12 ms·

Facebook Blocks Internet Pioneer “R.U. Sirius”

193 points by spiralganglion 11y ago

SwellJoe 11y ago
Facebook has kinda chosen a path that sets them apart from, and often in active opposition to, the Internet RU Sirius envisioned. Facebook is antithetical to what a lot of folks wanted to see the Internet become, so it shouldn't be surprising that the early visionaries of the Internet find themselves being excluded from participation in facebook on their own terms. Participation in facebook is on facebook's terms, always, and it's not surprising when they're dicks who wield that power arbitrarily. I've had several transgender friends excluded from participation in facebook based on this name policy, and I've known a wide variety of other people who use odd names for a wide variety of reasons (some silly, some deadly serious like trying to hide from an abusive ex) who've also been excluded from participation. Facebook makes pleasant noises about the policy and its implementation, but the reality is they're not doing this for us, for the good of the world, or for the good of the open Internet. I'm not trying to go all RMS about facebook; I have a facebook account, and I use it daily. But, facebook isn't the Internet I envisioned, either. It is just another petty little walled garden where we're all peasants.
- oldmanjay 11y ago
  Facebook isn't the Internet anyone envisioned, mainly because it isn't the Internet. It's possible to block them completely and still participate meaningfully.
  - SwellJoe 11y ago
    I agree with you, generally speaking. That said, facebook wields a tremendous amount of power, and they often wield that power in ways I am uncomfortable with. I think it's valid to express that discomfort, especially in places where the people who may be building the "next facebook" (whatever that looks like) happen to be hanging out. It's a complicated topic, but when you break it down there are billions/trillions of dollars on one side of the equation, and the values of human dignity and privacy and the open web on the other, with very little profit to be made from respecting those values. I think it's OK to call it out when a company that employs a lot of good people is doing something that is at odds with good values. Maybe they'll think about it, and take the conversation up the chain. Or, maybe they'll laugh at the grumpy old UNIX beard on the Internet for not "getting it". I dunno.
  - rodgerd 11y ago
    > It's possible to block them completely and still participate meaningfully. It's not that long ago that conventional wisdom on HN was you should delegate auth to Facebook and the hell with anyone who didn't want to use it to sign up to your startup.
    - nikatwork 11y ago
      I've noticed a number of yung'uns ditching FB completely for Instagram. Delegating auth to FB alone is an insanely self-defeating move.
      - onewaystreet 11y ago
        FB owns Instagram.
        eecks 11y ago
        Accounts are not linked though.
        ambicapter 11y ago
        Yeah, sure.
        bmelton 11y ago
        Snark aside, they're not. Really. They might be internally associated, but they're definitely not linked. I'm banned (mysteriously) from Facebook, but not from Instagram.
        eecks 11y ago
        You can't use your instagram credentials to log in on sites that have Facebook logins..
      - DataWorker 11y ago
        It didn't defeat Tinder or any number of other major apps.
  - coldtea 11y ago
    And yet your friends can still be there, talk about you, tag you in photographs etc -- not to some niche site, but to a potential audience of 1 billion people.
  - voltagex_ 11y ago
    The wider internet? Yes. My social group? I'd be a pariah. I use Facebook as an event calendar these days. I'm hopeful for upcoming.org.
- habith 11y ago
  Excuse the poor pun but.. are you serious? Facebook excluded several of your friends based on their terrible name policy. They run their walled garden however they want to. Your participation in it makes you (in your own words) a "peasant". Yet, you're not trying to go all RMS about it and you continue to use it daily to give them more money/power? Do you see anything wrong with this picture? Say what you want about RMS, but at least he's principled and does/says what he thinks instead of conforming to social norms.
  - SwellJoe 11y ago
    I am human, and my flaws are many.
    - habith 11y ago
      Likewise :) My apologies if that was over the top, I meant no disrespect.
      - SwellJoe 11y ago
        No apology needed. I understand where you're coming from.
  - scrollaway 11y ago
    It's not reasonable to expect people to "just not use facebook". Not that it's not possible - it is (and I don't use it), but it doesn't mean facebook can just do whatever. Reposting an old comment of mine: 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.
    - 11y ago
- rodgerd 11y ago
  > and I've known a wide variety of other people who use odd names for a wide variety of reasons Or people who use perfectly normal Native American names...
- yuhong 11y ago
  I dislike real name policies, but my vision is that I do want people to be able to use their real names as often as possible.
  - bigbugbag 11y ago
    Problem is, what's a real name ? How many real names a person has ? Are they consistent through time ?
    - yuhong 11y ago
      That is one of the reason I dislike the real name policies, but my point is that I do want people to be able to post non-anonymously if possible.
- lucaspiller 11y ago
  > excluded from participation in facebook based on this name policy A large bunch of my friends (30+ maybe) don't have their real names on Facebook. Some sound like they could be real, but most are pretty obvious they aren't. None of them are US based, so maybe they are only focussing on the real name policy there?
wdewind 11y ago
It is ironic to see the quote from RU Sirius about what a victory the internet is for the counter culture: > The rise of the Net and the Web represents a victory for the counterculture and the subculture. The next generation, raised on the Net as their primary medium, won't even know what consensus reality is. followed by this from the comments: > This is what happens when you let little children manage grownup things. basically begging for a more traditional power structure, and being extremely upset when the next generation, raised on the Net as their primary medium, manage it differently than how he'd expect. I don't think RU Sirius is right about the internet being a win for the counter culture (I do hope he is right, though). I can't find a year for that, but I'll bet it was said before all the Snowden stuff.
- squidfood 11y ago
  Well it certainly mainstreamed all kinds of counter-cultures. Whether this is a "victory" for them is debatable.
- oldbuzzard 11y ago
