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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

#231

Post by manigandham »

grayclhn wrote: post #169
smt88 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have responded to the criticism of their historical behavior and now only make changes with quite a bit of fanfare. They haven't done anything overtly evil related to privacy in a while.

Sure, but users who are legitimately concerned about privacy would be pretty foolish to rely on Facebook's settings, which was the comment I replied to. It's not like we're talking about behavior from 20 years ago. To be fair, I don't think those users should trust any service's privacy settings. Facebook is almost certainly better than, say, Ashley Madison. But I think most of us would ridicule a "real names only" p…

If you are legitimately concerned about privacy, why are you putting it on Facebook or online in the first place?

It's like everyone here wants to blame Facebook when it's actually less work to just not post anything.

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

#232

Post by manigandham »

grayclhn wrote: post #200
manigandham wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps dont share information if your career/life depends on it?

That's a very different argument than "I dont get it - Facebook has some of the most robust privacy settings of any platform"

I can have different arguments - especially for different scenarios.

If it really is your life at risk, dont share on Facebook or online. Otherwise, use privacy controls. What am I missing?

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

#233

Post by kruczek »

morgante wrote: post #21

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…

> I'm not constantly bombarded by fake friend requests like I am on Twitter, Skype, or any other platform which allows random usernames.

I don't see how "real name policy" would prevent that. What's stopping people from creating fake accounts with real-looking names?

> I can easily find the people in my life without having to go through an awkward song and dance.

But maybe some of those people don't want you to find them? And if they will want you to find them, they will let you know of their username.

> Facebook is a platform designed for digitizing your real world relationships, not for accumulating thousands of "followers."

Yea, nice, but that is irrelevant to the real name policy. I can very well digitize my real world relationships without using my real world name. People that know me in real world, know me on Facebook by my nick, even if I don't use that nick in real world.

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

#234

Post by morgante »

LoSboccacc wrote: post #198
TeMPOraL wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't know how they do it. But they do it. I'm assuming geo-tracking of phones and noticing that you spent X hours together the previous night. My boss and I were wondering the same thing after spending few days at client's site in another country, after which Facebook suggested the client as a friend to my boss, even though they never interacted electronically by means other than company e-mail. We thought about…

You know when websites ask for consent to share data with third parties? This is mostly how they do it. What you view on linkedin goes to fb and vice versa. I had used a chat service only once to call some guys and the day after all participants were suggestions on linkedin. To most of those free service a product is you and they monetize your graph in this way. Then you have subsidiaries. You may gave not given face…

> What you view on linkedin goes to fb and vice versa.

That's completely unfounded speculation, and I'd love to see any citation for it.

I'm inherently skeptical because for these companies their most important asset is their data. The idea that they would share that data willy-nilly with third parties makes no business sense.

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

#235

Post by junto »

scintill76 wrote: post #196
baby wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not create a second account for work under your real name?

I don't think they have a real first account. They only created an account at all because they needed it for work, and they didn't give it any real information because they didn't want Facebook to have it.

Correct.

I don't want a personal or work FB account that has my real identity. I don't want to share my identity with FB period. I consider it toxic. This is personal opinion, but by having an account with a real identity, I am consenting to Facebook spying on me and my friends. The application is a leaky sieve, and it is designed to follow you and your habits around the web.

Therefore I use a fake but real looking FB account purely so I can access developer functions, since I am forced to have a real account to do so.

I highly recommend people read this if they also have doubts about Facebook, their business model and your value to them as a user: http://saintsal.com/facebook/

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

#236

Post by morgante »

kruczek wrote: post #233
morgante wrote: post #21

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…

> I'm not constantly bombarded by fake friend requests like I am on Twitter, Skype, or any other platform which allows random usernames. I don't see how "real name policy" would prevent that. What's stopping people from creating fake accounts with real-looking names? > I can easily find the people in my life without having to go through an awkward song and dance. But maybe some of those people don't want you to find…

> And if they will want you to find them, they will let you know of their username.

