
Facebook Wants You To Snitch On Friends Not Using Their Real Name - mindstab
http://paulbernal.wordpress.com/2012/09/21/facebook-snitchgate/
======
FellowTraveler
In Mexico, bloggers are disemboweled and strung up from bridges as a warning
to others, by cartels.

In Syria, government snipers murdered bloggers to silence them.

In China, bloggers are imprisoned at hard labor.

In the United States, the Federalist Papers were released anonymously in order
to protect the lives of their authors.

It is only the spoiled, rich and free countries who make such naive and
irresponsible statements such as, "I am in support of people using their real
names online."

A better question is, what actions are Google, Apple, and Facebook taking to
protect our vital ability to remain anonymous online?

~~~
minikites
Wouldn't an even better question be: how do we build the kind of society where
people can express their thoughts attached to their names without fear of
reprisal?

~~~
kstenerud
A noble sentiment, but until it can be proven with solid evidence that such a
thing is possible, it would be dangerous and irresponsible to force such an
experiment upon people.

History is rife with examples of people imposing what they just KNEW was right
upon others, with disastrous consequences.

~~~
minikites
That's an interesting point, perhaps the goal I described is impossible. It
just seems like aiming for anonymity is aiming low and solving the wrong
problem.

~~~
kstenerud
Or perhaps it is aiming high and solving the right problem. Unless one can
back up their claims with good evidence, they're merely engaging in
conjecture. Thus far, the only evidence we have points in favor of preserving
the right to privacy and anonymity.

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Smudge
Enforcing real names has pros and cons. For Facebook as a business, the pros
certainly outweigh the value lost when accounts can't be mapped directly to
real people. Names are a key part of that mapping.

In general, I prefer an option for pseudonymity, because it is much more
inclusive (allowing certain people at the fringes to feel more comfortable
joining in -- victims of abuse, political dissidents, etc), and is much less
messy than total anonymity (which wouldn't really work for something like
Facebook, not that there isn't a place for it elsewhere on the web). That
said, pseudonymity can still get messy, so I see why Facebook might want to
keep it in check.

One can also make the argument that the level of discourse is much higher on
services where people are more personally accountable for what they say, and
where confusing or offensive usernames don't get in the way of conversations.
But I would say that the actual level of discourse sometimes found on Facebook
throws that argument into question.

~~~
prodigal_erik
What Facebook and Google+ gain in politesse, they lose in depth and honesty. I
can't assume I'll be held "accountable" in a just way by every prospective
employer, apartment manager, or lover I'll ever meet, so these venues get
empty pleasantries from me, certainly nothing controversial in any way.

~~~
psbp
Now imagine a whole generation socializing under these artificial
restrictions. Can you imagine how stifling being raised under an umbrella of
constant surveillance by your peer group, family, future employers and
advertisers would be to your personality and relationships? We're developing a
society of sociopatic egotists.

~~~
jodrellblank
We are basically under constant surveillance by our peer group and family,
just not in an Orwellian sense.

It's incredibly common for people to grow up afraid to say many things, having
massive restrictions on some parts of their personalities due to those kinds
of pressures.

We see it most obviously with the single big things such as "I can't tell my
religious family I'm an atheist" or "I got ostracised for dating someone from
another culture" or whatever, but it's almost certainly going on for a huge
range of smaller personality facets - or ones which were blanked out before
they developed.

Who would you be if you'd never had any restrictions on what you could say
other than moral ones? If any interest you had, you would have been supported
in following up, any comment you made would have been taken seriously and
never laughed at, any attempt to better yourself was encouraged not mocked.

Maybe more and more surveillance such as you imagine will actually make it
_more_ obvious that others opinions are their largely their own problem and
don't affect you all that much, and you should develop more confidence sooner.

~~~
ionwake
sorry I dont understand your last point - can you please rephrase it for me?
thank you

~~~
jodrellblank
I was trying to say that maybe total surveillance would feel less bad than
occasional surveillance, since you would be forced to "get used to it" from an
early age, and for things where there are no particular consequences other
than embarassment, maybe that would be an improvement.

(Yet, that only applies if you assume the oversight is only for spotting
criminals and the guides for criminal activity exactly agree with your own,
and the system is fair).

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jrtashjian
The only problem with forcing real names that I've recently encountered are
family members who work in prisons. They use a modified name as to make it
difficult for an inmate to gain knowledge of them and where they live.
Personal and family protection in a way with the ability to still use Facebook
to connect with distant friends and family members.

Anyone else run into this instance?