  Before the Snowden stuff... mmm probably yes. I'd bet that quote comes from an old issue of "Mondo 2000" and is contempory with the Clipper Chip battles about mandated NSA backdoors in all telecoms circa '93/94.
  - chucksmash 11y ago
    Oh man. I read a story (possibly found on HN?) a few months ago about a guy growing up reading 90s techno-utopia stuff. He used the last of his money to go to a convention only to become disillusioned with it when he saw his idols were just making it up as they went. It was a really interesting read - does this ring a bell for anybody? I'm sure Mondo 2000 was mentioned in it.
    - csixty4 11y ago
      Sounds like "The Guy I Almost Was" http://electricsheepcomix.com/almostguy/ http://electricsheepcomix.com/almostguy/
DanBC 11y ago
Facebook have some really horrible policies. A woman has some photos of her and her partner on her profile. He then murders her, is arrested and sent to prison. Her profile is memorialised. This means all those images of him are still on her wall. Nice memorial. The family have asked FB to remove those images. FB have declined. https://www.change.org/p/facebook-remove-the-pictures-of-hollie-gazzards-killer-from-her-facebook-page https://www.change.org/p/facebook-remove-the-pictures-of-hol...
- TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
  Hmm, tricky one. In this specific case, maybe it's a reasonable request. But people who don't have benevolent families would definitely not want to hand control of their online identity to them after death.
  - bad_user 11y ago
    I don't think there's any doubt in this specific case, there's really no room for "maybe". We're humans, can understand language, surely we can understand why a family would want pictures of their daughter's killer off her wall. How many people don't have benevolent families? In my opinion, if you're going to err on one side, that's not a good side to err on. And many people aren't even aware that their account will get "memorialized" after they're dead. That's a very strange default.
  - thaumasiotes 11y ago
    I believe the legal principle of inheritance is that the heir is the same person as the deceased. So barring a provision in the person's will saying "nobody gets my facebook profile", Facebook would be legally in the wrong here?
- onewaystreet 11y ago
  That story could easily read like this: A trans woman has some photos of her and her partner on her profile. Her partner then murders her, is arrested and sent to prison. Her profile is memorialised. Her family gets access to her account from Facebook and replaces all of her photos with photos of her before her transition. Facebook has no way of knowing the motives of people so they don't try to.
guard-of-terra 11y ago
I don't think people like him should even be on Facebook. It's not that you should boycott Facebook; any more than you boycott North Korea. You don't really have business with it and the only take away is lulz. Yes, real name policy is an unfortunate feature of Facebook, but I struggle naming any of its fortunate features.
- walshemj 11y ago
  You do know that in most courts even france now you can call your self what you like. I certainty have several people I know who I really only know by their nickname and vice versa I even have a thank you in a book by a booker prize (award like the pulitzer) nominated author which is in my nickname.
- throwitup 11y ago
  Déjà il rêvait à une thébaïde raffinée, à un désert confortable, à une arche immobile et tiède où il se réfugierait loin de l’incessant déluge de la sottise humaine. -- Huysmans
  - mkempe 11y ago
    OT: what brought you to Huysmans?
    - throwitup 11y ago
      I realized that National Socialism, the iconoclastic world-view of Adolf Hitler, was the doctrine of scientific, racial idealism, actually, a new 'religion' for our times. I saw that I was living in the age of a new world-view. Two thousand years ago there had been a similar rise of a new approach or world-view, called a 'religion'; a world-view which shook and changed the world forever. I realized that this new and wonderful doctrine of scientific truth applied ruthlessly to man himself, as well as to Nature and inanimate matter, and that it was the only thing which could save man from his own degradation in luxury, self-seeking short-sightedness and racial degeneration. The doctrine of Adolf Hitler was the new 'Christianity' of our times, and Adolf Hitler himself was the new 'savior', sent by inscrutable Providence recurrently to rescue a collapsing humanity. Hitler's and Germany's 'crucifixion' was all according to the inevitable workings of this unknowable Scenarist. Even the eleven hanged disciples in Nurnburg were not without significance! The most hated and dreaded idea two thousand years ago was Christianity, and the most hated and cursed man on earth was Jesus Christ. His followers were bitterly persecuted and murdered by the 'good', 'sensible' people who could see that anybody in his right mind recognized Rome and the Empire as the solid, substantial reality. I realized that today's Marxist- Democratic world is another sprawling 'Roman Empire', and today's Nazis the early 'Christians'. What is going on is far more than a battle for political supremacy in the present social and political situation. It is the utter smashing and destruction of a society which has become so rotten that it will tolerate and even love its own Marxist destroyers, just as it hates, despises and fears the slowly-growing Nazi society which will replace it. Such mighty, awesome thoughts come to a man but once in a lifetime, if ever, and when they do, that man changes for all time.
gcb0 11y ago
why someone who preaches counter culture even was on facebook?! this is akin to complaining that some kid was disappointed to be called Bartolomeo instead of Bart while attending the Sunday church bingo. Really?
- PhasmaFelis 11y ago
  Might as well ask why someone who preaches counterculture is on the internet. If you want people to hear your message, you need to be able to reach them in the place where they listen. This isn't hard to understand. It's irrelevant that you or I think Facebook is dumb.
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    Oh well, no one is telling you to stop preaching counterculture. Don't act entitled. Counterculture is by definition the thing you'll have people reacting weirdly to, so complaining about it is like complaining the water is wet.
    - PhasmaFelis 11y ago
      I'm not sure what you're trying to say. I think you may have misread my post.
  - bigbugbag 11y ago
    Might as well not. The internet is open and neutral, facebook is made possible by this open internet but facebook is closed and partisan, a walled garden. Facebook is an enemy of the internet and actively trying to replace the internet in the mind of people. It makes sense that counter culture would use the internet a global connecting medium which doesn't care about who you are and what your fetish is allows you to meet and find other people sharing the same counter culture. counter culture would rather go to 4chan than facebook, but when given the opportunity would hosts itself outside of these designated places.