That's not true in practice. I'm friends with tons of people in my school who are basically passing acquaintances. We don't know each other well enough that asking for a username would be normal, but it's helpful to have a readily available channel to ask things like "hey, what was the assignment for econ?"

Likewise, I am actually "following" some of my real world friends on Twitter. But it's always a song and dance to remember what their username is when I want to write to them.

Your arguments seem to be based in a theoretical version of how the world works, not how modern social relationships actually function.

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

#237

Post by TeMPOraL »

Swizec wrote: post #229
TeMPOraL wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that at this point it's IMO worrying too much. Being afraid of having your name discovered is a bit on the paranoid side for most people. Hell, it's usually trivial to get that data off-line and dangerous people will likely target you directly. By the way, some people don't even try. Few days ago I saw a girl on the tram carrying her CV in such a way it would be trivial to shoulder-surf her name, email, phone…

That attitude changes when you get death threats sent to your email that mention your home address because your dad had a business disagreed with an unstable person. Yeah, that happens irl sometimes. The scary thing is that you don't know who will turn out to be unstable, and it can be someone you never even interact with who is just trying to use you to get under somebody else's skin.

Ouch. That sucks :(.

Still, problematic as it is, that's just bad luck. We can't all live in fear of evil strangers sending death threats to us. There is no way a normal person can reasonably protect themselves from an attack like this targeted personally. We need to empower the police to deal better with such cases.

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

#238

Post by morgante »

dunkelheit wrote: post #72
morgante wrote: post #21

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…

Real-name internet identities have some drawbacks compared to their real-world counterparts: 1. In real life its fairly easy (and I would say healthy) to have multiple "identities", say your workday exquisitely professional identity and weekend identity which enjoys goofy antics with friends. In infinitely googlable internet - not so much. I guess mitigating this is the idea behind google+ circles but I have never us…

> 1. In real life its fairly easy (and I would say healthy) to have multiple "identities"

I don't know of anyone who uses different names for those identities. My family calls me by a nickname, but certainly all my friends and business relationships know my "real name." I imagine that's true for 99% of people: they name a name that they use with nearly everyone.

The rest of identity management is easily done on Facebook. My business colleagues see an entirely different version of my Facebook than my college friends: literally everything you post can be scoped to a particular friend list.

> Considering the difficulties with friend requests - you are usually connected to the people you want to befriend through other means (e.g. in real life).

Kind of, but it's awkward and unnecessary. I'm friends on Facebook with basically everyone I'm in class with, even though asking their username would be kind of strange. This nominal friendship is very helpful for quickly asking questions or interacting.

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

#239

Post by morgante »

ambicapter wrote: post #121
morgante wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Once your platform begins to become ubiquitous (Facebook Messenger), it starts to have certain responsibilities, similiar to a utility but not quite that far. I think this is a decent argument. Facebook is pretty close to being a digital utility at this point. But, a logical corollary of that argument is that if Facebook is a utility it's also expected for everyone to have it. Hence, it's fully okay for services to…

> if Facebook is a utility it's also expected for everyone to have it. How so? I am in no way required to live with running water and electricity in my house. Even things that are tangentially related, like my workplace requiring me to bathe and wash my clothes occasionally, don't require me to have the equipment to do so in my house.

The vast majority of jobs expect you to have a phone number.

I'm not sure how you would have a phone number without working with some phone service.

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

#240

Post by morgante »

taswal_tmanir wrote: post #122
TeMPOraL wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In real life its fairly easy (and I would say healthy) to have multiple "identities", say your workday exquisitely professional identity and weekend identity which enjoys goofy antics with friends. I think Facebook primarily targets the second one. Though personally, I find the whole concept of this type of multiple identities weird. Why should I present a different identity at work than I do in personal affairs? A…

> Though personally, I find the whole concept of this type of multiple identities weird. Why should I present a different identity at work than I do in personal affairs? Most people act more formally at work than they would otherwise. It's the same idea. > And if your boss objects to your weekend parties, then (unless we're talking PR-heavy industry, you being in the spotlight) you should consider changing jobs. Cari…

That's why privacy controls exist.

It's pretty easy on Facebook to restrict your social photos to only your social friends.

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