~~~
maxerickson
It seems like it would be more sensible for them to use modified names inside
the prison.

Of course, they probably don't get to choose what name to use in the prison.

~~~
qq66
I think that both guards and inmates should be assigned fake names in prison,
or addressed simply by number, to avoid prison interactions spilling out of
the prison and affecting prisoners' families etc. Of course, the danger with
this is that abuses within prison would become harder to track and account
for.

~~~
fl3tch
I going to guess that referring to inmates by numbers would be widely
criticized as inhumane by many human rights groups. It would be an uphill
battle to keep something like that going.

~~~
imroot
Inmates are commonly referred to by their number in prison -- as far as the
prison system is concerned, they're not 'Leland Highsmith,' they're A319445 --
it's tied to their phone calls, commissary purchases, meal records, medicine
records, and health records.

------
tokenadult
I have been on online networks of one kind or another since 1992. I am 100
percent behind the idea that people using their real names (the rule of some
networks I have been on) promotes better online community and people taking
more responsibility for their personal behavior in the community. That said, I
do have some friends who have long established pseudonyms that have most of
the good effects of real names, because those friends still try to build up
reputation for those pseudonyms. (You'll have to be the judge of how well I'm
doing here building up the reputation of "tokenadult," a screen name I brought
here from two other online communities where pseudonyms rather than real names
are mandatory but changing names is difficult so that reputation still
accumulates for each name.)

That said, I refuse to "out" my niece's dog, who has a Facebook profile. It's
important to have amusing counterexamples out there so that people don't
invest too much trust in Facebook. In the last week or so a Hacker News
participant (I don't know his real name [smile]) suggested that Facebook could
monetize by being an online payments platform. For consumer-to-business
transactions, I don't trust Facebook as a payment platform because its
engineers have the attitude "Don't be afraid to break things," which just
doesn't appeal to me for a network that handles my financial data. For user-
to-user transactions, I also don't trust Facebook because I don't trust the
users unless I know them in person--my Facebook community is enjoyable because
it really consists of people whose real identity I know, and who know me. If I
want to do business with strangers, I occasionally do that through Amazon
Marketplace, but that is because Amazon has built up its own reputation for
standing behind transactions there.

AFTER EDIT: Several comments in this thread are along the lines of

 _It's not hard to imagine a near future, if not a present, in which a
person's identity is entirely evaluated, shaped, and determined by a monolith
such as facebook._

But most people in the world still are largely stuck with the reputations
distorted for them, before they can develop their reputations for themselves,
by their family or their classmates in some small community. Facebook is LESS
of a "monolith," because it is made up of hundreds of millions of users, than
any small town anywhere. A lot of people find it liberating to find online
communities based on shared intellectual interests (Hacker News works for this
too, of course) rather than just being stuck with their current group of in-
person acquaintances.

~~~
quesera
> Facebook is LESS of a "monolith," because it is made up of hundreds of
> millions of users, than any small town anywhere.

You inadvertently bring up a strong counter argument.

Suppose, in your small town, you are outed (rightly or wrongly) as <insert
marginalized subgroup here>, and ostracized. Normally, after much
introspection and reflection, you or your family could decide to move away, if
the social effects were severe enough and unfixable.

With a real name policy and a permanent archive of the psychodrama, you cannot
start over elsewhere without all of it following along with you, ripe for the
next group of maladjusted simpletons to harrass you with. Not everyone can
move to tolerant cultures, not all marginalized groups can find reliably-safe
new places.

~~~
drbawb
I think this also speaks volumes about the "dangers" of using large general-
purpose social networks.

Think about it for a second: if I'm ostracized (using my name or a pseudonym,
it doesn't matter) from a `Club 3.14: Raspberry Pi Hackers` message board; I
can find other message boards with a surplus of R-Pi hackers.

If I say something stupid on Facebook... where am I supposed to go in order to
replace Facebook?

The issue with Google+ is (<\-- replace with your favorite defunct social
network) that it's a graveyard. (I say that facetiously; I actually use G+ and
quite like the service. That being said, I can't deny that it is missing 95%
or so of my Facebook friends.)

So the issue here isn't so much the ability to have pseudonyms, IMHO.

The issue is that Facebook is quickly becoming a "monolith", and that fact
_combined_ with an inability to escape your ostracism via "moving" your online
presence to a new identity is where the problem lies.

I feel the real problem is that Facebook is all-encompassing. They want to be
_the_ platform for online community.

Therein lies the problem, if you're only allowed _one true identity_ on their
platform, your baggage follows you to every sub-community _on that platform._

------
mkjones
Hey folks - I work on the Site Integrity team at Facebook. We work to keep
people safe from scams, spam, fake accounts, and having their account taken
over.

We're always looking for ways to better understand how people represent
themselves online and improve the design of our service. We look at the
results of this kind of experiment in aggregate - the responses doesn't have
any impact on the user account or that of their friends.