pboutet 11y ago
Facebook is a very closed system where it's users have little to no rights. I myself have checked out of most of it and only occasionally use it to chat with a few friends in a private group. I found that once you cut using it you really don't miss much. There are better alternatives in my mind that we should all start shifting towards.
downandout 11y ago
This question may sound absurd to some, but does it even matter if you are not allowed to use Facebook anymore? I use it to sign into Candy Crush. They paid me a few thousand dollars for discovering a bug, that I only discovered because I was playing with their advertising system. That is the entire extent of my Facebook usage. It doesn't play a role in my daily life to any extent whatsoever, and its role in the lives of many formerly heavy users seems to be diminishing as well. So while it sucks to be excluded from anything for arbitrary reasons, it shouldn't matter very much to him or anyone else. There are plenty of other places to accomplish the things that can be accomplished on Facebook.
- PhasmaFelis 11y ago
  > This question may sound absurd to some, but does it even matter if you are not allowed to use Facebook anymore? If Facebook access didn't matter, we wouldn't be talking about this. This isn't about you or me or our friends. It's irrelevant that Facebook doesn't matter to us. You only have to look around and read the news to see that it is the #1 communication tool for literally hundreds of millions of people. If you care about reaching those people, losing Facebook makes it much harder for you to do that.
- csixty4 11y ago
  > There are plenty of other places to accomplish the things that can be accomplished on Facebook. Except when there aren't. For example, my local cat shelter set up a Facebook group to coordinate volunteers. There's also a closed group for a particular program's volunteers. Sure, they could have set up the groups somewhere else. A shelter I used to be involved with still has a Yahoo group. But the fact is they didn't, and the decision was made way above my level. So if I lost access to Facebook, I'd lose access to a lot more than Candy Crush.
  - bigbugbag 11y ago
    This is vendor lock-in and this is how facebook retains users. If facebook was not locked down but open, many people would have left already if they had come in the first place. Now when the volunteers stop using facebook, it's the shelter that will lose their volunteers. The obvious solution is for the shelter to self host its own group.
__jal 11y ago
Perhaps, since Facebook is so terribly concerned with what we call ourselves, we should take it upon ourselves to be concerned with what Facebook denizens call themselves. I think I'll start inventing names for them. Henceforth, the industry titan formerly known as Mark Zuckerberg will be known has Howie Hughes II.
gtrubetskoy 11y ago
Facebook also does not allow clergy prefixes such as Fr. (father), Rev. (reverend), Br. (brother), etc. If you are a priest or a bishop, apparently your facebook friends cannot know about it. Or something like that. What's even more remarkable, some clergy I know have complied and dropped these prefixes because often the choice between not being on Facebook vs losing the "Fr." designation is not a choice if you need to be reachable by people on any medium.
- MichaelGG 11y ago
  If they allowed that, then they'd open themselves up to having to allow pretty much any prefix. Professional titles like Dr aren't even allowed, and those are far less disputable. https://www.facebook.com/help/132247486851813 https://www.facebook.com/help/132247486851813
  - jarek 11y ago
    "Real names, but not real titles, those are too real-world for us"
DataWorker 11y ago
Agree about Facebook being held accountable for the impact they have on the world. But I also agree with shaming people who use it. If you have an account you are actively subsidizing the impact Facebook has on the world. How frequently you use the product you are buying when you sign up for an account has no relevance. And here's what disturbs me most; a vast majority of the citizenship has basically handed over all of their personal details to big brother. Now we live in an environment where not having an account is enough to raise suspicion. History will prove Stallman the Cassandra of our times.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  Well, I am subsidizing Facebook and its impact on the world, and I am proud of it. Facebook had a tremendously positive impact on this planet - it connected people from all over the world like no other force in the history before. Maybe it's not really their accomplishment, maybe they just lucked into popularity at the right moment, but it doesn't change that they are there, helping over one billion people keep real-time communication across the world. People who don't use Facebook tend to not appreciate the impact it has on daily life, especially when it comes to staying up to date with lives of a hundred and then some people. 'peteretep provides some good examples[0]. So try and shame me all you want. I don't feel that I have anything to be ashamed of. > a vast majority of the citizenship has basically handed over all of their personal details to big brother Oh well. And the vast majority of the citizenship extracts tremendous value out of it and sees no negative consequence. Yes, maybe one day there will be an evil ad-company government that will drone-strike us all in bedrooms because twenty years ago we disagreed with the leading feminist activists. Or it will torture us eternally because it'll be so bored and have nothing else to do with all those real names it collected. But until then, explain to me like I'm five, why on earth should the majority of the citizenship care? And don't get me wrong. I'm not happy about what advertisers are doing. That industry is rotten to the core and should be burned down. But please, if you really need to shame someone, shame the advertisers using this data. > Now we live in an environment where not having an account is enough to raise suspicion. I see this repeated often, but there is no real point in that sentence. Not participating in any activity or phenomena that the majority is participating in is enough to raise suspicion, by the very definition of "majority", "suspicion" and "standing out". [0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10475506 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10475506
denzil_correa 11y ago
How does Facebook identify what is a real name and what is a pseudonym?
- ljk 11y ago
