Text 36933, 184 rader
Skriven 2016-10-04 00:00:00 av Allen Prunty (1:2320/100)
  Kommentar till text 36888 av Joe Delahaye (62889.fidonews)
Ärende: Chosen Names
====================
* In a message originally to Lee Lofaso, Joe Delahaye said:

 JD> What gives me the right, is simply this.  It is MY system, I run
 JD> it. They are MY rules, and if you want to use my system you will
 JD> do it according to MY rules, or not at all.  Obviously if it
 JD> cannot be determined a real name is not a real name, it will
 JD> stay.

I have really seen some really messed up names in my day I had some
unusual names but they were real.  A good friend of mine's last name
is Carr... I'm sure if their daughter were to log on your system you
would raise an eyebrow to see "Lexxus Carr" as a username.  She has
already had some problems with the "Book of Faces. Thought you might
find this article interesting.

Allen

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NEW YORK -  Alicia Istanbul woke up one recent Wednesday to find
herself locked out of the Facebook account she opened in 2007, one
Facebook suddenly deemed fake.

The stay-at-home mom was cut off not only from her 330 friends,
including many she had no other way of contacting, but also from the
pages she had set up for the jewelry design business she runs from her
Atlanta-area home.

Although Istanbul understands why Facebook insists on having real
people behind real names for every account, she wonders why the online
hangout didn't simply ask before acting.

"They should at least give you a warning, or at least give you the
benefit of the doubt," she said. "I was on it all day. I had built my
entire social network around it. That's what Facebook wants you to
do."

Facebook's effort to purge its site of fake accounts, in the process
knocking out some real people with unusual names, marks yet-another
challenge for the 5-year-old social network.

As Facebook becomes a bigger part of the lives of its more than 200
million users, the Palo Alto, Calif.-based company is finding that the
huge diversity and vast size of its audience is making it increasingly
difficult to enforce rules it set when its membership was smaller and
more homogenous.

Having grown from a closed network available only to college students
to a global social hub used by multiple generations, Facebook has
worked over the years to shape its guidelines and features to fit its
changing audience.

But requiring people sign up under their real name is part of what
makes Facebook Facebook.

To make sure people can't set up accounts with fake names, the site
has a long, constantly updated "blacklist" of names that people can't
use.

Those could either be ones that sound fake, like Batman, or names tied
to current events, like Susan Boyle.

While there are dozens of Susan Boyles on Facebook already, people who
tried to sign up with that name after the 47-year-old woman became an
unlikely singing sensation had more difficulty doing so.

Facebook spokesman Barry Schnitt acknowledged that Facebook does make
mistakes on occasion, and he apologized for "any inconvenience."

But he said situations like Istanbul's are very rare, and most
accounts that are disabled for being fake really are.

"The vast, vast, vast majority of people we disable we never hear from
again," he said. Because the exceptions are so rare, he said, prior
notification is "not something we are doing right now."

Facebook, which is available in more than 40 languages (and growing),
has only about 850 employees worldwide, so getting complaints answered
can take a long time.

Istanbul, whose father is from the city of Istanbul in Turkey, said it
took three weeks to get her account reinstated.

Without being able to log in for that time, she said she felt
"completely cut off" from her contacts. Frustrated, she wrote e-mails,
then mailed letters to 12 Facebook executives.

To keep in touch with her friends and monitor her business pages,
Istanbul said she sort of "hijacked" her husband's account.

"I think they just assume you can't have an interesting name," she
said of Facebook. "I kept my maiden name because it's such an
interesting name, I didn't want to give it up. And now I am having to
defend my name."

The suspension of Robin Kills The Enemy's account inspired a friend to
create the group "Facebook: don't discriminate against Native
surnames!!!" on the site.

The group has more than 3,200 members, including some with American
Indian last names who've had their account disabled.

"If you deal with this kind of thing all the time, and on top of that
Facebook wants you to prove your identity, ... it's adding insult to
injury," said Nancy Kelsey, a graduate student at the University of
Nebraska in Lincoln, who started the Facebook group.

She said Facebook should remedy the problem so that it "wouldn't be so
offensive" each time a real name is deemed fake.

"Native American surnames mean something," she said. "They are points
of pride, points of identity. It's not someone trying to make up a
fake name."

Istanbul's sister, Lisa Istanbul Krikorian, also got locked out of her
Facebook account, which she opened a year and a half ago. So she
opened another one that omits her maiden name.

Their mother and their cousin, who both joined the social network more
recently, were not even allowed to sign up under their real names.

"They had to misspell their last names," Alicia Istanbul said, so that
Facebook's system of weeding out fake accounts wouldn't recognize
them. Her mom added an extra "n" to spell "Istannbul," and her cousin
added an "e" to become "Istanbule."

The last name Strawberry also raises a red flag with Facebook, so to
get around the namebots many Strawberrys have resorted to misspelling
their names - to "Strawberri," "Sstrawberry" or "Strawberrii."

But that makes it difficult to reconnect with old classmates and
long-lost friends, something Facebook prides itself in helping
facilitate.

"No one is going to find you if your last name is spelled wrong,"
Istanbul said.

Unlike many other social networks, Facebook wants a real name behind
each person's account. Bands, brands and businesses are supposed to
use fan pages and groups; regular accounts are for real people.

Facebook says its "real name culture" is one of the site's founding
principles. It creates "accountability and, ultimately, creates a
safer and more trusted environment for all of our users," Schnitt
said. "We require people to be who they are."

Once the site disables an account it deems fake, its holder has to
contact Facebook to prove it is real.

In some cases, the company may require that the person fax a copy of a
government-issued ID, which Facebook says it destroys as soon as the
account is verified.

Yet an informal search on Facebook shows that efforts to weed out fake
names may be a Sisyphean task.

A recent search for "stupid," for example, turned up more than 27
people matches, most looking dubious at best. They join some 20 "I.P.
Freely" accounts and 13 "Seymour Butts."

Although many of the fake accounts are created as sophomoric humor or
as a vehicle for malicious activity, others are to protect users from
having their postings create problems when they later look for jobs or
apply to school.

Facebook has extensive privacy settings, but they are complicated and
many people don't know how to properly use them.

Steve Jones, professor of communications at the University of Illinois
at Chicago, said having real people behind personal accounts helps
Facebook maintain credibility.

"If they let fake names and accounts proliferate people are going to
take it less seriously," he said.

Still, he believes that Facebook should notify the holders of
purportedly fake accounts.

"The first step in any sort of takedown action is to notify," he said.
"What's the rush? Why not give somebody 24, 48 hours?"


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