
Facebook Tells Salman Rushdie He Has to Go By His Given Name, Ahmed Rushdie - jamesbritt
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/11/facebook-tells-salman-rushdie-he-has-to-go-by-his-given-name-ahmed-rushdie/248446/
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credo
from [http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/15/technology/hiding-or-
using...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/15/technology/hiding-or-using-your-
name-online-and-who-decides.html?pagewanted=all)

Twitter, on the other hand, has vigorously defended the use of pseudonyms,
bucking demands most recently from British government officials who pressed
for a real-names policy in the aftermath of the civil unrest across Britain.

 _"Other services may be declaring you have to use your real name because they
think they can monetize that better,"_ said Twitter’s chief executive, Dick
Costolo. _"We are more interested in serving our users first."_

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RexRollman
In other words, arbitrary "real name" rules only apply to non-famous people.

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naz
I think this happened precisely because he is famous. Facebook assumed he was
a fake Salman Rushdie, and demanded identification.

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z92
That's what probably happened. And I can also assume that Rushdi never tried
to claim there "I am the real Rushdi", only tried to show that "My name is
Salman Rushdi [too], see my passport, therefore I should be allowed to use
this name". While FB was trying to protect that name for the real Rushdi.

If FB employees really knew this is the real Salman Rushdi they are talking
with, this probably would have never happened.

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codezero
An easy explanation for this slipping through the cracks is that the person
handling this didn't know who Salman Rushdie was.

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nekojima
Of my 500+ "friends" on FB, over 40 (at last count) had non-real names of one
kind or another. As far as I know, based on status updates, none of my friends
has ever been told to change their name. Other than getting free publicity/bad
press, not really sure why FB insists on this policy.

Of course I can guess why and understand that, but just seems a waste of
resources and customer goodwill.

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SquareWheel
Do you think it's beneficial to your browsing experience that your friends are
able to use fake names? Genuine question. I know personally I would prefer my
friends to stick to real names and avoid ASCII art, cute nicknames and such.
But I might be in the minority here.

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jamesbritt
_I would prefer my friends to stick to real names ..._

Define _real_.

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SquareWheel
Good point, and I understand legal names aren't always conventional. By real I
mean the name a teacher would call you in school. Not a nickname or pseudonym.

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ck2
So the solution to getting all corporate problems fixed is to be famous.

Well we're screwed aren't we?

Either that or run your own website and forget FB/twitter/G+

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buyx
Facebook is generally weak at dealing with fake profiles. Their social graph
is a mess. Obviously fake names, businesses, support groups and scams go
untouched for months. Here's a small sample, which I didn't have to go to much
effort to collect (I've seen many more):

<https://www.facebook.com/CupCaked1>
<https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100002325987571>
<https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100002404362509>
<https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100002157256832>
<https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100003034066636>
<https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100002586855234>
<https://www.facebook.com/adsence.clickr>

Their Real Names policy, is _de facto_ dead already. They should stop
pretending otherwise.

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smackfu
Yes, and the business-as-person thing get really annoying in the friends
suggestions. You are friends with 5 local businesses that decide to setup as
persons rather than pages, and then FB starts suggesting other people be your
friends who are only friends with those 5 "people" and are otherwise
strangers.

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MrEnigma
Update shows that everything was taken care of. Guess they got scared that
they might be seen like Google+

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dhughes
On CBC Radio One there was a good discussion of how people use different names
or characters in their everyday life.

You may be know as Bob to your mother, B-man to your friends and rocketBoy55
online. Your demeanor is different depending on the situation, you wouldn't
act or talk towards your mom like you do when you are online as RocketBoy55 or
vice versa.

It's unreasonable to expect people to act the same all the time and go by the
same description in all areas of their life.

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glhaynes
That's true, though I always _look_ essentially the same; my visual image is a
sort of a "name".

(OK, yeah, I might wear different clothes in different circumstances. And some
of us use makeup which makes even our face look a bit different.)

I guess I'm trying to say that I'm OK[1] with there being a place (Facebook)
that requires real names while there are places (Twitter, most of the rest of
the web) that don't. Different requirements for different contexts lead to
different tones and different conversations.

Anyway, this is all a bit beside the point of this post, which seems to just
be about an overzealous FB employee demanding a famous person (that presumably
they didn't recognize) had to use the name on his ID.

[1] Yes, I'm privileged and have a standard Western-style name and nobody
dangerous stalking me that I need to hide from, etc etc.

