Facebook Apologizes & Tweaks Real Name Policy to Better Support LGBT Community -- But Avatar Community Should Stick With Fan Pages

A Facebook executive just issued a public apology to the many drag queens, transgender people, and other folks in the LGBT community whose accounts have recently been deleted or suspended under the social network's real name-only policy. The apology also offers some insight on how this rule is enforced:

An individual on Facebook decided to report several hundred of these [LGBT] accounts as fake. These reports were among the several hundred thousand fake name reports we process every single week, 99 percent of which are bad actors doing bad things: impersonation, bullying, trolling, domestic violence, scams, hate speech, and more — so we didn't notice the pattern.

The company vows to change its reporting and enforcement mechanisms, but also maintains (with some amendments) its real name policy:

We believe this is the right policy for Facebook for two reasons. First, it's part of what made Facebook special in the first place, by differentiating the service from the rest of the internet where pseudonymity, anonymity, or often random names were the social norm. Second, it's the primary mechanism we have to protect millions of people every day, all around the world, from real harm. The stories of mass impersonation, trolling, domestic abuse, and higher rates of bullying and intolerance are oftentimes the result of people hiding behind fake names, and it's both terrifying and sad. Our ability to successfully protect against them with this policy has borne out the reality that this policy, on balance, and when applied carefully, is a very powerful force for good.

As longtime NWN readers know, some people who've created Facebook profiles with their Second Life avatar name have also found their accounts suspended or deleted, as far back as 2009. This has led to conspiracy theories that Facebook is running some kind of targeted purge against SLers, but there's never been any evidence of that. Instead, as a Facebook rep once told me (and as the above statement confirms), avatar accounts are generally only flagged to the company by other Facebook users. And meanwhile, the official Second Life Facebook page keeps growing, now approaching 400,000 members.

So while Facebook will probably stop randomly suspending Facebook accounts of drag queens, avatars who get their accounts flagged are not any safer. There is, however, a solution:

Create a Facebook page for your avatar, and (if you prefer), interact through Facebook solely through your page. That's totally acceptable to Facebook policies, and is actually a better way for supporting your avatar and virtual content. Here's instructions for doing that.

Overall, this is probably the best balance for Facebook. Pseudonyms, while valuable in many contexts, continue to be abused by a small minority of bad actors, to the detriment of all. At the moment, Twitter is the largest social network which supports pseudonyms (including avatars), but then again, it also has a far worse problem with trolling, death threats, and other nastiness. (As we most recently saw in the #GamerGate imbroglio.)

Photo of famed San Francisco drag queen Sister Roma from SFist.com.

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Comments

[Jo Yardley]

Using a page really isn't an alternative.
Having a page doesn't allow you to use most of the things FB has to offer that make it worth the hassle.

[Wizard Gynoid]

No it's not. There is virtually no difference between my Second Life stage name and that of a drag queen. You can't convince me of that. It would be nice to see you take a stand on something that matters to the community like this.

[Ciaran Laval]

Facebook are entitled to their rules but they remain Second Life unfriendly and Linden Lab should embrace Google + which has a far more sensible naming policy.

Many of those Facebook fans of Second Life's page are using avatar names and running the risk of being purged.

However yes, if you want to abide by Facebook's rules and use a Second Life avatar on there, then a page is the option. As Jo points out, pages have restrictions.

Facebook's real name policy does not stand up to any sort of real scrutiny and causes as many problems as it cures.

[Jim Tarber]

"Second, it's the primary mechanism we have to protect millions of people every day, all around the world, from real harm."

How is revealing your real name, your birthday, your home address, when you're out doing something, going to protect people from real harm? Publishing that info for stalkers, your boss, everyone to see is specifically EXPOSING yourself to REAL HARM. How many times have I heard that someone on Facebook posted that they were going out (e.g. to a concert tonight) and have their home invaded, theft, etc. Or how may times has someone lost a job, or been hurt or harassed by social morons, directly as a result of exposed personal information on Facebook?

And that talking point about using a page is just an FB talking point, completely inappropriate for those who do not wish to expose their wallet names and other personal info. It is not even close to a solution.

The bottom line is that Facebook continues to be hostile to folks wishing to maintain Internet Best Practices. See http://www.eff.org/issues/anonymity for more. Facebook's official policy is to be HOSTILE towards virtual identities. This policy is causing real harm to FB users.