  They probably have a list of words to check. If you have the same name as its founder then you'll be removed as well http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1386069/Mark-Zuckerberg-Attorney-Facebook-founders-account-shut-down.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1386069/Mark-Zuckerb...
- zaphos 11y ago
  Reportedly a mixture of automated systems, user reports, and manual work by facebook employees. See the 'How Fake Names are Flagged and Targeted' section of this article: http://lifehacker.com/how-to-use-a-fake-name-on-facebook-without-getting-flag-1637644101 http://lifehacker.com/how-to-use-a-fake-name-on-facebook-wit...
- protomyth 11y ago
  Poorly. I'm a bit sick of the annual purge of Native American names. For f sakes, Yellow Horse has a wikipedia entry. If you are an American company claiming to want real names, then you damn well can accept people's real names. Never mind what real name means to a group that often has two "real" names.
- bigbugbag 11y ago
  Mostly snitching.
tracker1 11y ago
I wonder what FB would do if everyone just changed their name to "John Smith" to comply with a "real names" policy... it's about the most common name in english speaking countries.
- SXX 11y ago
  Facebook would block access to those accounts and ask to upload ID photo.
- DangerousPie 11y ago
  Presumably their policy is not that it has to be A real name, but YOUR real name.
Zelphyr 11y ago
How much more does Facebook have to do before people realize they're a scourge of the Internet and delete their accounts?
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
mirimir 11y ago
Facebook = AOL 2.0 ;)
- KasianFranks 11y ago
  Exactly.
Animats 11y ago
Evey worse, nobody under 50 remembers him.
mirimir 11y ago
OK, so Facebook has a "real name" policy. People try to circumvent it, for reasons both good and bad. And there's risk of getting outed or losing high-value accounts. But bottom line, it's their business, and they can run it as they like, subject to law.
- pmoriarty 11y ago
  The law could always be changed to make them run it another way.
  - mirimir 11y ago
    That seems unlikely in the US. It's my impression that shopping malls, which are arguably even more public than Facebook, are considered to be private property in the US. But I can imagine regulation on an antitrust basis. And if EU has jurisdiction, all bets are off.
    - thaumasiotes 11y ago
      Malls may be considered private property, but they're certainly also considered public accommodations, which comes with a whole host of legal restrictions on what you can and can't do.
      - mirimir 11y ago
        That's a good point. Owners can exclude demonstrators. But they can't discriminate based on race etc. However, they probably can exclude people wearing masks. Except on Halloween, anyway ;) And maybe there's a better analogy to using pseudonyms on Facebook.
        panglott 11y ago
        Facebook as a public accomodation? That's an interesting idea. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_accommodations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_accommodations Public accomodations in the US are in many states prohibited from discriminating on the basis of race, national origin, sex, gender identity, or prohibited from discrimination against breastfeeding in public. That's an interesting angle to attack Facebook's hostility toward Native American names, breastfeeding photos, or queer folks who go by other names.
marcusgarvey 11y ago
I think FB is so insistent on using real names because, through its partnership with companies like Datalogix, it allows advertisers to show FB ads based on offline / elsewhere purchases. Won't work if FB doesn't have real names. Not a fan. Have personally noticed FB ads shown to me based on my purchase of a prescription drug. Tempted to go all cash when it comes to paying for health-related and other sensitive stuff. https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-and-privacy/relevant-ads-that-protect-your-privacy/457827624267125 https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-and-privacy/relevant...
- jsonne 11y ago
  I'm fairly certain it's illegal to target ads based on a medical condition. That being said, I believe you're right as to why they require real names. It's also why I use it as my go to for advertising and marketing. The added data from Datlogix etc makes it incredibly useful as a marketing tool.
  - briandear 11y ago
    It isn't illegal to target based on a medical condition. I am not making any value judgement about it, just providing factual clarification. Unless HIPAA rules were violated, there's no problem. For example, at iCouch, if they were to take diagnostic information stored on their server by their practitioner and then send out emails to the patient based on the Protected Health Information, that would be illegal. But someone visiting a depression website and then targeting depression treatment ads based on that -- that would not be illegal. Don't would depend on where the information came from that was used to do the targeting. The targeting itself wouldn't be illegal, but the use of the data to do targeting could be illegal if that data were Protected Health Information covered by HIPAA or the Hi Tech Act. Of course, I am only speaking in a US context here..
    - marcusgarvey 11y ago
      In my case, I'm 99.9% sure the info was based on my offline purchase behavior at a CVS. I had a prescription filled for a very specific condition and, a few days later, was shown a Facebook ad for a related product. Not an ad that would be shown to a general population. I had not searched about the condition anywhere online in the recent past.
meeper16 11y ago
I like this commenters take in the article: "Fecesbook was the former MySpace, which was the former friendster, which was the former [keep filling in the blank] Fecesbook is the next AOL walled garden of junk. They were founded on calling their users dumb f*cks and voyeristcally to spy on girls. Google, worth an order of magnitude more that FB, is a true internet and technology company founded on algorithms and smart innovation as opposed to being a copy of myspace and walled gardens that anyone can cut and paste. Good riddens to Fecesbook but I wonder what's next. Better yet, what's going to be the next Google/Alphabet?"
- bigbugbag 11y ago
  Don't worry, google will see that there will no be a next google any time soon.
egonschiele 11y ago
Is this intentional? Things like this are frequently done using scripts, or well-meaning support folks that don't know any better. Let's get all the facts before throwing a fit.
droithomme 11y ago
Facebook is a private company with its own rules. It's not a government with a bill of rights. I do not have a Facebook account and I do not use it because I disagree with everything they are doing and everything they represent. It is sad, or shall we say pathetic, that individuals connect their identity and sense of self to an ability to patronize a particular brand of consumer ad delivery network.

