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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 fak

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.

throwaway6845 11y ago
Agreed. I run a small-town community website. Instituting a real-name policy stopped the trolling overnight: people behave much more reasonably if they know they might meet the person they're yelling at in the street tomorrow. The key is that our site aims to be solely a resource for the existing community (where people relate to each other through real names), not a virtual community in itself. I certainly wouldn't argue that the web should be real-name only, but nor do I believe everyone always has an automatic right to post on privately-owned websites using pseudonyms.
- morgante 11y ago
  > I certainly wouldn't argue that the web should be real-name only 100% agreed. The vast majority of the web is based around pseudonymous interaction (even this comment thread). I love that about the web, but I also appreciate Facebook creating one place to foster those real world connections.
  - gknoy 11y ago
    I would prefer to be able to explicitly set a pseudoynmous profile (name, profile picture, etc) in groups that we join (e.g., gaming groups, where FB is Super Awesome for out-of-game collaboration, but where not everyone needs to be able to see my profile picture or name). On the one hand, one might say that this is using FB counter to its intentions ... but on the other, it seems clear that the ubiquity of FB chat, the excellence of many other things (shared discussion, etc), and the general stickiness that the platform has indicate that they want you to use it for as much as possible. I'd love it if people who feel they are in danger can join communities, or even comment on things freely. I'd probably be happy even if such pseudonymous accounts were flagged visibly. As it is, many of my real-life friends in the SCA or in gaming groups __already__ create dual FB accounts (one for Real Them, one for their SCA or gaming persona), and it doesn't really inhibit trusted interactions with them. I'm fortunate not to feel I __need__ one, but I'd love to have my comments on some things (gaming forums, etc) be more in-character and less tied to my public persona. At the same time, having real names hasn't seemed to reduce the abusive behavior that one sees (e.g. any political post, or Youtube comments) noticeably, because strangers are effectively anonymous.
    - morgante 11y ago
      That's an interesting idea. You have a good point: Facebook has developed a really powerful and sticky social platform. While they explicitly want the primary experience on that platform to be around real world communications, there's no fundamental reason that the technology couldn't simultaneously be used for digital communities. I feel strongly that the communities shouldn't overlap (I do not want to see pseudonyms in my comment threads), but the idea of a parallel Facebook where alternative profiles can interact with alternative profiles is interesting.
- scrollaway 11y ago
  > I certainly wouldn't argue that the web should be real-name only, but nor do I believe everyone always has an automatic right to post on privately-owned websites using pseudonyms. For a lot of people, Facebook is "The Web". That's all or almost all they use. The less tech-literate ones don't even know "the web", they connect to Facebook. They get their news from Facebook. They communicate on Facebook. Everything they do online, they do on Facebook. Like someone mentioned above, when you get big enough you start to have responsibilities. When your actions affect and your voice is heard by billions of people, you're no longer "some random privately-owned website"... you're a supergiant with the ability to affect the entire world.
- grayclhn 11y ago
  The real-name local facebook group for my small town is a cesspool, so ymmv.
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toomuchtodo 11y ago
No downvote even if I disagree. Once your platform begins to become ubiquitous (Facebook Messenger), it starts to have certain responsibilities, similiar to a utility but not quite that far. Now I'm prepared for the downvotes, but I don't think its wrong to expect certain behavior from tech companies in certain segments once they reach a particular size. A compromise would be to allow Facebook users to get verified (similar to Twitter's verification), and then groups and communities could exclude non-verified profiles by default while allowing those non-verified accounts that they'd like to on a case by case basis.
- morgante 11y ago
  > 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 require Facebook access to log in (just as it's okay for companies to basically expect their employees to have a telephone). So, which would you prefer: ubiquitous Facebook, with certain regulations keeping it in check, or a Facebook that you can readily opt out of because you don't agree with its policies. > A compromise would be to allow Facebook users to get verified (similar to Twitter's verification) I'm not sure I fully understand your proposal, but it actually sounds a lot like my opinion. It's not that I think Facebook profiles should be required to use their official legal name, just that they should use the name they use offline. Is that what you meant by verification?
  - toomuchtodo 11y ago
    > I'm not sure I fully understand your proposal, but it actually sounds a lot like my opinion. It's not that I think Facebook profiles should be required to use their official legal name, just that they should use the name they use offline. Is that what you meant by verification? Yes.
  - ambicapter 11y ago
    > 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.
rspeer 11y ago
This particular statement from the EFF is not in any way trying to convince Facebook that they shouldn't have a real names policy. It's simply saying: Okay, you've got a real name policy. You should reform it in a few ways so that people can't use it for targeted silencing and harassment of groups they dislike.
- morgante 11y ago