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vijayr
genuine question - why do people put up with stupid, arbitrary "rules" like
these? FB is not "necessary" for life (it is not a drivers license or any
other important identification requirement that is "needed"). Rushdie is
famous enough that he can interact with his fans by having his own site, or in
other sites (twitter) which don't have such stupid rules.

In short, why is FB so important? There are phones, emails, twitter and a
whole lot of other means of communication.

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jamesbritt
_In short, why is FB so important? There are phones, emails, twitter and a
whole lot of other means of communication._

As best I can tell, people use it because people use it.

Hell, even the various #occupy$foo groups, while railing about privacy
violations and Goldman-Sachs use FB.

Many, many people are OK with freely compiling a dossier of their life and
associations to be sold to advertisers.

Many, many people who aren't OK with that are still OK with allowing
convenience to trump principles.

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snakebites
Some idiot was fired.

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pork
Non-story: Facebook has recanted.

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potatolicious
What about the other people affected by idiotic policies like this, who aren't
Salman Rushdie-famous?

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abbasmehdi
I never use my first name anywhere (most of my frineds don't even know Abbas
is my middle name, not first) and have never had any trouble with FB. The
point is that Salman Rushdie is a highly controversial figure and I bet this
is not the first time someone has tried to create an account with that name.
If FB didn't block folks from doing this, Rushdie would be complaining how FB
never checks on reals vs. fakes. The point is, FB is trying to maintain the
integrity of it's data, and people like Rushdie are often attacked for their
opinions and are a target of those who disagree with them.

~~~
potatolicious
Right.

So, a Salman Rushdie account appears. Facebook is afraid that, given Salman
Rushdie's sometimes infamy, that this might be a troll account that can be
more inflammatory than it's worth.

So they verify Rushdie's identity and are suitably convinced that it really is
him.

... So they make him change his account name? How does that make sense?

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abbasmehdi
They don't make him do anything outside of what he is supposed to do as per
their policy - use his real first and last names on his FB account. The
problem arises when he is well known by his middle name and has been using it
as his first name. Which once they clarified with him was allowed on the site.

Side note: It is common for people from that part of the world (Indo-
subcontinent) to use their middle name as their first (like Salman and I do).

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potatolicious
So therein lies the fatal shortcoming in the "real names" policy. Looking
beyond privacy and anonymity issues (though those are important), the policy
itself doesn't work simply because the concept of a canonical name for a
person _doesn't really exist_.

In some cultures it's prevalent to go by your middle name. In some others
preferred names are shortened from its legal form. Some people have _multiple_
names, each one just as legal and valid as the other (I have both a legal
English and Chinese name, for example).

Nothing that Facebook (or to be fair, G+) does accounts for any of this, and
without a framework to manage a person's many names (not to mention
identities), a "real name" policy is both shortsighted and unenforceable.

My original point stands - we've established and agree that asking Salman
Rushdie to use Ahmed Rushdie is stupid and unacceptable. Rushdie got this
decision reversed because he's famous and published. Anyone else would not be
so lucky. So why does this policy continue to exist and get enforced?

[edit] And something else: my parents had the foresight to officialize my
English name when we immigrated to North America. Many other Chinese I know
have gone by English names for decades and yet never got it cemented legally.
According to Google/Facebook these people have no claim over these names,
despite the fact that all of their friends and family have known them by only
that name for decades.

So I guess what these companies are trying to communicate is, if I pay the
paltry fee to get my name legally changed to Superfly McAwesome tomorrow,
that's a-ok by them. But an account belonging to Ho Li-Jen, who's gone by
"Jean" all her life, who is known by her neighbors and friends by that name,
needs to be found and made to fix their account.

Nice priorities.

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abbasmehdi
I understand your frustration, but the point here is famous people versus
regular. Not western vs eastern culture (for naming conventions). And I think
its ok for famous people to be able to go by their public persona or stage
name.

I agree with you that the examples you cited seem to have no remedy. What's
your proposed solution?

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potatolicious
Not have a real-name policy. Identity is too complex a concept to be reduced
to simple data structures, no matter how much us engineers desperately want
to.

If one is concerned about impersonation, attack impersonation - impersonation
can and will happen even with a strongly-enforced real-name policy (name
changes, anyone?). Empower support to deal with impersonation on a case-by-
case basis.

Open-endedness in this sort of enforcement can be risky, but it's certainly
better than the "baby with the water" policy the way it is right now.