~~~
steve8918
The best way people, especially kids, have to protect their future selves from
things they write or post today, is by assuming a fake identity.

Kids are quickly learning that everything on the Internet is forever. Take the
option of hiding their identity away from them, and I think they will move to
a service that will allow this.

~~~
genwin
My kids are sick of me harping on this. But now they use different pseudonyms
for every site, including Facebook, and I'm proud of them for it.

They rarely use Facebook anymore; it seems it's becoming boring.

------
jedbrown
If the responses are actually anonymous (as they claim, but I don't believe
it's actually anonymous in their database), it would be easy to generate
enough false positives to spoil the system.

~~~
quesera
There is a 0% chance that Facebook does not record your response to every
request.

~~~
latimer
If it turns out it isn't anonymous and they are shutting down accounts over
it, can there be any repercussions for them lying like that or is it just
"unethical"?

~~~
chris_wot
Funny - it says they won't take any action over it. Do I trust that?

~~~
petitmiam
makes you wonder why they are asking then.

------
ivany
Every time fb does something scummy, and people act surprised, _I_ am
surprised. They've proven themselves to have the morals of a used car dealer.
Why would you trust them, or be surprised when they act untrustworthy?

"Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." No?

~~~
vidarh
Used car dealers presumably have that reputation because they still manage to
fool people, otherwise the immoral ones would quickly go out of business. Part
of the skill is to manage to convince people that things are different with
you and them.

------
ari_elle
I don't really think the connection that he tries to make between Facebook's
real name policy and the need for anonymity for whistleblowers/oppressed
regimes is really fair. Facebook wants to be a social portal were you feed
your desire to be seen and make stupid updates about your life and contact
your friends when you go out with them. I don't really think that Facebooks
policies are crucial for whistleblowers :D

What should be done? Stop using Facebook. Everybody has e-mail, it's quick
enough, it's fun and people tend to think before they send off an e-mail
(something i miss with instant messaging).

The niveau on facebook has been hiding under the table since i don't know when
and that is true for their policies and for how people use facebook, so
instead of trying to force the niveau to come out, how about giving up
already?

If Facebook is such an important part of one's life that even while being
unhappy with their policies you can't give up on the service, then that's just
sad....

~~~
brador
Rumors on Reddit that employers are asking for a Facebook presence pre-
interview. What then?

~~~
gaius
I do not believe that for one second. As someone who has interviewed hundreds
of candidates, there are many things a prospective employer really, really
does not want to know. Religion, sexual orientation, veteran status, the list
goes on... A company that finds out these things and rejects a candidate for
any reason, even a legitimate technical one, is begging to be sued.

That is what LinkedIn is for...

~~~
vidarh
The laws about these things are there because at least some employers _do_
want to find out these things. Some of those employers would love a more
innocent-sounding way of finding out those details exactly to reduce the
chance that the candidate will think they have grounds to sue.

------
w1ntermute
This could be a good way to hasten the departure of users from Facebook. If
you get the accounts of all your friends using fake names suspended, they
might be more willing to move to Google Plus.

~~~
notatoad
It might hasten the departure of users from Facebook, but if they're leaving
because of facebook's real name policy, I doubt they're going to find G+ more
attractive.

------
Karunamon
FTA: _Indeed, under the terms of the Snoopers Charter, it wouldn’t just be
Facebook who could access this kind of information: the authorities could
potentially set up a filter to gather data on people who don’t confirm the
names of their friends_

Yes, and I _could potentially_ sprout wings from my ass and become a travel
carrier. The rest of this article is nothing more than a ton of thinly veiled
fallacies, slippery slope and appeal to emotion the least of the two.

Is the feature dodgy? Perhaps.

Did you agree to the rules of the party before joining? Yup. One of which is:
"Use your real name".

Should you be surprised if you get called out on it? Nope.