  It's also pretty overtly hostile to the existence of a real name policy at all. The very first line sets the tone of hostility: > 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. The piece they link to emphasizes that the "EFF continues to believe that the best solution is simply to get rid of the 'real names' policy entirely."
gurkendoktor 11y ago
> 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. Some people use their pseudonym (usually a nick name) in real life as well, except for work, and I think separating work from Facebook is exactly how Facebook should be used. (There's always LinkedIn for work...) Another thing I see a lot in Germany are (heavily) abbreviated names, so that all your friends know who you are in their stream, but stalkers/your boss cannot find you as easily. Tellingly, my female FB friends are much more likely to obfuscate their names (and get blocked for it). > I'd love to hear an argument over why access to Facebook is a right together with your down vote. Complaining about bad policies is how public discourse works, no matter if one has a right to better policies or not.
- Swizec 11y ago
  > Tellingly, my female FB friends are much more likely to obfuscate their names (and get blocked for it). This is the part of Facebook that's really creepy. As a guy who used to date around a lot, I was surprised by how well the "find user" function works. You connect with someone on Tinder, and meet up in real life. You have no friends in common, no digital connection other than a week-old Tinder conversation consisting of 5 messages. Neither of you checks-in to the restaurant you met up at. But when you type the woman's first name into Facebook (you don't know her last name), she will be the first suggested result. 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.
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    > 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 geo-tracking, but then concluded that it's more likely Facebook must have identified both of them were connecting to the same Wi-Fi network at the same time.
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dunkelheit 11y ago
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 used them so can't say much. 2. In real life past events tend to diminish in significance after some time passes. So someone who had committed a misstep can atone himself over time. Not so on the internet - what happened on the internet stays on the internet ... like forever and also infinitely googlable. This is less relevant to the walled garden of facebook but relevant to the internet at large. 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). So use that channel to communicate your pseudonym! I guess real-name policy had sense when facebook was being discovered by former classmates who wanted to be in touch over the internet for the first time but these days are long gone.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  > 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? 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. Caring about such issues is as sign of serious problems in the company.
  - taswal_tmanir 11y ago
    > 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. Caring about such issues is as sign of serious problems in the company. If you have a secure job, or are important to the company, maybe. Many younger people are not so secure in their jobs, however, or live in a highly religious area, or both. A Facebook user still dependent on their strict parents could also be ruined by a stray pic.
jleader 11y ago
What about people who don't want all of their real life relationships to be able to follow them online? For example, suppose someone has a restraining order against a stalker, so they don't want to be findable online. Does that mean they're "not using Facebook the way it's meant to be used and should probably just leave it"? Online interaction has very different affordances than off-line interaction (for example, the ease of searching, the indefinite persistence of communications, etc.). Pretending that saying "Facebook should be just like real life" erases those differences is naive. There's a cost to allowing pseudonymity, but there's also a cost to its lack, it's just that the latter cost is distributed very unevenly.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  What about the people who do live single life, who do want their real-life relationships to follow them on-line? Why should we bow down and twist our system for the unfortunate minority that has a stalker problem? There are ways to deal with those that don't involve designing the entire experience around the special cases. So someone has a restraining order against a stalker. Then it should be enough for them to be able to send a scan of this order to Facebook to mark themselves exempt from real-name policy. There is need for such a problem to influence the way most people experience the service. Besides, what good does changing profile name do anyway? Even if you'd have a pseudonymous account, you still probably have your real-life friends added on Facebook. Any stalker worth the name will quickly find you by just browsing through friendlists of your friends (if you have a restraining order against him, it means he interacted with you enough to know some of your real-life friends). You can't solve this problem by changing the service mechanics without ruining it for everyone. This is a kind of matter the police is supposed to deal with, and this in fact is an argument for more cooperation between Facebook and law enforcement.
  - taswal_tmanir 11y ago
    > What about the people who do live single life, who do want their real-life relationships to follow them on-line? Then they just drumroll use their real name? Heck, they could have even used a more easily recognizable nickname... before this policy, anyway.
natch 11y ago
This reminds me of the meme of first world problems versus third world problems. Essentially, you are saying that because it saves you some annoyance, it's a good tradeoff, even if that means that a few others face not annoyance, but actual existential threats of death, violence, imprisonment, dismemberment, etc. http://violetblue.tumblr.com/post/130440543695/why-im-sitting-at-home-crying-on-a-saturday http://violetblue.tumblr.com/post/130440543695/why-im-sittin... Edit: and yes, participation in Facebook is somewhat optional, but there's a larger price to be paid for not participating than the price of any of the annoyances you mention.
