Sarah Dobbs looks at Facebook’s recent change of heart
Remember the early days of the internet, when you didn’t give your real name to anyone unless you trusted them? Now, you probably use your real name in most online contexts. Partly that’s because the online and offline worlds are a lot more enmeshed now than they were in the 90s; email’s now a part of everyday life, and people tend to use their real names there. But partly, too, it’s because of Facebook.
Social networks before Facebook tended to encourage their users to create screennames, handles that were generally based on nicknames or interests rather than legal names. But then Facebook came along.
You know Facebook’s background by now, but let’s do a very quick recap. Created by Mark Zuckberg in 2004, it was meant to be an online version of the paper ‘facebooks’ that were available at some universities, to help students get to know one another. It began at Harvard, soon expanded to encompass other universities, and eventually opened up to the general public in 2006. What made it different from most other online discussions forums and networks was that it aimed to connect people to other people they already knew (or were at least likely to run into in real life). In that context, it made sense to use your real name and real photo.
It’s been almost a decade since then, and Facebook has become a fixture. Pretty much everyone uses it – it has 1.55 billion monthly active users, which means that almost all of your friends and family are likely to be on there, and if you’re not, it means missing out on all kinds of news and invitations. But Facebook’s insistence on people using their real names has meant some people have been pushed out. After months of complaints, protests, and organised campaigns, Facebook has finally made a change to the way it polices ‘real’ names on its site, which is, broadly, good news. But is it enough? And why does it matter, anyway?
Privacy And Safety
Facebook’s position on names, basically, is that it shouldn’t be a choice – everyone should use their real names on their profiles. In the Help section, it says: “Facebook is a community where people use their authentic identities. We require people to provide the name they use the name they use in real life; that way, you always know who you’re connecting with. This helps keep our community safe.”
Sounds reasonable, doesn’t it? After all, troll-like behaviour online is often attributed to anonymity; it seems to stand to reason that if you don’t have to stand behind your words, you might say things you’d never actually say if someone could later confront you about it in another context (at your job, for example). Facebook’s former Marketing Director, Randi Zuckerberg, has talked about the real name policy as a way to prevent cyberbullying, saying, “I think anonymity on the Internet has go to away. People behave a lot better when they have their real names down.”
But there are problems with that reasoning. For one thing, the evidence doesn’t back up Facebook’s argument – in Korea, when the law dictated that commenters on big websites had to use their real name, it made virtually no difference to the amount of nastiness that got posted, while some research by Livefyre showed many people just decide not to bother commenting at all if they’re forced to use their real names.
Then there’s the question of who, exactly, these kinds of policies make Facebook safer for. Certainly not victims of domestic abuse, or anyone who’s ever been stalked, who might be trying to keep their profile hidden from people who want to do them harm. Ditto trans people, whose “real” names, or at least their legal names, might not be the ones they actually use. People who live in countries without any real provision for freedom of speech – especially journalists – might also feel safer if they can express their views without attaching their real names to them.
That’s Not A Name
There are other kinds of people who might want to use false names on Facebook, too – performers, for example, whether they’re actors, musicians, or drag queens, might want to use stage names rather than the names their schoolfriends knew them by. Another category of people affected by Facebook’s policies, weren’t using fake names at all – they just fell foul of the fact that Facebook’s systems aren’t set up to recognise certain name formats.
Native Americans, for example, have repeatedly been targeted by Facebook and told to use their real names. High profile examples of this include Robin Kills The Enemy, Lance Brown Eyes, and Dana Lone Hill, all of whom had to fight to get the firm to reinstate their accounts.
Facebook doesn’t like users to have too many letters in their name, either. This has caused problems for Hawaiians like Chase Nahooikaikakeolamauloaokalani Silva, as well as for people from the Chamoru culture, who routinely use their middle names as well as their first and last names. It seems like such a minor thing, but Facebook’s set up was just too rigid to make allowances for people who were, perfectly reasonably, just trying to do as they were told and use their real names. I don’t want to labour the point too hard, but it just seems a bit silly. Facebook also rejected people trying to use first initials instead of first names, even if, like M. Night Shyamalan or J. Michael Straczynski, those are the real names they’re really known by.
Enforcement
The thing that made this policy so much more aggravating than any other slightly daft clause in some overlong terms and conditions document that no-one actually reads was how strict Facebook was prepared to be in enforcing it. Last September, Facebook started a crackdown, and anyone using a name that didn’t look, to Facebook, like their real name got a message telling them to either change it to something more acceptable, provide documentation to prove their name was legit – or face losing access to their account.