See also the lesson Google learned, and they admitted "that the old policy caused harm to people": https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140715/14165427881/years-later-google-finally-dumps-its-ill-advised-real-names-policy-drops-all-restrictions-names.shtml

[Ciaran Laval]

Oh and as people are pointing out in the comments on that Facebook post, if their policy isn't to insist on real names then why do they insist on people sending in ID and their policy is that your name should be the one on your driving licence?

Salman Rushdie had a mini spat with them over this, they relented after a short while but initially they changed his Facebook name to his official name (which he hardly ever uses) because that's the name on his ID. Plenty of people who don't have Salman Rushdie's reach can't make such a fuss.

They're making it up as they go along, ello seem to have spooked them.

[Wagner James Au]

"It would be nice to see you take a stand on something that matters to the community like this."

Wizard, most of the community is on Facebook. Including you.

[chryblnd Scribe]

As Jo Yardley notes, a facebook "page" is not at all a satisfactory option. You cannot interact with people at the same level, you cannot "like" photos, or add friends. You are, essentially, a "product"; you can promote, but that's not providing the sense of community most of us are seeking.
I use facebook under my FL name and use lists to integrate FL and SL. It's time consuming and reveals far more of my life to both streams than I wish.
We need advocates to articulate the case for avatar identities. People live and work in SL and are thereby answerable for their actions, which renders the usual argument (that real name policies force people to behave well) useless, if, in fact, it ever was a worthy argument.
It would be nice to see NWN, and indeed, all SL media outlets participate in the debate on our behalf, not least because it provides a case in point of how avatars live within their names.
I believe that SL media is often just as guilty as mainstream media for belittling and disparaging the choice to have a second life. This is a great shame and ultimately compromises your own legitimacy.
In the meantime there is google+, at least and at last. That was a tough fight, kudos to those who had the guts to stay with it.

[Melissa Yeuxdoux]

For years I've seen people create Facebook accounts for their pets, apparently so they can give themselves goodies in Zynga games. I've never seen Facebook do a thing about those. It tends to make me doubt their seriousness about their real name policy.

[Jim Tarber]

Facebook also has code that creates a terrible violation of the privacy of your *friends*. If you *ever* use your wallet name email account to register for an online service, it may use that email address to suggest you to your *virtual* friends. I outlined this in blog posting when it first happened to me 3 years ago: http://jim.tarber.net/?p=29

Facebook was offering to connect my *virtual* friends in Skype with their *RL* identities in Facebook. It was outing the wallet identities of my online virtual friends.

Now some of you may put your RL identity in your profiles First Life tab, but most of you do not. However, Facebook will effectively do that for you.

So the lesson learned there was to always use at least two different email/userid accounts and never EVER friend other RL identities from your virtual email/account, and never friend other virtual email/accounts from your RL identity. Regardless of how careful you are, others will not be, and you will out their RL identity if you allow any cross-over of RL/virtual identities.

[iisingh]

Sometimes ice hurts my teeth.

[Tracy RedAngel]

I'm going to chime in and also stress that no, creating a page does not allow you to interact on Facebook the same way that an account does. You can't offer to 'friend' people, you have to invite them to like your page. Some people get downright annoyed and consider this spamming. It's not the same at all. Maybe they could do some sort of a compromise and allow people to create fictional accounts that are labeled as an avatar, public figure, etc. I don't see the difference if they allow people to create a fictional page or a fictional user account. Anyone can use a fake name regardless of their rules, so it's not going to do anything to stop people with bad intentions.

[zz bottom]

What is facebook? I was a beta tester before it went live, Now wih Nsa being known one can guess its true purpose but i'll not say that, enough to say i stop using it as soon as i ended the beta testing to never look back!
Linden Lab has a tool already, second life feed, that it what should be their bet on improving.

[Arcadia Codesmith]

I'd be less annoyed at Facebook if they'd drop the ridiculous pretext that they're in any way, shape or form "protecting" users. Users don't pay the bills. The only thing they're protecting is the purity of the eyeball pool for their advertisers.

If they'd just come out and admit that, they'd still be scumbags, but at least they'd be honest scumbags.

[shirc desantis]

So : "An individual on Facebook decided to report several hundred of these [LGBT] accounts as fake"
And these handlers of 'big data' that aim to provide real reputable info to their advertisers didn't actually spot this...the ineptitude is almost touching.

[2014]

FB can claim "avatar accounts are generally only flagged to the company by other Facebook users", but they have routinely deleted massive amounts of SL Facebook accounts.

The bottom line is, FB can't data mine a avatar account, so a SLer FB account do them no good with advertising, which is how they make their money. "money" is and always will be the bottom line.