- kuschku 11y ago
  And, in some countries, even making copies or photographing or scanning an ID is a crime. I’ll not commit a crime just to get access to Facebook.
  - techdragon 11y ago
    I love learning random facts like this. Can I get a citation/link to where coping your own ID is a crime?
    - detaro 11y ago
      In Germany, making a copy of your own ID is probably legal but requesting a copy is illegal, as is making a copy if you are not the owner, with only very limited exceptions (e.g. some parts of government, for some financial transactions). (Completely ignoring the fact that real name policies are legally dubious as well)
- ryandrake 11y ago
  What is the price I pay for not participating in Facebook?
  - taswal_tmanir 11y ago
    You might lose all online communication options with at least some of your friends. This is unacceptable to many/most people, hence why they join Facebook and end up perpetuating the effect.
andmarios 11y ago
Most people have a partitioned identity. There is a side you show to your friends, a side you show to your colleagues, a side for your parents, for your significant other and even one for your kids. An online persona is just another partition that whilst you may don't want to hide, you probably want to keep the intersection with most of the rest of the partitions to a minimum. In real world there is a physical separation. All your contacts know you by your real name but only interact with a specific partition. On the other hand, in the virtual world, all your contacts will have to interact with your one online persona. A pseudonym is an easy and practical way to have more than one online personas or keep your one persona limited to a certain group of people in your life. The people you want to interact with a certain part of your identity, are easy to reach; online nicknames are part of everyone's life. For the rest, they will have to search a bit more to find you and even then, they will be less imposed to take into account that part of your identity due to the use of a pseudonym.
jeena 11y ago
> If I'm working on a project with someone, I can immediately find them and message Interesting, that is exactly why I don't use my real name on Facebook. I don't wont everyone I work on some project with to be able to find me and message me outside of the established conversation channels from within the project. And even less am I interested them to be able to learn about my private life. All my friends do find me with help of the friend of a friend feature on Facebook and the Picture I have there. Everyone else should never try to contact me there, I will block them anyway.
yarrel 11y ago
It's easy to generate real-looking names, there are libraries to do so. Requiring real-looking names therefore doesn't prevent bots. If you're not being bombarded with friend requests by bots on Facebook that just means none of your friends have accepted a friend request from a profile with a picture of a young asian woman as its avatar (and an authentic-sounding name) yet... You can validate your name on Twitter if you want to. You don't have to though. Access to Facebook isn't a right (although in countries where it is the only net presence that may become more of an issue). But Facebook's mistakes (and Real Names policies are a mistake) affect a lot of people, all of whom have the valid use case of "using Facebook as a platform". So the argument is you're creating a false dichotomy between using Facebook to get "5000 followers" and wanting to use Facebook under your legal, European-sounding, name. The valid use case you're missing is using Facebook under the name you generally go by without this being a problem if it's not a name Facebook thinks is valid. Even I go under an informal version of my legal name - it's not the name on my birth certificate, passport, or bank account. So it's not my Real Name. And I'm not any of the groups that get hit hardest by this.
slavik81 11y ago
> I'm not constantly bombarded by fake friend requests like I am on Twitter, Skype, or any other platform which allows random usernames. Really? I constantly get Facebook friend requests from pretty women in skimpy clothes with 6 to 10 friends.
taswal_tmanir 11y ago
> 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. The way Facebook is "meant" to be used is to maximize their revenue from data mining. This is clearly not something we, the users, should be caring about. > 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. How is that even possible? There's no authority for "proving" nicknames, and I highly doubt Facebook is going to bother hiring judges to evaluate non-standard evidence. Not when it's easier, and more profitable, just to demand everyone's legal name. > but I'd love to hear an argument over why access to Facebook is a right Why not flip it around, and ask why Facebook has the right to demand our real names? In some countries, at least, it's seeming that it doesn't. <http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jul/29/germany-fights-facebook-over-real-names-policy> http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jul/29/germany-fi...
linkydinkandyou 11y ago
These discussions remind me of the debate over caller ID in California. California was one of the last states to have Caller ID. On the opposing side were battered women's advocacy groups arguing that Caller ID would make it impossible for a woman to hide her location from her tormentor. See http://www.nytimes.com/1993/03/15/nyregion/popularity-of-caller-id-service-alarms-women-s-groups.html http://www.nytimes.com/1993/03/15/nyregion/popularity-of-cal... for a general discussion about this. the most vehement opposition has come from advocates for battered women and other victims whose safety might depend on being able to call help lines or domestic-violence shelters anonymously. One Caller I.D. option lists numbers for calls that have been made as well as for calls received; thus an abusive husband, for example, could tell if his wife had called for help. And if such a victim has left home, Caller I.D. might help the abuser track her down if she or her children called. 'A Step Backward' And among the groups that wanted it were, you guessed it, battered women's advocacy groups who argued that Caller ID would put an end to harassing phone calls! Both sides gave tearful testimony to the California PUC.