193 points by spiralganglion 11y ago

Facebook has kinda chosen a path that sets them apart from, and often in active opposition to, the Internet RU Sirius envisioned. Facebook is antithetical to what a lot of folks wanted to see the Internet become, so it shouldn't be surprising that the early visionaries of the Internet find themselves being excluded from participation in facebook on their own terms. Participation in facebook is on facebook's terms, always, and it's not surprising when they're dicks who wield that power arbitrarily. I've had several transgender friends excluded from participation in facebook based on this name policy, and I've known a wide variety of other people who use odd names for a wide variety of reasons (some silly, some deadly serious like trying to hide from an abusive ex) who've also been excluded from participation. Facebook makes pleasant noises about the policy and its implementation, but the reality is they're not doing this for us, for the good of the world, or for the good of the open Internet. I'm not trying to go all RMS about facebook; I have a facebook account, and I use it daily. But, facebook isn't the Internet I envisioned, either. It is just another petty little walled garden where we're all peasants.

oldmanjay 11y ago
Facebook isn't the Internet anyone envisioned, mainly because it isn't the Internet. It's possible to block them completely and still participate meaningfully.
- SwellJoe 11y ago
  I agree with you, generally speaking. That said, facebook wields a tremendous amount of power, and they often wield that power in ways I am uncomfortable with. I think it's valid to express that discomfort, especially in places where the people who may be building the "next facebook" (whatever that looks like) happen to be hanging out. It's a complicated topic, but when you break it down there are billions/trillions of dollars on one side of the equation, and the values of human dignity and privacy and the open web on the other, with very little profit to be made from respecting those values. I think it's OK to call it out when a company that employs a lot of good people is doing something that is at odds with good values. Maybe they'll think about it, and take the conversation up the chain. Or, maybe they'll laugh at the grumpy old UNIX beard on the Internet for not "getting it". I dunno.
- rodgerd 11y ago
  > It's possible to block them completely and still participate meaningfully. It's not that long ago that conventional wisdom on HN was you should delegate auth to Facebook and the hell with anyone who didn't want to use it to sign up to your startup.
  - nikatwork 11y ago
    I've noticed a number of yung'uns ditching FB completely for Instagram. Delegating auth to FB alone is an insanely self-defeating move.
    - onewaystreet 11y ago
      FB owns Instagram.
      - eecks 11y ago
        Accounts are not linked though.
        ambicapter 11y ago
        Yeah, sure.
        bmelton 11y ago
        Snark aside, they're not. Really. They might be internally associated, but they're definitely not linked. I'm banned (mysteriously) from Facebook, but not from Instagram.
        eecks 11y ago
        You can't use your instagram credentials to log in on sites that have Facebook logins..
    - DataWorker 11y ago
      It didn't defeat Tinder or any number of other major apps.
- coldtea 11y ago
  And yet your friends can still be there, talk about you, tag you in photographs etc -- not to some niche site, but to a potential audience of 1 billion people.
- voltagex_ 11y ago
  The wider internet? Yes. My social group? I'd be a pariah. I use Facebook as an event calendar these days. I'm hopeful for upcoming.org.
habith 11y ago
Excuse the poor pun but.. are you serious? Facebook excluded several of your friends based on their terrible name policy. They run their walled garden however they want to. Your participation in it makes you (in your own words) a "peasant". Yet, you're not trying to go all RMS about it and you continue to use it daily to give them more money/power? Do you see anything wrong with this picture? Say what you want about RMS, but at least he's principled and does/says what he thinks instead of conforming to social norms.
- SwellJoe 11y ago
  I am human, and my flaws are many.
  - habith 11y ago
    Likewise :) My apologies if that was over the top, I meant no disrespect.
    - SwellJoe 11y ago
      No apology needed. I understand where you're coming from.
- scrollaway 11y ago
  It's not reasonable to expect people to "just not use facebook". Not that it's not possible - it is (and I don't use it), but it doesn't mean facebook can just do whatever. Reposting an old comment of mine: 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.
  - 11y ago
rodgerd 11y ago
> and I've known a wide variety of other people who use odd names for a wide variety of reasons Or people who use perfectly normal Native American names...
yuhong 11y ago
I dislike real name policies, but my vision is that I do want people to be able to use their real names as often as possible.
- bigbugbag 11y ago
  Problem is, what's a real name ? How many real names a person has ? Are they consistent through time ?
  - yuhong 11y ago
    That is one of the reason I dislike the real name policies, but my point is that I do want people to be able to post non-anonymously if possible.
lucaspiller 11y ago
> excluded from participation in facebook based on this name policy A large bunch of my friends (30+ maybe) don't have their real names on Facebook. Some sound like they could be real, but most are pretty obvious they aren't. None of them are US based, so maybe they are only focussing on the real name policy there?

wdewind 11y ago

It is ironic to see the quote from RU Sirius about what a victory the internet is for the counter culture: > The rise of the Net and the Web represents a victory for the counterculture and the subculture. The next generation, raised on the Net as their primary medium, won't even know what consensus reality is. followed by this from the comments: > This is what happens when you let little children manage grownup things. basically begging for a more traditional power structure, and being extremely upset when the next generation, raised on the Net as their primary medium, manage it differently than how he'd expect. I don't think RU Sirius is right about the internet being a win for the counter culture (I do hope he is right, though). I can't find a year for that, but I'll bet it was said before all the Snowden stuff.

