining Anyone?)
Posted by: Nexii Malthus | Tuesday, May 12, 2009 at 12:24 PM
Avatar Wizard Gynoid was also banned by Facebook. This is the same individual who collaborates with renown physicist Garret Lisi to create math inspired art. Most recently http://npirl.blogspot.com/2009/04/wizard-gynoid-i-think-its-important-i.html to help us visualize the E8 Polytope, which may at last reveal the link between gravity and the other fundamental forces of nature.
Ah, but she's not real, you see? She's just a cartoon. *Smirk*
Posted by: Bettina Tizzy | Tuesday, May 12, 2009 at 12:26 PM
You know, if they nuked my FB account, I'm not sure how long it would be before I noticed. Months, maybe. Friendfeed, Twitter, and a gazillion other social websites don't give a flip if you're an avatar or not; and if I want to write on my "wall", well that's what WordPress is for. And then there's my favorite social network of all -- this little thing called "Second Life".
No Facebook just means I'll never get "superpoked" again. Somehow I'd find a way to live with that.
Posted by: Liberty Tesla | Tuesday, May 12, 2009 at 07:34 PM
Thanks, Wagner, for yet another Public Service Announcement, this time concerning my eviction from Facebook.
The comments on your post provide lots of information and ideas. That another Sideways was recently evicted suggests that the Facebook Team concentrates on obviously unreal last names. I just had the bad luck to choose a name like Danton Sideways, instead of something like Sophrosyne Stenvaag or Dirk Talamasca, which COULD be real names. Yet there is a Facebook member called simply "My Secondlife," and no real person has such a last name, so the eviction decisions seem totally arbitrary.
Despite its obvious drawbacks, Facebook offers a network so large that it is difficult to ignore. Like btripp, I opened my avatar account on Facebook about two years before I opened one for my real identity. I had two separate accounts because I try to hide the real-world identity associated with my avatar, for professional reasons. Maybe the FB algorithms managed to figure out that I had two accounts – though I wonder how, because the only identity key in FB is the email address you give, and I gave two different ones.
A more reasonable policy would be for Facebook to allow members to have two accounts, one real and one virtual, with some sort of identity authentication to tie them together. This once again raises the pertinence of digital identity standards, such as OpenID. Service providers that feel a need to verify the real-world identity of their users could agree to keep that information confidential in the case of an account that displays only the user's virtual identity.
Posted by: Danton Sideways | Wednesday, May 13, 2009 at 04:50 AM
Identity in an increasingly digitial age is not so easy captured - let alone 'wiped'. It is short-sighted in my opinion.
One would think that a social network like FaceBook would recognise that identity and making REAL connections are not in seated in a name, but in the quality of the conversation and in behaviour.
There is a good reason why I use my Second Life name in social networks such as FaceBook. It does not make it any less valid. The greater concern would be for 'real' people using false identities (fake names and surnames) without any digitial reputation and relationships in Second Life.
Posted by: Alanagh Recreant | Wednesday, May 13, 2009 at 10:58 AM
Be brave. Celebrate avatar pride.
Remember when Flickr treated Second Life photos like, well, 3rd-grade snapshots? To be more accurate: we were NIPSA'ed and hidden from public.
Times have changed and there are like, 1 million SL photos on Flickr. Strength in numbers, make it more familiar, helps people to understand. Treat with grace, as one sharing their country's culture and customs would do.
(But yes, I find it bemusingly SAD when tech companies aren't as savvy about "liquid identities" as they should be... for mutual gain)
Posted by: Torley | Friday, May 15, 2009 at 10:02 AM
we all know the rules when we sign up, its that simple...if we get caught take it on the chin and move on.
LL forced me to change my avatars name on SL...its their rules they can do wot they like. FB is exactly the same, their rules and we must comply...
HEAR THE CALL PPL...FB DONT WANT US...TAKE OUR TIME & MONEY ELSEWHERE
and for my friends reading this....see ya inworld
Posted by: Ava Dailey (SL) | Monday, May 18, 2009 at 08:29 AM
Look, I have 150 fake Fussbook accounts in many countries. Does Kildenberg go to that level? Give me a brake. Lat time I checke, FB wasn't making any money anyway. Who needs social networking when it is just a fad?
Posted by: Maria Ru | Friday, May 29, 2009 at 01:08 PM
Something I wrote in case I should find my account deleted -
"My response to the Facebook Terms of Service Section 4. 'Registration and Account Security' regarding the use of real names:
1. You have provided no clear cut definition of "real". My avatar / SL identity is very real. I do business and provide services to clients under this pseudonym, and I consider this name as much mine as any name I may have been assigned by my parents.
2. Re – Item 1: None of the personal information I have provided is false. My location, e-mail address, date of birth, etc. are all completely accurate and truthful, and my name is also a true name that I identify with. (Items 2 - 7 are not applicable)
3. How do you address stage names? I notice Tom Cruise has a Facebook page and you have not removed it, however his real name is Thomas Cruise Mapother IV. Same thing with 50 Cent (Curtis Jackson), David Bowie (David Robert Jones), and Madonna (Madonna Louise Ciccone), just to name a few.
Based upon how you have chosen to interpret the definition of 'real', you must delete these accounts and the accounts of all other celebrity members who are listed under their stage names. If you feel they have not violated any TOS rules, then it's only fair that you reinstate my account on that basis."
Posted by: Kat Claxton | Wednesday, June 03, 2009 at 09:32 PM