- zyxley 11y ago
  I don't see the similarity. Where are the disadvantaged and at-risk groups arguing that Facebook's name policy is a good thing?
fweespeech 11y ago
> 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. Facebook's Real Name Policy isn't actually effective. I've got ~15 accounts with fake names [but "real sounding" in that they are real names]. > 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. That isn't related to the real name policy, sorry. If it was, I wouldn't have ~15 accounts with different names. > 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. I've successfully done it and each account is a silo by interest. It isn't hard. :/
bzbarsky 11y ago
There would be no problem, perhaps, if Facebook allowed you to compartmentalize your relationships like you can in the real world, but it doesn't as far as I can tell. In the real world, the fact that I need to communicate with my children's teachers has no bearing on the fact that I need to communicate with my co-workers, which has no bearing on needing to communicate with my family. I can use different e-mail addresses, different phone numbers, and even different postal addresses (P.O. boxes, say) for these separate groups, and people often do. This is most prevalent with e-mail, but not uncommon with phone numbers and I know several people who have a P.O box or two for some parts of their correspondence. On Facebook, these all get hopelessly conflated, which is great for Facebook but not necessarily great for users. > I'd love to hear an argument over why access to Facebook is a right If your child's teacher sends all communications via Facebook (which is true of some of them), then Facebook access becomes rather required just so you know when little things like parent-teacher conferences are and whatnot. Yes, the teacher shouldn't be doing that. Good luck convincing them.
- smt88 11y ago
  > if Facebook allowed you to compartmentalize your relationships like you can in the real world, but it doesn't as far as I can tell It absolutely does allow this, and it has for years. I can't find the name for the feature, but it seems to be called "Friends" on the left column. Maybe "friend lists" is accurate. It automatically creates some lists for you based on your employers, schools, etc., and then you can create your own.
  - bzbarsky 11y ago
    And I can present a different identity, including different name, to these different groups? My family knows me by a name that's not even in the same character set as the name that my co-workers know me by. Just like my neighbor who's a teacher can have all her students see her as "Mrs. Jones" while her college friends see her as "Emily"? I'm not talking about keeping my separate groups of acquaintances separate in my perception. I'm talking about keeping the separate "me"s that exist in other people's perception separate, just like I, and many other people, do in the real world.
PhasmaFelis 11y ago
> 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. Effectively banning political dissidents and victims of abuse, stalking, and harassment from using the world's largest communication platform is a shitty thing to do. Mentioning "rights," or--the other popular approach--saying "it's their website, they can do what they want," is a non sequitur and dishonest besides. You're trying to imply that people saying "Facebook should do this" are actually saying "Facebook should be forced to do this." Personally, I am more than willing to acknowledge that allowing pseudonyms on Facebook would cause some inconvenience, just as--for example--I acknowledge that allowing government organizations the control they want over data, crypto, and personal devices would, indeed, make it easier for them to catch some criminals. I would like you to acknowledge that some things are more important than those things. (Do bear in mind, when you respond, that Facebook has reversed users' privacy settings with no notice before and reserves the right to do so at any time, and that "they probably won't do that again" is a slim fucking hope for someone whose life could be endangered.)
rwallace 11y ago
I didn't downvote you, but I'll play devil's advocate and make an argument over why access to Facebook is a right. In the normal course of events, a non-government company is free to decide who it does business with. But there is a case to be made that this changes if society reorganizes itself so that use of a particular service is no longer optional. For example, insurance companies would a priori be free to decide who they do business with. Except that it's illegal to drive without liability insurance, and in some places, either because of the physical fact of distance or bad town planning, it's effectively mandatory to drive if you want to be a functioning member of society. Therefore in some jurisdictions, you do actually have the legal right to buy insurance. There are social circles these days in which you effectively cannot participate without having a Facebook account. There is therefore a case to be made that Facebook is obliged to either make sure people aren't excluded from having accounts, or set up some kind of federated system whereby you can participate in Facebook circles from some other social medium. I myself don't use Facebook, so I don't have a dog in that fight either way, but I think it's a valid argument.
rmc 11y ago
> 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. One of the problems with how Facebook is currently implementing it's "real names policy" is that it is not accepting people's real world identity, because FB only accepts certain things as "proof". For example, trans people often get stung by this.
kruczek 11y ago
> 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.
- morgante 11y ago
  > 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.
  - kruczek 11y ago
    > 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"..
tripzilch 11y ago
> 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.