squidfood 11y ago
Well it certainly mainstreamed all kinds of counter-cultures. Whether this is a "victory" for them is debatable.
oldbuzzard 11y ago
Before the Snowden stuff... mmm probably yes. I'd bet that quote comes from an old issue of "Mondo 2000" and is contempory with the Clipper Chip battles about mandated NSA backdoors in all telecoms circa '93/94.
- chucksmash 11y ago
  Oh man. I read a story (possibly found on HN?) a few months ago about a guy growing up reading 90s techno-utopia stuff. He used the last of his money to go to a convention only to become disillusioned with it when he saw his idols were just making it up as they went. It was a really interesting read - does this ring a bell for anybody? I'm sure Mondo 2000 was mentioned in it.
  - csixty4 11y ago
    Sounds like "The Guy I Almost Was" http://electricsheepcomix.com/almostguy/ http://electricsheepcomix.com/almostguy/

DanBC 11y ago

Facebook have some really horrible policies. A woman has some photos of her and her partner on her profile. He then murders her, is arrested and sent to prison. Her profile is memorialised. This means all those images of him are still on her wall. Nice memorial. The family have asked FB to remove those images. FB have declined. https://www.change.org/p/facebook-remove-the-pictures-of-hollie-gazzards-killer-from-her-facebook-page https://www.change.org/p/facebook-remove-the-pictures-of-hol...

TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
Hmm, tricky one. In this specific case, maybe it's a reasonable request. But people who don't have benevolent families would definitely not want to hand control of their online identity to them after death.
- bad_user 11y ago
  I don't think there's any doubt in this specific case, there's really no room for "maybe". We're humans, can understand language, surely we can understand why a family would want pictures of their daughter's killer off her wall. How many people don't have benevolent families? In my opinion, if you're going to err on one side, that's not a good side to err on. And many people aren't even aware that their account will get "memorialized" after they're dead. That's a very strange default.
- thaumasiotes 11y ago
  I believe the legal principle of inheritance is that the heir is the same person as the deceased. So barring a provision in the person's will saying "nobody gets my facebook profile", Facebook would be legally in the wrong here?
onewaystreet 11y ago
That story could easily read like this: A trans woman has some photos of her and her partner on her profile. Her partner then murders her, is arrested and sent to prison. Her profile is memorialised. Her family gets access to her account from Facebook and replaces all of her photos with photos of her before her transition. Facebook has no way of knowing the motives of people so they don't try to.

guard-of-terra 11y ago

I don't think people like him should even be on Facebook. It's not that you should boycott Facebook; any more than you boycott North Korea. You don't really have business with it and the only take away is lulz. Yes, real name policy is an unfortunate feature of Facebook, but I struggle naming any of its fortunate features.

walshemj 11y ago
You do know that in most courts even france now you can call your self what you like. I certainty have several people I know who I really only know by their nickname and vice versa I even have a thank you in a book by a booker prize (award like the pulitzer) nominated author which is in my nickname.
throwitup 11y ago
Déjà il rêvait à une thébaïde raffinée, à un désert confortable, à une arche immobile et tiède où il se réfugierait loin de l’incessant déluge de la sottise humaine. -- Huysmans
- mkempe 11y ago
  OT: what brought you to Huysmans?
  - throwitup 11y ago
    I realized that National Socialism, the iconoclastic world-view of Adolf Hitler, was the doctrine of scientific, racial idealism, actually, a new 'religion' for our times. I saw that I was living in the age of a new world-view. Two thousand years ago there had been a similar rise of a new approach or world-view, called a 'religion'; a world-view which shook and changed the world forever. I realized that this new and wonderful doctrine of scientific truth applied ruthlessly to man himself, as well as to Nature and inanimate matter, and that it was the only thing which could save man from his own degradation in luxury, self-seeking short-sightedness and racial degeneration. The doctrine of Adolf Hitler was the new 'Christianity' of our times, and Adolf Hitler himself was the new 'savior', sent by inscrutable Providence recurrently to rescue a collapsing humanity. Hitler's and Germany's 'crucifixion' was all according to the inevitable workings of this unknowable Scenarist. Even the eleven hanged disciples in Nurnburg were not without significance! The most hated and dreaded idea two thousand years ago was Christianity, and the most hated and cursed man on earth was Jesus Christ. His followers were bitterly persecuted and murdered by the 'good', 'sensible' people who could see that anybody in his right mind recognized Rome and the Empire as the solid, substantial reality. I realized that today's Marxist- Democratic world is another sprawling 'Roman Empire', and today's Nazis the early 'Christians'. What is going on is far more than a battle for political supremacy in the present social and political situation. It is the utter smashing and destruction of a society which has become so rotten that it will tolerate and even love its own Marxist destroyers, just as it hates, despises and fears the slowly-growing Nazi society which will replace it. Such mighty, awesome thoughts come to a man but once in a lifetime, if ever, and when they do, that man changes for all time.

gcb0 11y ago

why someone who preaches counter culture even was on facebook?! this is akin to complaining that some kid was disappointed to be called Bartolomeo instead of Bart while attending the Sunday church bingo. Really?

