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Global coalition to Facebook: “Authentic names” are dangerous for your users

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Re: Global coalition to Facebook: “Authentic names” are dangerous for your users

#21

Post by morgante »

I wish the EFF and others who are against using real names would at least acknowledge the drawbacks of pseudonyms and the proliferation of fake accounts and fake names which comes with them.

The real name policy has huge benefits. I'm not constantly bombarded by fake friend requests like I am on Twitter, Skype, or any other platform which allows random usernames. Even more importantly, I can easily find the people in my life without having to go through an awkward song and dance. If I'm working on a project with someone, I can immediately find them and message them without worrying that it's some random imposter or some such.

Facebook is a platform designed for digitizing your real world relationships, not for accumulating thousands of "followers." There's a reason they limit you to 5,000 friends. People who are trying to disconnect their Facebook identity from their real world identity are not using Facebook the way it's meant to be used and should probably just leave it.

That being said, Facebook could definitely do a better job of making it easier for people to prove that a name is their everyday name even when it's not their legal name.

I fully expect to lose a lot of karma over this comment, but I'd love to hear an argument over why access to Facebook is a right together with your down vote.

Re: Global coalition to Facebook: “Authentic names” are dangerous for your users

#22

Post by Karunamon »

cableshaft wrote: post #12
Animats wrote: post #5

Real names keep Facebook spam down. You can report real name violations to make spam accounts go away. That's worth doing. Giving that up to make a tiny number of drag queens happy isn't worth it.

Every teacher I know either doesn't use Facebook at all, or if they do, they don't use their real name. Why? Because they know that their students are going to look for them on Facebook out of curiosity and gossip amongst themselves about any detail that's on there (or if it's locked down, try to sneak onto their friends list and then gossip). They often have to be very careful or else they could easily get in troubl…

So the idea is we give up social networking entirely because a small percentage of people are jerks? Doesn't that seem a little defeatist?

Re: Global coalition to Facebook: “Authentic names” are dangerous for your users

#23

Post by qznc »

junto wrote: post #13
seiji wrote: post #2

Isn't it kinda obvious the long game of facebook is to become the single globally mandated identity service? Governments will contract with them to maintain your official citizen ID records. Game over.

You should read "The Circle". It is basically that and more.

I found The Circle entertaining.

As an argument against Facebook (or Google,Amazon,etc) it just sets up a strawman. Not realistic enough. That politicians can be pressured into 24/7 live streaming is ridiculous. The Circle has no serious opponents, while in reality there are more powers which would acquire or destroy Facebook if they attempted something like that.

Re: Global coalition to Facebook: “Authentic names” are dangerous for your users

#24

Post by oniTony »

junto wrote: post #9

I use Facebook as a developer using a completely fake but real looking identity. I have to have a developer account because of my job. Otherwise I wouldn't touch the site with someone else's bargepole. Thank you http://www.fakenamegenerator.com If that account gets blocked then I'll just have to create another fake one.

Why not use actual Test Users for development? https://developers.facebook.com/docs/apps/test-users

Re: Global coalition to Facebook: “Authentic names” are dangerous for your users

#25

Post by tjoff »

jawns wrote: post #7
1ris wrote: post #3

And in fact illegal in Germany and probably a hell lot of other places. I wonder if that gets enforced anytime soon.

I'm sincerely curious ... how is a social network like Facebook, which is built around connecting you with your real-world friends and acquaintances, supposed to work if you can't require users to identify themselves in a meaningful way? The little "people you may know" widget is really useful, because it shows me names I recognize from my offline life. If it's just a random stream of pseudonyms and online handles, t…

The little "people you may know" widget is really useful

It seems to be quite useful for generating spam-mails, I'll give it that...

Re: Global coalition to Facebook: “Authentic names” are dangerous for your users

#26

Post by andreasvc »

Animats wrote: post #5

Real names keep Facebook spam down. You can report real name violations to make spam accounts go away. That's worth doing. Giving that up to make a tiny number of drag queens happy isn't worth it.