throwaway6845 11y ago

Agreed. I run a small-town community website. Instituting a real-name policy stopped the trolling overnight: people behave much more reasonably if they know they might meet the person they're yelling at in the street tomorrow. The key is that our site aims to be solely a resource for the existing community (where people relate to each other through real names), not a virtual community in itself. I certainly wouldn't argue that the web should be real-name only, but nor do I believe everyone always has an automatic right to post on privately-owned websites using pseudonyms.

morgante 11y ago
> I certainly wouldn't argue that the web should be real-name only 100% agreed. The vast majority of the web is based around pseudonymous interaction (even this comment thread). I love that about the web, but I also appreciate Facebook creating one place to foster those real world connections.
- gknoy 11y ago
  I would prefer to be able to explicitly set a pseudoynmous profile (name, profile picture, etc) in groups that we join (e.g., gaming groups, where FB is Super Awesome for out-of-game collaboration, but where not everyone needs to be able to see my profile picture or name). On the one hand, one might say that this is using FB counter to its intentions ... but on the other, it seems clear that the ubiquity of FB chat, the excellence of many other things (shared discussion, etc), and the general stickiness that the platform has indicate that they want you to use it for as much as possible. I'd love it if people who feel they are in danger can join communities, or even comment on things freely. I'd probably be happy even if such pseudonymous accounts were flagged visibly. As it is, many of my real-life friends in the SCA or in gaming groups __already__ create dual FB accounts (one for Real Them, one for their SCA or gaming persona), and it doesn't really inhibit trusted interactions with them. I'm fortunate not to feel I __need__ one, but I'd love to have my comments on some things (gaming forums, etc) be more in-character and less tied to my public persona. At the same time, having real names hasn't seemed to reduce the abusive behavior that one sees (e.g. any political post, or Youtube comments) noticeably, because strangers are effectively anonymous.
  - morgante 11y ago
    That's an interesting idea. You have a good point: Facebook has developed a really powerful and sticky social platform. While they explicitly want the primary experience on that platform to be around real world communications, there's no fundamental reason that the technology couldn't simultaneously be used for digital communities. I feel strongly that the communities shouldn't overlap (I do not want to see pseudonyms in my comment threads), but the idea of a parallel Facebook where alternative profiles can interact with alternative profiles is interesting.
scrollaway 11y ago
> I certainly wouldn't argue that the web should be real-name only, but nor do I believe everyone always has an automatic right to post on privately-owned websites using pseudonyms. For a lot of people, Facebook is "The Web". That's all or almost all they use. The less tech-literate ones don't even know "the web", they connect to Facebook. They get their news from Facebook. They communicate on Facebook. Everything they do online, they do on Facebook. Like someone mentioned above, when you get big enough you start to have responsibilities. When your actions affect and your voice is heard by billions of people, you're no longer "some random privately-owned website"... you're a supergiant with the ability to affect the entire world.
grayclhn 11y ago
The real-name local facebook group for my small town is a cesspool, so ymmv.

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toomuchtodo 11y ago

No downvote even if I disagree. Once your platform begins to become ubiquitous (Facebook Messenger), it starts to have certain responsibilities, similiar to a utility but not quite that far. Now I'm prepared for the downvotes, but I don't think its wrong to expect certain behavior from tech companies in certain segments once they reach a particular size. A compromise would be to allow Facebook users to get verified (similar to Twitter's verification), and then groups and communities could exclude non-verified profiles by default while allowing those non-verified accounts that they'd like to on a case by case basis.

morgante 11y ago
> 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 require Facebook access to log in (just as it's okay for companies to basically expect their employees to have a telephone). So, which would you prefer: ubiquitous Facebook, with certain regulations keeping it in check, or a Facebook that you can readily opt out of because you don't agree with its policies. > A compromise would be to allow Facebook users to get verified (similar to Twitter's verification) I'm not sure I fully understand your proposal, but it actually sounds a lot like my opinion. It's not that I think Facebook profiles should be required to use their official legal name, just that they should use the name they use offline. Is that what you meant by verification?
- toomuchtodo 11y ago
  > I'm not sure I fully understand your proposal, but it actually sounds a lot like my opinion. It's not that I think Facebook profiles should be required to use their official legal name, just that they should use the name they use offline. Is that what you meant by verification? Yes.
- ambicapter 11y ago
  > 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.

rspeer 11y ago

This particular statement from the EFF is not in any way trying to convince Facebook that they shouldn't have a real names policy. It's simply saying: Okay, you've got a real name policy. You should reform it in a few ways so that people can't use it for targeted silencing and harassment of groups they dislike.

