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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

#241

Post by PhasmaFelis »

manigandham wrote: post #232
grayclhn wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

"Political dissidents and abuse victims can't safely use Facebook" is the problem we're discussing. I take it your solution is "political dissidents and abuse victims shouldn't be using the internet at all"?

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

#242

Post by grayclhn »

manigandham wrote: post #232
grayclhn wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

First sentence of the fucking article: "Facebook claims its practice of forcing users to go by their 'real names' (or 'authentic identities' as Facebook spins it) makes the social network a safer place."

Second sentence of the fucking article: "In fact, the company has often claimed that the policy protects women who use the social media platform, even when faced with community advocates pointing out that the policy facilitates harassment, silencing, and even physical violence towards its most vulnerable users."

If Facebook claimed that its practice of forcing users to go by their real names endangered some of those users and it consciously warned those users about the danger of posting personal information on facebook, that would be one thing. But it seems like they are doing the opposite.

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

#243

Post by Swizec »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #237
Swizec wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I agree, we can't live in fear of that. And it's as sinple as making your legsl identity ungooglable.

Artists have figured out long ago that pseudonyms serve a purpose. These days we get sinilar levels of exposure online.

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

#244

Post by PhasmaFelis »

smt88 wrote: post #175
PhasmaFelis wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Facebook hasn't abused their users much in a while, so I trust them to never do so again ever" is pretty fucking slim for someone whose career or life could be endangered.

It's possible to use Facebook in a way that couldn't endanger your life or career, depending on who you are. Obviously if someone is stalking you or something, that's a different story. But most people can just omit the information that they find to be sensitive and limit their friends list to people they trust.

> It's possible to use Facebook in a way that couldn't endanger your life or career, depending on who you are. Obviously if someone is stalking you or something, that's a different story.

It's the story in the article we're discussing, in fact.

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

#245

Post by LoSboccacc »

morgante wrote: post #234
LoSboccacc wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

it is indeed speculation, but at least anecdotal, not totally unfunded

http://www.interactually.com/linkedin-creepiest-social-netwo...

http://imonlinkedinnowwhat.com/2009/09/14/linkedin-people-yo...

there are quite a few instances of weird guess about the people you might know suggestions

of course the actual source is kept as one of their best secrets.

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

#246

Post by soft_dev_person »

dredmorbius wrote: post #143

One of the best commentaries I've seen on the matter of "authentic" or "real" names policies comes from Yonatan Zunger, chief architect of Google's Google+ social network. I've had plenty of disagreement with Google and Yonatan over many aspects of G+, and have given both the company and him much grief on multiple counts, including Real Names (Google's varient of Facebook's policy), though I'll also note that Yonatan…

Not to trivialize his opinion, but I always thought it was a wide spread notion that not allowing anonymity will lead to only "politically correct" or "harmless" opinions to surface.

I made the same argument when one of the Norwegian newspapers I somewhat read regularly (online) started requiring full names in the comments sections. The comments sections are now completely boring and predictable, and any really important but sensitive issues that would really need a minority voice in the debate are just not debated at all.

At least not on a civil level. There are always those who blurt out anything even under their full name (although possibly fake), but these tend to be the same people who are not really able to articulate a sensible and constructive argument for their case.

Personally I have opinions I would not like to link to my real name, since I need to work for a living in a place where we have customers and such...

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

#247

Post by kruczek »

morgante wrote: post #236
kruczek wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 "fo…

> That's not true in practice.

Well, looks like your practice differs from mine then. Whenever I had to cooperate with someone, I'd ask them about their e-mail, username or any other form of contact, so that I would have a "readily available channel", as you say. I don't see how asking for a username would not be normal; to me it's as much normal as asking for a name.

> But it's always a song and dance to remember what their username is when I want to write to them.

I don't use Twitter, but there are many places where lists of known people are kept - e.g. contacts on my phone or known e-mail addresses; and somehow in neither of such places I have trouble finding the right people; it is a feature of such lists to let me tag specific usernames (be it phone numbers or e-mails, to stick to these examples) with descriptions which sound familiar to me. These descriptions don't necessarily need to be real world names either - often it is easier for me to tag someone with a word describing shared interest or place I know them from, rather than using their real name, because often their last name would look completely unfamiliar to me anyway.

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

On the other hand your arguments seem to be based on the narrow view of how your social relationships function, completely ignoring much wider spectrum of "modern social relationships"..

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

#248

Post by unclebucknasty »

Ensorceled wrote: post #148
unclebucknasty wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I don't get is why Facebook's users don't just disengage. Instead, Facebook is treated as some basic human right. Here, with some vague "responsibilities akin to a utility, but not quite that far". I mean, that really sounds kind of, well, made up. Who's defining these responsibilities? In fact, Facebook is not a public utility, but a private company. And, unlike with a public utility, the public to which they a…

My stepson tried to stay off Facebook. But then he started missing parties, not being part of evening conversations, had difficulties with groups at school, was missing out on his theatre group. If you just ... stop ... you may find your social circle leaving you behind.

My sibling comment here is being downvoted for saying he needs closer friends. Maybe that's blunt, but if he is unable to maintain friendships without FB, then something is going on there that shouldn't just be accepted as normal.

And, if what you're saying is universally true for kids, or even nearly so, then I'd say that we (collectively, as adults) have failed them in strolling hand-in-hand with them into a world wherein personal relationships are not viable without a profiteering third-party intermediary.

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

#249

Post by morgante »

LoSboccacc wrote: post #245
morgante wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

it is indeed speculation, but at least anecdotal, not totally unfunded http://www.interactually.com/linkedin-creepiest-social-netwo... http://imonlinkedinnowwhat.com/2009/09/14/linkedin-people-yo... there are quite a few instances of weird guess about the people you might know suggestions of course the actual source is kept as one of their best secrets.

Neither of those links you shared provided any evidence whatsoever for LinkedIn and Facebook having a secret bidirectional data sharing relationship.

The far more intelligent explanation is that suggestions are, as LinkedIn repeatedly emphasizes, based on imported contacts. Note that even if you don't import contacts, the other person might have.

Try using Occam's razor before jumping to unprofitable conspiracy theories. (Again, why on earth do you think Facebook would voluntarily share data with Facebook?)

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

#250

Post by tripzilch »

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…

> 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.

This sounds like a little inconvenience. Hypothetical, at that. I use email and at least half my contacts have some made-up username that doesn't relate to their real identity. It works very well. I'm not so familiar with Skype, but how do "fake friend requests" work on Twitter? You decide who to follow, and that's it. The list of followers is not a very useful source of info and never was, even without bots, you can't know if that old friend in your followers list even uses Twitter regularly.

But the real question is, I don't believe for a moment that (the possibility of) a little inconvenience should in any way weigh in against the certainty of real physical danger that is happening right now to (I don't have the numbers but I'm sure it has to be at least) 1000s of individuals. I mean this side of the argument is very much not a theoretical or hypothetical scenario. There are many, many people on FB with abusive exes, with or without restraining orders, or perhaps parts of their families that they don't want to know certain aspects of their lives in fear of being ostracised (sad as that may be). You hear about these cases all the time, and you can expect that's only a fraction of the cases that actually speaks out (for obvious reasons).

And on the other side, you may get a little spam.

And on the other other side, we should all just get off Facebook, but that's another topic.

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