You're more than welcome to protest unfair policies (whether saying you'll put
truthful info on a form is "unfair" is left as an exercise to the reader), but
much like civil disobedience, you have no right to complain once you are found
to be breaking the law/policy and are punished for it.

This is a website. Let's try to keep perspective here.

~~~
fleitz
What is a "real" name vs. one that is not "real"?

Did you mean legal name? And if so does that exclude legal aliases?

What about Madonna, is that her 'real' name?

~~~
Karunamon
Are you called "fleitz" in real life? No? That is not your real name then. It
is a pseudonym.

This isn't rocket science.

~~~
jlgreco
What if people call me "T-Bone"?

The divide between "real name" and "pseudonym" is very fuzzy as soon as you
step outside the "engineer box" and look at real world data. Many people in
this world go by names that you would never expect to see on their driver
license or passport, both of which seem to be things Facebook asks users
provide to "prove" their "real names".

And lets not even get started on the fact that facebook _is in fact part of
real life_. If people call you a certain name on facebook, they are calling
you that _in real life_. Different names for different social situation is
_far_ from unheard of. Which is "real"?

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brackin
They'd love a database full of confirmed names, which advertisers could buy
into. With Facebook the '900m users' are all real people not just accounts
created.

------
mikiem
Oh excellent. I can help those poor neutered friends stuck as half of user
like "Susan N Steve Smith" because their significant other created that
account.

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propercoil
Where is the X button? "leave me alone" ? i'm deleting my account right at
this moment i had enough

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tyrmored
If nothing else this might help put the kibosh on the intensely annoying way
Facebook users tend to use cutesy fake names so that you don't know who the
hell they are when they comment on your posts.

~~~
Evbn
Or you could unfriend people you don't like to hang out with on Facebook.

~~~
michaelhoffman
I'd rather have Facebook fix the problem.

------
denzil_correa
There's a reason why people do not want to use their real names. Currently
Facebook does not keep up with such promises. What has changed to make me have
a leap of faith on Facebook?

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idunno246
I always wondered why google+ got all that bad press and facebook didn't for
real names

~~~
fl3tch
I'm guessing it's because a culture and expectation of using real names had
already been established on Facebook by the time the masses arrived, while
privacy-conscious techies were the first G+ users.

------
pasbesoin
Time to call it: Jumped the shark.

Is there anything more "anti-social" they could have done? Betrayal. Or...
maybe they're just trying to make it more _realistically_ social?

Seriously, it's another instance of not listening to your users. Strong-arming
only works as long as you are strong...

------
VeejayRampay
Everyone has people they don't like and vice versa. People that know your real
name. I suspect it wouldn't too hard to crowdsource "identification" to the
audience of Facebook so that they can monetize their idiotic platform better.

------
rsync
I was going to say that I can't believe Salman Rushdie stooped so low as to
mail a copy of his passport to some website.

But it's harder to believe that he had a facebook account in the first place.

~~~
unabridged
why? the man loves attention, haven't you seen his twitter account:
<http://twitter.com/SalmanRushdie>

------
at-fates-hands
Wrot wrow, the gig might be up for myself. Hopefully none of my HS friends
will out me. If so, I'm going to have to close my account.

Not that I use a lot anyways. . .

------
fauigerzigerk
Maybe it's a kind of Milgram experiment.

------
fudged71
This is really bad.

A lot of educators aren't allowed using their real names on social networks.

------
clobber
We're setting a really bad precedent for the future here and these sorts of
things need to stop now. Unfortunately, people don't seem to want to fight
this.

Now we have people getting turned down for jobs because they DON'T have a
facebook account[1]. What's next?

1\.
[http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/109ipi/no_faceboo...](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/109ipi/no_facebook_no_job_interview_is_this_seriously_a/)

~~~
Smudge
No social media presence? Clearly you are a psychopathic recluse unfit for
_normal_ work.

We only want employees who do _normal_ things, like obsessively refreshing a
particular website all day long.

~~~
eyevariety
Brilliant!

------
Meist
I work with Matt at Facebook and wanted to reaffirm his comment below. This
survey was a small anonymous test designed to improve the systems we use to
keep the site safe for everyone. And, we have already confirmed that the
responses collected will have _zero_ impact on people's accounts.

We believe a real name culture is core to our mission of making the world more
connected and helps us to provide the best possible experience for our users.

PS One thing I did want to note is that we offer Pages where the individual
admins are not listed and have been effectively used in the past by a wide
variety of groups, movements, brands, and individuals.