morgante 11y ago
It's also pretty overtly hostile to the existence of a real name policy at all. The very first line sets the tone of hostility: > 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. The piece they link to emphasizes that the "EFF continues to believe that the best solution is simply to get rid of the 'real names' policy entirely."

gurkendoktor 11y ago

> 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. Some people use their pseudonym (usually a nick name) in real life as well, except for work, and I think separating work from Facebook is exactly how Facebook should be used. (There's always LinkedIn for work...) Another thing I see a lot in Germany are (heavily) abbreviated names, so that all your friends know who you are in their stream, but stalkers/your boss cannot find you as easily. Tellingly, my female FB friends are much more likely to obfuscate their names (and get blocked for it). > I'd love to hear an argument over why access to Facebook is a right together with your down vote. Complaining about bad policies is how public discourse works, no matter if one has a right to better policies or not.

Swizec 11y ago
> Tellingly, my female FB friends are much more likely to obfuscate their names (and get blocked for it). This is the part of Facebook that's really creepy. As a guy who used to date around a lot, I was surprised by how well the "find user" function works. You connect with someone on Tinder, and meet up in real life. You have no friends in common, no digital connection other than a week-old Tinder conversation consisting of 5 messages. Neither of you checks-in to the restaurant you met up at. But when you type the woman's first name into Facebook (you don't know her last name), she will be the first suggested result. 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.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  > 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 geo-tracking, but then concluded that it's more likely Facebook must have identified both of them were connecting to the same Wi-Fi network at the same time.

deleted 11y ago

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dunkelheit 11y ago

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 used them so can't say much. 2. In real life past events tend to diminish in significance after some time passes. So someone who had committed a misstep can atone himself over time. Not so on the internet - what happened on the internet stays on the internet ... like forever and also infinitely googlable. This is less relevant to the walled garden of facebook but relevant to the internet at large. 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). So use that channel to communicate your pseudonym! I guess real-name policy had sense when facebook was being discovered by former classmates who wanted to be in touch over the internet for the first time but these days are long gone.

TeMPOraL 11y ago
> 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? 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. Caring about such issues is as sign of serious problems in the company.
- taswal_tmanir 11y ago
  > 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. Caring about such issues is as sign of serious problems in the company. If you have a secure job, or are important to the company, maybe. Many younger people are not so secure in their jobs, however, or live in a highly religious area, or both. A Facebook user still dependent on their strict parents could also be ruined by a stray pic.

jleader 11y ago

What about people who don't want all of their real life relationships to be able to follow them online? For example, suppose someone has a restraining order against a stalker, so they don't want to be findable online. Does that mean they're "not using Facebook the way it's meant to be used and should probably just leave it"? Online interaction has very different affordances than off-line interaction (for example, the ease of searching, the indefinite persistence of communications, etc.). Pretending that saying "Facebook should be just like real life" erases those differences is naive. There's a cost to allowing pseudonymity, but there's also a cost to its lack, it's just that the latter cost is distributed very unevenly.

TeMPOraL 11y ago
What about the people who do live single life, who do want their real-life relationships to follow them on-line? Why should we bow down and twist our system for the unfortunate minority that has a stalker problem? There are ways to deal with those that don't involve designing the entire experience around the special cases. So someone has a restraining order against a stalker. Then it should be enough for them to be able to send a scan of this order to Facebook to mark themselves exempt from real-name policy. There is need for such a problem to influence the way most people experience the service. Besides, what good does changing profile name do anyway? Even if you'd have a pseudonymous account, you still probably have your real-life friends added on Facebook. Any stalker worth the name will quickly find you by just browsing through friendlists of your friends (if you have a restraining order against him, it means he interacted with you enough to know some of your real-life friends). You can't solve this problem by changing the service mechanics without ruining it for everyone. This is a kind of matter the police is supposed to deal with, and this in fact is an argument for more cooperation between Facebook and law enforcement.
- taswal_tmanir 11y ago
  > What about the people who do live single life, who do want their real-life relationships to follow them on-line? Then they just drumroll use their real name? Heck, they could have even used a more easily recognizable nickname... before this policy, anyway.

natch 11y ago

This reminds me of the meme of first world problems versus third world problems. Essentially, you are saying that because it saves you some annoyance, it's a good tradeoff, even if that means that a few others face not annoyance, but actual existential threats of death, violence, imprisonment, dismemberment, etc. http://violetblue.tumblr.com/post/130440543695/why-im-sitting-at-home-crying-on-a-saturday http://violetblue.tumblr.com/post/130440543695/why-im-sittin... Edit: and yes, participation in Facebook is somewhat optional, but there's a larger price to be paid for not participating than the price of any of the annoyances you mention.