PhasmaFelis 11y ago
Might as well ask why someone who preaches counterculture is on the internet. If you want people to hear your message, you need to be able to reach them in the place where they listen. This isn't hard to understand. It's irrelevant that you or I think Facebook is dumb.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  Oh well, no one is telling you to stop preaching counterculture. Don't act entitled. Counterculture is by definition the thing you'll have people reacting weirdly to, so complaining about it is like complaining the water is wet.
  - PhasmaFelis 11y ago
    I'm not sure what you're trying to say. I think you may have misread my post.
- bigbugbag 11y ago
  Might as well not. The internet is open and neutral, facebook is made possible by this open internet but facebook is closed and partisan, a walled garden. Facebook is an enemy of the internet and actively trying to replace the internet in the mind of people. It makes sense that counter culture would use the internet a global connecting medium which doesn't care about who you are and what your fetish is allows you to meet and find other people sharing the same counter culture. counter culture would rather go to 4chan than facebook, but when given the opportunity would hosts itself outside of these designated places.

pboutet 11y ago

Facebook is a very closed system where it's users have little to no rights. I myself have checked out of most of it and only occasionally use it to chat with a few friends in a private group. I found that once you cut using it you really don't miss much. There are better alternatives in my mind that we should all start shifting towards.

downandout 11y ago

This question may sound absurd to some, but does it even matter if you are not allowed to use Facebook anymore? I use it to sign into Candy Crush. They paid me a few thousand dollars for discovering a bug, that I only discovered because I was playing with their advertising system. That is the entire extent of my Facebook usage. It doesn't play a role in my daily life to any extent whatsoever, and its role in the lives of many formerly heavy users seems to be diminishing as well. So while it sucks to be excluded from anything for arbitrary reasons, it shouldn't matter very much to him or anyone else. There are plenty of other places to accomplish the things that can be accomplished on Facebook.

PhasmaFelis 11y ago
> This question may sound absurd to some, but does it even matter if you are not allowed to use Facebook anymore? If Facebook access didn't matter, we wouldn't be talking about this. This isn't about you or me or our friends. It's irrelevant that Facebook doesn't matter to us. You only have to look around and read the news to see that it is the #1 communication tool for literally hundreds of millions of people. If you care about reaching those people, losing Facebook makes it much harder for you to do that.
csixty4 11y ago
> There are plenty of other places to accomplish the things that can be accomplished on Facebook. Except when there aren't. For example, my local cat shelter set up a Facebook group to coordinate volunteers. There's also a closed group for a particular program's volunteers. Sure, they could have set up the groups somewhere else. A shelter I used to be involved with still has a Yahoo group. But the fact is they didn't, and the decision was made way above my level. So if I lost access to Facebook, I'd lose access to a lot more than Candy Crush.
- bigbugbag 11y ago
  This is vendor lock-in and this is how facebook retains users. If facebook was not locked down but open, many people would have left already if they had come in the first place. Now when the volunteers stop using facebook, it's the shelter that will lose their volunteers. The obvious solution is for the shelter to self host its own group.

__jal 11y ago

Perhaps, since Facebook is so terribly concerned with what we call ourselves, we should take it upon ourselves to be concerned with what Facebook denizens call themselves. I think I'll start inventing names for them. Henceforth, the industry titan formerly known as Mark Zuckerberg will be known has Howie Hughes II.

gtrubetskoy 11y ago

Facebook also does not allow clergy prefixes such as Fr. (father), Rev. (reverend), Br. (brother), etc. If you are a priest or a bishop, apparently your facebook friends cannot know about it. Or something like that. What's even more remarkable, some clergy I know have complied and dropped these prefixes because often the choice between not being on Facebook vs losing the "Fr." designation is not a choice if you need to be reachable by people on any medium.

MichaelGG 11y ago
If they allowed that, then they'd open themselves up to having to allow pretty much any prefix. Professional titles like Dr aren't even allowed, and those are far less disputable. https://www.facebook.com/help/132247486851813 https://www.facebook.com/help/132247486851813
- jarek 11y ago
  "Real names, but not real titles, those are too real-world for us"

DataWorker 11y ago

Agree about Facebook being held accountable for the impact they have on the world. But I also agree with shaming people who use it. If you have an account you are actively subsidizing the impact Facebook has on the world. How frequently you use the product you are buying when you sign up for an account has no relevance. And here's what disturbs me most; a vast majority of the citizenship has basically handed over all of their personal details to big brother. Now we live in an environment where not having an account is enough to raise suspicion. History will prove Stallman the Cassandra of our times.

TeMPOraL 11y ago
Well, I am subsidizing Facebook and its impact on the world, and I am proud of it. Facebook had a tremendously positive impact on this planet - it connected people from all over the world like no other force in the history before. Maybe it's not really their accomplishment, maybe they just lucked into popularity at the right moment, but it doesn't change that they are there, helping over one billion people keep real-time communication across the world. People who don't use Facebook tend to not appreciate the impact it has on daily life, especially when it comes to staying up to date with lives of a hundred and then some people. 'peteretep provides some good examples[0]. So try and shame me all you want. I don't feel that I have anything to be ashamed of. > a vast majority of the citizenship has basically handed over all of their personal details to big brother Oh well. And the vast majority of the citizenship extracts tremendous value out of it and sees no negative consequence. Yes, maybe one day there will be an evil ad-company government that will drone-strike us all in bedrooms because twenty years ago we disagreed with the leading feminist activists. Or it will torture us eternally because it'll be so bored and have nothing else to do with all those real names it collected. But until then, explain to me like I'm five, why on earth should the majority of the citizenship care? And don't get me wrong. I'm not happy about what advertisers are doing. That industry is rotten to the core and should be burned down. But please, if you really need to shame someone, shame the advertisers using this data. > Now we live in an environment where not having an account is enough to raise suspicion. I see this repeated often, but there is no real point in that sentence. Not participating in any activity or phenomena that the majority is participating in is enough to raise suspicion, by the very definition of "majority", "suspicion" and "standing out". [0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10475506 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10475506

denzil_correa 11y ago

How does Facebook identify what is a real name and what is a pseudonym?

