Recently Facebook started enforcing its real names policy, in a particularly cack handed fashion. Facebook has for an awfully long time had an “authenticate name policy. It’s a slightly confused policy as it states:
“The name you use should be your authentic identity; as your friends call you in real life and as our acceptable identification forms would show.”
But the types of ID they accept are basically state ID of your current legal name which often is the name “your friends call you in real life”. Add to this a very healthy dose of American cultural assumptions to what is now a global service and well it was a recipe for drama. If Facebook paid a bit more attention they’d have seen that Google had already tried the real name thing and had had to back down, but nope Facebook missed that one. Alternatively Facebook did see what happened to Google and decided that they could cope with the loss of a percentage of users in return for the increase in data quality they could provide to their customers. Regardless of the reasons the unannounced and heavy-handed enforcement of the policy , was promptly abused by people reporting the names of people they didn’t like, and Facebook compounded the problem by blocking accounts first and asking later – only they didn’t even always bother to ask.
This quite understandable has led to quite a bit of confusion with people falling off Facebook and returning with new fake names or real names that no one uses. Of course for a surprising number of people there are really good reasons not to use your legal name:
- Holding views that are politically unwelcome in your country
- Hiding from abusive partners/ex’s
- Having a job where using social media is problematic: teachers, politicians, police, armed forces, medical research , any large media sensitive company anywhere
- Transgender and other people in the middle of changing identity
Now of course some people have taken the predictable stance of “doesn’t affect me, not my problem”. Others have said “well don’t call yourself ‘Screaming Lord Such'”, this doesn’t hold much water as relatively normal names have been caught due to that cultural bias mentioned earlier – and is really irrelevant given the numerous reasons why people might use an alternative identity.
Amidst this drama some people have decided to organise a protest, which may be the epitome of lazy clicktivisim. The plan is for one day to “deactivate accounts” or “Change user pictures to black”, or “unlike pages” and even better “don’t post”. Now some of those ideas are actually good if carried out in enough numbers (bonus points if you guess which ones*). The problem with such a demonstration is that we’re the product not the customer, we’re just turkeys protesting against Christmas. For turkeys to protest effectively it needs to be in large numbers over a longer time. Of course whilst we’re not Facebooks customers we are the customers of Facebooks customers. So writing to as many companies that advertise with Facebook saying you’re not going to spend money with them if they keep supporting Facebooks real names policy would probably be more effective as it threatens their wallets, and they’ll threaten Facebooks.
Ultimately though all such protests won’t change the fact that we’re still the Turkeys staying in the farm because all the other turkeys are here. As numerous internet social platforms have proven though that can change if we want it to and in this case if we’re prepared to actually pay for it. The Internets past if littered with social platforms that died over night because something better came along. Of course each time the new platform has offered an improvement and much as it’s a privacy invading monster Facebook continues to offer a better product than anyone else, but there are alternatives (which I’m going to take a quick look at later) if we actually wanted to leave the turkey farm. As there are alternatives and even if there weren’t I’m afraid this really isn’t much of a free speech issue. You can use other platforms, no one is forcing you to use any social media and ultimately it’s a private enterprise so their gaff their rules. It is of course much easier to take a day off and turn your profile picture black.
* the only ones Facebook would ever notice are “deactivate accounts” and “don’t post” but much like many other one day embargo’s it will most likely be followed by an upsurge in traffic the next day and so make no difference.