kuschku 11y ago
And, in some countries, even making copies or photographing or scanning an ID is a crime. I’ll not commit a crime just to get access to Facebook.
- techdragon 11y ago
  I love learning random facts like this. Can I get a citation/link to where coping your own ID is a crime?
  - detaro 11y ago
    In Germany, making a copy of your own ID is probably legal but requesting a copy is illegal, as is making a copy if you are not the owner, with only very limited exceptions (e.g. some parts of government, for some financial transactions). (Completely ignoring the fact that real name policies are legally dubious as well)
ryandrake 11y ago
What is the price I pay for not participating in Facebook?
- taswal_tmanir 11y ago
  You might lose all online communication options with at least some of your friends. This is unacceptable to many/most people, hence why they join Facebook and end up perpetuating the effect.

andmarios 11y ago

Most people have a partitioned identity. There is a side you show to your friends, a side you show to your colleagues, a side for your parents, for your significant other and even one for your kids. An online persona is just another partition that whilst you may don't want to hide, you probably want to keep the intersection with most of the rest of the partitions to a minimum. In real world there is a physical separation. All your contacts know you by your real name but only interact with a specific partition. On the other hand, in the virtual world, all your contacts will have to interact with your one online persona. A pseudonym is an easy and practical way to have more than one online personas or keep your one persona limited to a certain group of people in your life. The people you want to interact with a certain part of your identity, are easy to reach; online nicknames are part of everyone's life. For the rest, they will have to search a bit more to find you and even then, they will be less imposed to take into account that part of your identity due to the use of a pseudonym.

jeena 11y ago

> If I'm working on a project with someone, I can immediately find them and message Interesting, that is exactly why I don't use my real name on Facebook. I don't wont everyone I work on some project with to be able to find me and message me outside of the established conversation channels from within the project. And even less am I interested them to be able to learn about my private life. All my friends do find me with help of the friend of a friend feature on Facebook and the Picture I have there. Everyone else should never try to contact me there, I will block them anyway.

yarrel 11y ago

It's easy to generate real-looking names, there are libraries to do so. Requiring real-looking names therefore doesn't prevent bots. If you're not being bombarded with friend requests by bots on Facebook that just means none of your friends have accepted a friend request from a profile with a picture of a young asian woman as its avatar (and an authentic-sounding name) yet... You can validate your name on Twitter if you want to. You don't have to though. Access to Facebook isn't a right (although in countries where it is the only net presence that may become more of an issue). But Facebook's mistakes (and Real Names policies are a mistake) affect a lot of people, all of whom have the valid use case of "using Facebook as a platform". So the argument is you're creating a false dichotomy between using Facebook to get "5000 followers" and wanting to use Facebook under your legal, European-sounding, name. The valid use case you're missing is using Facebook under the name you generally go by without this being a problem if it's not a name Facebook thinks is valid. Even I go under an informal version of my legal name - it's not the name on my birth certificate, passport, or bank account. So it's not my Real Name. And I'm not any of the groups that get hit hardest by this.

slavik81 11y ago

> I'm not constantly bombarded by fake friend requests like I am on Twitter, Skype, or any other platform which allows random usernames. Really? I constantly get Facebook friend requests from pretty women in skimpy clothes with 6 to 10 friends.

taswal_tmanir 11y ago

> 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. The way Facebook is "meant" to be used is to maximize their revenue from data mining. This is clearly not something we, the users, should be caring about. > 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. How is that even possible? There's no authority for "proving" nicknames, and I highly doubt Facebook is going to bother hiring judges to evaluate non-standard evidence. Not when it's easier, and more profitable, just to demand everyone's legal name. > but I'd love to hear an argument over why access to Facebook is a right Why not flip it around, and ask why Facebook has the right to demand our real names? In some countries, at least, it's seeming that it doesn't. <http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jul/29/germany-fights-facebook-over-real-names-policy> http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jul/29/germany-fi...

linkydinkandyou 11y ago

These discussions remind me of the debate over caller ID in California. California was one of the last states to have Caller ID. On the opposing side were battered women's advocacy groups arguing that Caller ID would make it impossible for a woman to hide her location from her tormentor. See http://www.nytimes.com/1993/03/15/nyregion/popularity-of-caller-id-service-alarms-women-s-groups.html http://www.nytimes.com/1993/03/15/nyregion/popularity-of-cal... for a general discussion about this. the most vehement opposition has come from advocates for battered women and other victims whose safety might depend on being able to call help lines or domestic-violence shelters anonymously. One Caller I.D. option lists numbers for calls that have been made as well as for calls received; thus an abusive husband, for example, could tell if his wife had called for help. And if such a victim has left home, Caller I.D. might help the abuser track her down if she or her children called. 'A Step Backward' And among the groups that wanted it were, you guessed it, battered women's advocacy groups who argued that Caller ID would put an end to harassing phone calls! Both sides gave tearful testimony to the California PUC.