ljk 11y ago
They probably have a list of words to check. If you have the same name as its founder then you'll be removed as well http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1386069/Mark-Zuckerberg-Attorney-Facebook-founders-account-shut-down.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1386069/Mark-Zuckerb...
zaphos 11y ago
Reportedly a mixture of automated systems, user reports, and manual work by facebook employees. See the 'How Fake Names are Flagged and Targeted' section of this article: http://lifehacker.com/how-to-use-a-fake-name-on-facebook-without-getting-flag-1637644101 http://lifehacker.com/how-to-use-a-fake-name-on-facebook-wit...
protomyth 11y ago
Poorly. I'm a bit sick of the annual purge of Native American names. For f sakes, Yellow Horse has a wikipedia entry. If you are an American company claiming to want real names, then you damn well can accept people's real names. Never mind what real name means to a group that often has two "real" names.
bigbugbag 11y ago
Mostly snitching.

tracker1 11y ago

I wonder what FB would do if everyone just changed their name to "John Smith" to comply with a "real names" policy... it's about the most common name in english speaking countries.

SXX 11y ago
Facebook would block access to those accounts and ask to upload ID photo.
DangerousPie 11y ago
Presumably their policy is not that it has to be A real name, but YOUR real name.

Zelphyr 11y ago

How much more does Facebook have to do before people realize they're a scourge of the Internet and delete their accounts?

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

mirimir 11y ago

Facebook = AOL 2.0 ;)

KasianFranks 11y ago
Exactly.

Animats 11y ago

Evey worse, nobody under 50 remembers him.

mirimir 11y ago

OK, so Facebook has a "real name" policy. People try to circumvent it, for reasons both good and bad. And there's risk of getting outed or losing high-value accounts. But bottom line, it's their business, and they can run it as they like, subject to law.

pmoriarty 11y ago
The law could always be changed to make them run it another way.
- mirimir 11y ago
  That seems unlikely in the US. It's my impression that shopping malls, which are arguably even more public than Facebook, are considered to be private property in the US. But I can imagine regulation on an antitrust basis. And if EU has jurisdiction, all bets are off.
  - thaumasiotes 11y ago
    Malls may be considered private property, but they're certainly also considered public accommodations, which comes with a whole host of legal restrictions on what you can and can't do.
    - mirimir 11y ago
      That's a good point. Owners can exclude demonstrators. But they can't discriminate based on race etc. However, they probably can exclude people wearing masks. Except on Halloween, anyway ;) And maybe there's a better analogy to using pseudonyms on Facebook.
      - panglott 11y ago
        Facebook as a public accomodation? That's an interesting idea. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_accommodations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_accommodations Public accomodations in the US are in many states prohibited from discriminating on the basis of race, national origin, sex, gender identity, or prohibited from discrimination against breastfeeding in public. That's an interesting angle to attack Facebook's hostility toward Native American names, breastfeeding photos, or queer folks who go by other names.

marcusgarvey 11y ago

I think FB is so insistent on using real names because, through its partnership with companies like Datalogix, it allows advertisers to show FB ads based on offline / elsewhere purchases. Won't work if FB doesn't have real names. Not a fan. Have personally noticed FB ads shown to me based on my purchase of a prescription drug. Tempted to go all cash when it comes to paying for health-related and other sensitive stuff. https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-and-privacy/relevant-ads-that-protect-your-privacy/457827624267125 https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-and-privacy/relevant...

jsonne 11y ago
I'm fairly certain it's illegal to target ads based on a medical condition. That being said, I believe you're right as to why they require real names. It's also why I use it as my go to for advertising and marketing. The added data from Datlogix etc makes it incredibly useful as a marketing tool.
- briandear 11y ago
  It isn't illegal to target based on a medical condition. I am not making any value judgement about it, just providing factual clarification. Unless HIPAA rules were violated, there's no problem. For example, at iCouch, if they were to take diagnostic information stored on their server by their practitioner and then send out emails to the patient based on the Protected Health Information, that would be illegal. But someone visiting a depression website and then targeting depression treatment ads based on that -- that would not be illegal. Don't would depend on where the information came from that was used to do the targeting. The targeting itself wouldn't be illegal, but the use of the data to do targeting could be illegal if that data were Protected Health Information covered by HIPAA or the Hi Tech Act. Of course, I am only speaking in a US context here..
  - marcusgarvey 11y ago
    In my case, I'm 99.9% sure the info was based on my offline purchase behavior at a CVS. I had a prescription filled for a very specific condition and, a few days later, was shown a Facebook ad for a related product. Not an ad that would be shown to a general population. I had not searched about the condition anywhere online in the recent past.

meeper16 11y ago

I like this commenters take in the article: "Fecesbook was the former MySpace, which was the former friendster, which was the former [keep filling in the blank] Fecesbook is the next AOL walled garden of junk. They were founded on calling their users dumb f*cks and voyeristcally to spy on girls. Google, worth an order of magnitude more that FB, is a true internet and technology company founded on algorithms and smart innovation as opposed to being a copy of myspace and walled gardens that anyone can cut and paste. Good riddens to Fecesbook but I wonder what's next. Better yet, what's going to be the next Google/Alphabet?"

bigbugbag 11y ago
Don't worry, google will see that there will no be a next google any time soon.

egonschiele 11y ago

Is this intentional? Things like this are frequently done using scripts, or well-meaning support folks that don't know any better. Let's get all the facts before throwing a fit.

droithomme 11y ago

Facebook is a private company with its own rules. It's not a government with a bill of rights. I do not have a Facebook account and I do not use it because I disagree with everything they are doing and everything they represent. It is sad, or shall we say pathetic, that individuals connect their identity and sense of self to an ability to patronize a particular brand of consumer ad delivery network.