
Facebook's Name Policy Strikes Again, This Time at Native Americans - CapitalistCartr
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/02/facebooks-name-policy-strikes-again-time-native-americans
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dbg31415
This is really racist though. Like... imagine the insult of being told,
"Please use your real name..." when you already are. Motive on the policy
aside, Facebook devs were REALLY racist when they coded this check and flagged
people who have "descriptive names" \-- they clearly don't have any native
friends and couldn't care less about how their 2 lines of code would make
someone feel that day. Some form of formal apology is probably in order.

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ahelwer
You're right, and in an interesting way. This is a great illustration of how
irrelevant _intent_ is to systemic racism. The devs weren't intentionally
racist in their name check code, but their ignorance - the stuff they didn't
know they don't know - led to a very racist policy. Good intentions are not
sufficient for eradication of systemic racism.

Edit - it appears the name check wasn't formalized into actual code, but
rather policy.

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prodigal_erik
Ignorance about names doesn't support an accusation of any kind of prejudice,
much less racial (not cultural) prejudice. I am glad EFF knows better than to
misuse a word that would have people stop taking them seriously due to
gratuitous KKK/Nazi undertones.

~~~
ahelwer
To define identity in such a way that it rejects something as fundamental to a
culture as names is certainly racist against that culture. I'm curious what
you would call it instead. I'm sure you can understand on your own why saying
something is racist is not literally the same as comparing it to the
KKK/Nazis, so I won't delve further into that topic.

~~~
prodigal_erik
There is no word for prejudice against a culture because we don't have the
same consensus that's axiomatically evil. And if we did the developers would
not be guilty of it. The policy is insensitive, capricious, heavy-handed, and
stupid, but it's not driven by developers' opinions about native american
bloodlines or even names. Calling it "racism" is an accusation of a uniquely
dangerous kind of malevolent prejudice.

~~~
ahelwer
The developers are not racist. My _entire original point_ is their attitudes
and intents were irrelevant. The system they created is very much racist,
completely independent about how they felt in creating it; I'm not sure how
you can really dispute that. The venerable Jay Smooth describes a closely-
related distinction here[0]. Also, when you describe a _system_ as racist
that's somewhat different from describing a _person_ as racist, which might be
a place we're talking past each other.

Re: the culture/race/ethnicity terminology quagmire, the sister comment by
dragonwriter explains it well.

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0Ti-
gkJiXc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0Ti-gkJiXc)

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nsxwolf
I'm surprised "Lone Hill" would even register. "Hill" is a perfectly ordinary
European name, and "Lone" can be short for "Magdelone", or "Lonetta" or a lot
of other things. It's nothing like "Sitting Bull" or "Kicking Bird" or "Crazy
Horse".

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AlecSchueler
A few years ago I decided to phase out my pseudonymous Alec Schueler username
and begin using my painfully common real name (John Hill) on certain websites.
Quora in particular refused to accept it, and asked me to prove that this was
in fact a real name. Instead, I decided to add them to my host file and
haven't used their services in the 3 years since.

I had a pretty strong emotional reaction to this policy. I can imagine it
would be pretty distressing to run into this problem as e.g. a Native American
or transgender person.

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tokenadult
My actual, factual Chinese name, which I use in Chinese-speaking countries,
was automatically disallowed by a bot within a second after I tried to add it
to my Facebook profile. Oddly, my son's Chinese name (the same surname, but a
given name that arguably looks a little more authentically Chinese) has been
posted on his Facebook profile for years. Why Facebook can't figure out that I
am Chinese by marriage (and now by parentage) and have spoken the language for
most of my life (which I have declared on my profile from the beginning) is
beyond me. I have no idea how to get behind the bot response to reach an
actual human being to add this information to my profile.

~~~
bigbugbag
If you managed to get in before they upgrade the guards at the gate then
you're in, otherwise you're stuck outside.

Change of policy over time turns what was possible in the past to "no longer
acceptable" today.

Keep in mind that you have no right and no control over anything in the
facebook world and you can explain every quirks.

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amirmc
People (and programmers) have many false beliefs. Combine this with a strong
desire to automate things and _reduce_ recourse to properly trained humans and
you end up with a particular form of tyranny - as we see here.

I'm surprised no one's linked to the below posts already.

[http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-
programmers-b...](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-
believe-about-names/)

[http://infiniteundo.com/post/25326999628/falsehoods-
programm...](http://infiniteundo.com/post/25326999628/falsehoods-programmers-
believe-about-time)

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chrisfarms
heh...

> (#11) People’s names are all mapped in Unicode code points.

Well, not really sure how to fix that one!. Maybe one day postgres will be
able to index a column of handwritten images, but until then I think I'll just
stick with being 99% ok.

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csbrooks
A little frustrated that both the current top-level comments here seem to
reflect someone not reading the article before commenting.

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hyperliner
Frankly, a name I would have reported a while back would have been "Mark
Zuckerberg."

"Hey Facebook, I am SURE this Mark guy made up that last name. I am POSITIVE!"

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BrianEatWorld
What is the benefit of a real name policy in the first place? Isn't it still
fairly easy to create fake accounts using generic names?

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Crito
They are less concerned with fake accounts with fake names than they are with
real accounts with fake names. Real accounts with fake names are potentially
good data that they can sell, but with reduced quality because of the fake
name.

The "real name" policy is entirely about raising the perceived value of their
dataset.

~~~
sukilot
But you can live on Facebook as (fake name) John Crito and connect to all for
friends and FB will let you. But Laughing Critter will get shut down.

~~~
Crito
If facebook becomes aware that John Crito is not my real name, they would ban
me or make me change it. They would only "tolerate" that fake name for as long
as they did not know it was fake.

They ban names like Laughing Critter, despite being real names, because they
incorrectly believe that they are fake names.

They're not working with perfect information here. Their strategies have false
positive and false negative rates, which they seemingly consider acceptable
_(hence the outrage. If you can make facebook reevaluate the cost of a false
positive (by associating those false positives with outrage), then you may be
able to influence facebooks behavior)_.

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laumars
I know humour isn't always well received on HN, but this article about
Facebook's "authentic name" policy reminded me about a recent-ish Onion
sketch:

[http://www.theonion.com/video/cias-facebook-program-
dramatic...](http://www.theonion.com/video/cias-facebook-program-dramatically-
cut-agencys-cos,19753/)

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overgard
I imagine there must be a monetary reason around this dumb policy, considering
they must have seen the backlash around G+ and still thought "we'll risk it".
Do advertisers pay more to know someone's legal name or something?

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n72
FWIW, just tried registering with "Mark Sugarmountain" and got "We require
everyone to use their real name on Facebook. If you'd like to add an alternate
name, you may do so after registration. Learn more."

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sigzero
Facebook should have just stuck with the original policy or not have one at
all.

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yuhong
Real name policies are a bad idea, but fixing the problems with using real
names is not, though it sometimes can be difficult.

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uslic001
I have an account I do not use on Facebook with a completely made up name from
a MMORPG I used to play and they have never said a thing to me about it. I
can't believe they want to harass Native Americans about their names.

~~~
mkr-hn
The issue is more that these "real name" policies tend to indirectly target
groups rarely encountered by the sort of people who work at social network
companies. If you don't have any trans, Native American, or [insert group that
often changes names/has uncommon names] friends, you might not see a need to
use caution in applying these policies.

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ritchiea
One could even say that it reeks of hubris to believe a largely homogenous
group of people is fit to police the values and customs of the entire world.

~~~
iamdave
Something something twitter activists.