zyxley 11y ago
I don't see the similarity. Where are the disadvantaged and at-risk groups arguing that Facebook's name policy is a good thing?

fweespeech 11y ago

> 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. Facebook's Real Name Policy isn't actually effective. I've got ~15 accounts with fake names [but "real sounding" in that they are real names]. > 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. That isn't related to the real name policy, sorry. If it was, I wouldn't have ~15 accounts with different names. > 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. I've successfully done it and each account is a silo by interest. It isn't hard. :/

bzbarsky 11y ago

There would be no problem, perhaps, if Facebook allowed you to compartmentalize your relationships like you can in the real world, but it doesn't as far as I can tell. In the real world, the fact that I need to communicate with my children's teachers has no bearing on the fact that I need to communicate with my co-workers, which has no bearing on needing to communicate with my family. I can use different e-mail addresses, different phone numbers, and even different postal addresses (P.O. boxes, say) for these separate groups, and people often do. This is most prevalent with e-mail, but not uncommon with phone numbers and I know several people who have a P.O box or two for some parts of their correspondence. On Facebook, these all get hopelessly conflated, which is great for Facebook but not necessarily great for users. > I'd love to hear an argument over why access to Facebook is a right If your child's teacher sends all communications via Facebook (which is true of some of them), then Facebook access becomes rather required just so you know when little things like parent-teacher conferences are and whatnot. Yes, the teacher shouldn't be doing that. Good luck convincing them.

smt88 11y ago
> if Facebook allowed you to compartmentalize your relationships like you can in the real world, but it doesn't as far as I can tell It absolutely does allow this, and it has for years. I can't find the name for the feature, but it seems to be called "Friends" on the left column. Maybe "friend lists" is accurate. It automatically creates some lists for you based on your employers, schools, etc., and then you can create your own.
- bzbarsky 11y ago
  And I can present a different identity, including different name, to these different groups? My family knows me by a name that's not even in the same character set as the name that my co-workers know me by. Just like my neighbor who's a teacher can have all her students see her as "Mrs. Jones" while her college friends see her as "Emily"? I'm not talking about keeping my separate groups of acquaintances separate in my perception. I'm talking about keeping the separate "me"s that exist in other people's perception separate, just like I, and many other people, do in the real world.

PhasmaFelis 11y ago

> 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. Effectively banning political dissidents and victims of abuse, stalking, and harassment from using the world's largest communication platform is a shitty thing to do. Mentioning "rights," or--the other popular approach--saying "it's their website, they can do what they want," is a non sequitur and dishonest besides. You're trying to imply that people saying "Facebook should do this" are actually saying "Facebook should be forced to do this." Personally, I am more than willing to acknowledge that allowing pseudonyms on Facebook would cause some inconvenience, just as--for example--I acknowledge that allowing government organizations the control they want over data, crypto, and personal devices would, indeed, make it easier for them to catch some criminals. I would like you to acknowledge that some things are more important than those things. (Do bear in mind, when you respond, that Facebook has reversed users' privacy settings with no notice before and reserves the right to do so at any time, and that "they probably won't do that again" is a slim fucking hope for someone whose life could be endangered.)

rwallace 11y ago

I didn't downvote you, but I'll play devil's advocate and make an argument over why access to Facebook is a right. In the normal course of events, a non-government company is free to decide who it does business with. But there is a case to be made that this changes if society reorganizes itself so that use of a particular service is no longer optional. For example, insurance companies would a priori be free to decide who they do business with. Except that it's illegal to drive without liability insurance, and in some places, either because of the physical fact of distance or bad town planning, it's effectively mandatory to drive if you want to be a functioning member of society. Therefore in some jurisdictions, you do actually have the legal right to buy insurance. There are social circles these days in which you effectively cannot participate without having a Facebook account. There is therefore a case to be made that Facebook is obliged to either make sure people aren't excluded from having accounts, or set up some kind of federated system whereby you can participate in Facebook circles from some other social medium. I myself don't use Facebook, so I don't have a dog in that fight either way, but I think it's a valid argument.

rmc 11y ago

> 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. One of the problems with how Facebook is currently implementing it's "real names policy" is that it is not accepting people's real world identity, because FB only accepts certain things as "proof". For example, trans people often get stung by this.

kruczek 11y ago

> 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.

morgante 11y ago
> 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.
- kruczek 11y ago
  > 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"..

tripzilch 11y ago

> 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.