Facebook are planning on forcing people to use their legal names

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/facebooks-name-policy-angers-drag-queens-9731904.html

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/09/16/living/facebook-name-policy/index.html

Or their accounts will be deleted.

My Facebook name is not my legal name, because I am transgender and I haven't been able to legally change my name yet.

So it's basically, legally change my name FAST, or lose my ability to stay in contact with my friends.

It's strange that it's drag queens making a stink about this and not Trans people, considering that drag queens aren't having their identity erased, not really.

Smooth, Zuckerberg. Smooth.

(yes, this is a few days old, but I missed it due to being away from home)

Yeah Facebook is being kind of a control freak with how people display their information, what is the end game of this?

There's always been a struggle between keeping people's privacy and providing information with this stupid website. I deliberately used a made-up alias because I don't trust people. I doubt it will know the difference.

How will they enforce this?

Removing you from Facebook. How will they confirm the information you provide is correct well, I have a more disgusting answer for that. Ugh.

But how will they know what's a person's legal name and what isn't?

Well there is only one real way to do that.

Steal their personal information such as Social Security Numbers?

They apparently ask for driving licenses and social security numbers, stuff like that.

And if it seems... funny, they poke you.

edited 20th Sep '14 7:22:15 AM by RatherRandomRachel

I don't think they'll steal it per say, but they will ask for it.

In a very assertive way.

edited 20th Sep '14 7:22:29 AM by SilentlyHonest

Well if I can legally get my name changed fast enough.....

I have a friend I need to warn about this, but I can't currently get to facebook as it fluctuates between blocked and unblocked.

Does anyone knows if this applies to the entirety of facebook or just the US branch? Because I have not heard of any such thing on the Pt-Br side of Facebook.

Same thing on this side of the Portuguese-speaking world.

If Facebook believes they can make people reveal their real names by forcing them to show documents, they are completely wrong and they don't even realize that.

And if you think they care about their users' real names, you're wrong. There are hundreds of accounts impersonating Charlie Sheen and tens impersonating Mexican drug lords. To say nothing of those impersonating anime and movie characters. As long as you're not the target of some asshole's private vendetta or a State Sec operation, you can have your account under a fake name and Facebook won't care.

I'm not quite sure I understand their reasoning behind their enforcement policy (whether or not they actually enforce it). If they ban the person from using Facebook, then presumably Facebook can't make money from that person, since that person is no longer using Facebook's services. Likewise if people don't want to provide their legal name and just decide to leave Facebook all together, then of course that hurts Facebook economically too.

Plus if I really want to be sure I know with whom I'm connecting, I could just, you know, only add people I actually fucking know as friends; in that case then it doesn't even matter what name they use because I already know who they are.

Problem is, if a person leaves FB, their account is not deleted, it just becomes part of an archive which can still be milked for all its worth.

edited 20th Sep '14 8:29:53 AM by Quag15

So the solution to that is to make it possible to delete a Facebook page you control. Not force the use of real names. I'm in the SCA; over half of my friends have two pages; one under their persona name and one under their real name.

Fair enough in that case, supposing the person only leaves and doesn't also delete their account.

The solution is to not use face book. Find another website to talk to your friends on. People get so stuck on one way of doing things we forget their are alternatives.

I know some people have to use facebook for their jobs, and I know that's going to suck if they don't use their legal name in their job but no one else is really obligated to stick with a service they dislike. Where I live people are making a lot of noise about the national football league and that has the same answer, watch someone else's football if you don't like the current product.

edited 20th Sep '14 10:34:47 AM by IndirectActiveTransport

This is gross.

Google+ doing this is part of why people refused to use it back when it was first released

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nymwars

You'd think Facebook would have learned from that mess.

edited 20th Sep '14 2:12:15 PM by Sixthhokage1

Big companies will only learn when there's a loss in profits.

I feel the urge to throw something in because yes, this sucks for a lot of people, but I get the feeling that this is mostly for pursuing fake identities: We all know the stories, people who actually pretend to be someone else in order to, well, you know where I'm going. It's not actually a bad motive (this would actually be important, even I know people who have been a victim to this), just a bad approach.

Bullshit, son. You can clearly see from this action against drag queens that Facebook doesn't care about scammers or people impersonating Charlie Sheen, they just sheepishly react to hundreds of targeted reports, not even noticing that what they're doing is enabling bullies to harass innocent people as they please.