Anecdotally, several of my friends deleted their accounts, saying they refused to be bullied into making their names public, or using a name that they actually hadn’t used in real life for years. Some more extreme cases hit the headlines, like the guy who’d legally changed his name to Something Long And Complicated and wanted to use Facebook under that name, but couldn’t get staff to accept it, even after scanning in his passport for them.
Some people found themselves feeling victimised because Facebook allows users to ‘flag’ profiles if they think they’re not being honest about their names. In theory, this feature is meant to highlight fake profiles; back in 2012, Facebook admitted that around 83 million accounts on its network were fakes, which didn’t look particularly good for a site that wants to claim it’s all about openness and honesty. Mark Zuckerberg has even said that he thinks the real name policy makes the site safer for some of the people complaining about it. Speaking to Buzzfeed, he said, “We know that people are much less likely to act abusively towards other members of our community when they’re using their real names. There are plenty of cases – for example, a woman leaving an abusive relationship and trying to avoid her violent ex-husband – where preventing the ex-husband from creating profiles with fake names and harassing her is important. As long as he’s using his real name, she can easily block him.”
Not many people seem to have agreed with him, though. Back in October, some users set up The Nameless Coalition, hoping to force Facebook to change its policy. And after some more protests and many more news articles, it seems to have worked.
Making A Change
As of this month, Facebook has announced plans to relax its stringent rules. The policy isn’t changing, exactly – it’s just that someone at Facebook seems to have realised how useless the previous way of dealing with the issue was, and tried to bring in a bit of common sense. So, users are still asked to use “authentic” names, but that doesn’t necessarily mean their legal name. Rather than demanding copies of users’ birth certificates, passports or library cards when a query is raised, Facebook has tweaked the process so that anyone flagged will be able to explain themselves, and their individual circumstances be taken into accounts when decisions are made.
As an additional step in trying to prevent abuse of the flagging system, Facebook will also ask users to provide some context as to why they think someone is using a fake name – which should, hopefully, make it less likely that people will lose access to their Facebook accounts just because of someone else’s petty spite. Essentially, these changes are adding some flexibility and logic to both parts of a process that was previously almost completely automated. It’s an acknowledgement that things aren’t always straightforward when it comes to names, identity – and privacy.
Privacy has been a big stumbling block for Facebook for almost as long as it’s existed. While we are now generally happier sharing more information about ourselves online, big companies like Facebook do need to remember that everyone’s circumstances are different. This change is definitely a welcome one, though it doesn’t immediately solve every issue anyone’s ever had with the policy, it seems like a step in the right direction. Let’s hope it’s implemented with as much sensitivity (and common sense!) as it needs.
Facebook Vs. Germany
You’d think that Facebook could do whatever it liked with its own site – after all, the argument goes, if you don’t like it, you don’t have to use it – but turns out that’s not totally true. In Germany, it’s been forbidden from enforcing its real name policy. The Hamburg data protection authority ruled that stopping people from using pseudonyms if they wanted to was a violation of citizens’ rights, and an infringement of their privacy.
A case had been brought against the social network by a woman complaining that she wanted to use a pseudonym on the site so people wouldn’t pester her with work-related matters. And in the ruling, Johannes Caspar, commissioner for data protection and freedom of information, said “As in many other complaints against Facebook, this case demonstrates that the network wants to enforce the so-called real names policy with no regard to national legislation.”
Specifically, when Facebook changed the woman’s pseudonym on her profile to her real name, he said it had “blatantly violated the right to informational self-determination,” which was an infringement of the Data Protection Act.
In response, a Facebook spokesperson said they were “disappointed”, and insisted that the policy did comply with European data protection law, but it seems even giant tech companies can’t always get their way. Take that, Facebook.
Google’s Take On Real Names
In most ways, Google+ can fairly be considered inferior to Facebook, but on the issue of real names it was ahead of the game. Last July, in a short blog post, it announced that “there are no more restrictions on what name you can use.” YouTubers can use their channel names instead of the name on their birth certificate – handy, since Google+ identities are linked to YouTube comments – and users can even create profiles with only a first name and no surname if they want to.
It’s sort of weird that it’s taken so much effort to get companies to let us do what we always used to (i.e. make up new aliases online). While the idea of encouraging everyone to own their words and stand by their actions online is nice enough, it’s actually nicer that, eventually, these corporations are bothering to listen to their users.