That argument makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. It's trivial to obtain legit sounding names for spamming purposes. It's better to report actual spam than something indirect such as names; being able to report accounts just for their names is asking for abuse.

Re: Global coalition to Facebook: “Authentic names” are dangerous for your users

#27

Post by LordKano »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #15

I wish to God that Google+ had done the right thing on names during their five minutes of relevance. They might have actually lasted as a viable Facebook competitor.

Google needed Facebook to have a MySpace moment to open the door but their insistence on real names, binding all of your accounts (Gmail, Youtube, etc) to your Google+ account and Google's history of unceremoniously dropping support for services if they under-perform kept me and millions of others from going there.

Re: Global coalition to Facebook: “Authentic names” are dangerous for your users

#28

Post by hoorayimhelping »

oniTony wrote: post #24
junto wrote: post #9

I use Facebook as a developer using a completely fake but real looking identity. I have to have a developer account because of my job. Otherwise I wouldn't touch the site with someone else's bargepole. Thank you http://www.fakenamegenerator.com If that account gets blocked then I'll just have to create another fake one.

Why not use actual Test Users for development? https://developers.facebook.com/docs/apps/test-users

I think what GP is saying is that you need a Facebook account to get a developer account, so they create fake identities to attach to developer accounts.

Re: Global coalition to Facebook: “Authentic names” are dangerous for your users

#29

Post by seiji »

qznc wrote: post #23
junto wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should read "The Circle". It is basically that and more.

I found The Circle entertaining. As an argument against Facebook (or Google,Amazon,etc) it just sets up a strawman. Not realistic enough. That politicians can be pressured into 24/7 live streaming is ridiculous. The Circle has no serious opponents, while in reality there are more powers which would acquire or destroy Facebook if they attempted something like that.

You may be a little oblivious to how Facebook has "like" buttons, which are also javascript tracking beacons, on basically every site online. Well, "Facebook" doesn't have them there, the site owners include them willingly, serving up the privacy of their users in exchange for "engagement." Billions of tracking beacons spread around the Internet give Facebook a real time click-by-click bread-cumb trail of almost your entire thought process and Internet experiential reality (reminder: use uBlock Origin with everything enabled).

Google has the email of probably over a billion people. Sure, there are safeguards to prevent employee naughtiness (supposedly there are now, after years of "lol, i'm a sysadmin and i'll read the email of my ex" abuse), but if they wanted, they could do a lot of damage and there's nobody capable of stopping them.

Heck, let's not even include google analytics. Sure, they say there is a "corporate firewall" between the global analytic record of every web user alive and the rest of the company, but we just have to trust them.

Trust Google. Trust Facebook. Trust VW. It's only software created by and data retained by for-profit corporations in constant competition who must meet growth targets or else the market will punish them. What could go wrong?

(Amazon doesn't have a bird in this fight.)

Old quote (from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUXh-GPa5dI&t=36m00):

"In some respects, it's pretty clear that we are sleepwalking into nightmares. Absolutely. And the most distressing thing is how hard that is to explain to anybody.

The way in which people will give away their personal details in much the way as in the child history books about colonialism. You had native chieftains who handed over mineral rights in return from some baubles from some canny imperialist. All that stuff is happening but it's very hard to explain to anybody."

Re: Global coalition to Facebook: “Authentic names” are dangerous for your users

#30

Post by jleehey »

oniTony wrote: post #24
junto wrote: post #9

I use Facebook as a developer using a completely fake but real looking identity. I have to have a developer account because of my job. Otherwise I wouldn't touch the site with someone else's bargepole. Thank you http://www.fakenamegenerator.com If that account gets blocked then I'll just have to create another fake one.

Why not use actual Test Users for development? https://developers.facebook.com/docs/apps/test-users

I believe you're required to have a real, verified account in order to create and modify test users, and I think there are certain features that are blocked for test users.
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