7 ms·

Native Americans Say Facebook Is Accusing Them of Using Fake Names

118 points by jpatokal 12y ago

williamcotton 12y ago
“You have one identity,” he emphasized three times in a single interview with David Kirkpatrick in his book, “The Facebook Effect.” “The days of you having a different image for your work friends or co-workers and for the other people you know are probably coming to an end pretty quickly.” He adds: “Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity.”
- hamburglar 12y ago
  Ironically, one of the reasons I have a second, fake facebook profile is that I don't trust the integrity of the facebook privacy settings so I want to see what my profile and posts look like from a non-friend 3rd party.
  - geon 12y ago
    > I don't trust the integrity of the facebook privacy settings LOL. I use fb as a completely public forum. I assume everything I post can be seen by anyone. That is the only sane way to use it. fb has repeatedly shown that they don't give a s*it about your privacy or the settings you pick for it.
- ssclafani 12y ago
  You should probably edit that quote so people know it's by Mark Zuckerberg (from 2010). Zuckerberg did back off that position in a more recent interview though: http://www.forbes.com/sites/tarunwadhwa/2014/02/03/zuckerbergs-embrace-of-anonymity-marks-shift-in-tech-industry-attitudes-toward-privacy/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/tarunwadhwa/2014/02/03/zuckerber...
- hessenwolf 12y ago
  The chap with a bit of blind luck, who lives off the personal data of others, accuses anybody of a lack of integrity? The chap who runs the website with constantly changing, fantastically obfuscated privacy settings? I'll have as many faces as there are people who face me, thank you.
- _cudgel 12y ago
  This made me do a spit-take. No sane individual should take advice or direction on _integrity_ from Zuckerberg.
  - vidarh 12y ago
    The logical extension of that is that we should all expect him to tell the public all the same things he tells his wife.. I suspect it is one of those ideas that would fall apart very quickly if he was actually put in a position where he was called out on it every time he himself demonstrated such supposed lack of integrity. To me it indicates he'd never seriously thought about how people actually interact, and that's quite scary.
- kbart 12y ago
  Bullshit. How does having several online identities differ from wearing different social masks every day? I do want my boss to see me differently than my close friends, my family to see different than friends etc. I like having as many online identities as I see fit and don't see how that's "coming to an end pretty quickly". It's not like pretending or lying, just the same person seen from different angles with different emphasis. Of course, it would be convenient for Zuckerberg and the like to have a single entry for every person in a db, but I'm not going to buy it.
jameshart 12y ago
One more to add to Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names (http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/ http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-b...): Real names don't contain combinations of normal words like 'creeping bear' or 'lone hill'...
- tracker1 12y ago
  The only rules I've ever entered regarding real names... is at least two characters, though I tend not to allow numbers, but /([a-z][a-z' -]{,48}[a-z])/i generally speaking... even then, I had to bump that up from 25 characters once.
  - mercurial 12y ago
    Can't Chinese last name consist of a single Hanzi character?
    - dnr 12y ago
      Yes, actually they almost always do. Two-character last names are pretty rare (and of those, many are transliterations from other languages).
    - geon 12y ago
      I don't think [a-z] covers hanzi anyway...
  - saraid216 12y ago
    Which is honestly still pretty restrictive. I can immediately think of two cases you'd be throwing out erroneously.
  - eru 12y ago
    People have names outside of [a-z]. (Me, for example.)
    - lucaspiller 12y ago
timothya 12y ago
This isn't really too surprising; this is the kind of problem you have when you try to automatically enforce real name policies. When you try to create a system which separates real names from made up ones, it's a lot harder when real names can have common English words which aren't ordinarily found in names. Google+ had similar problems, if I remember right, and they ultimately solved the problem by getting rid of the real name policy entirely.
- _cudgel 12y ago
  Do people not realize that _all_ names are "made up" by someone?
Dylan16807 12y ago
>Native Americans Say That's an odd phrasing for something that should be very easy to verify.
- prawn 12y ago
  I think Dylan's point is that the headline could be something like this: "Facebook Is Disallowing Native American Names"
  - Dylan16807 12y ago
    Yes. Is there another way to read my comment? I'm a bit confused by the downvotes.
    - tempestn 12y ago
      I don't see another reading, but perhaps people are misunderstanding you to mean that you don't believe the Native Americans. Perhaps if you suggested an alternative title?
    - rodgerd 12y ago
      I imagine it's getting downvotes from people who tire of the tendancy of a chunk of the HN commentariat to dismiss anything as "not a real problem" if it doesn't impinge of straight white guys, and have assumed your response is a thinly-veiled version of that.
    - lmm 12y ago
      Pedantic complaint about the headline, rather than engaging with the article? Ample reason for a downvote in my book.
- pjc50 12y ago
  Newspaperese much prefers to construct everything out of statements that other people have said. Rather like wikipedia.
jasonjei 12y ago
I'm reminded of being unable to schedule Genius Bar appointments because my last name was a banned name. Given my Cantonese romanization, Jason Hung was apparently denied AppleCare support from geniuses. (I do understand why'd they regex for bad names since at one point Apple publicly showed who was enqueued for support, but not very helpful to tell someone their last name isn't good when they already need help! Not trying to be sensational, but they could have just flagged it for human review to see if the name was an obvious joke, or better yet, not display names publicly) Edit: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/1491462 https://discussions.apple.com/thread/1491462
- tsotha 12y ago
  "Hung" is a pretty common name. You'd think it wouldn't be on the list for that reason alone.
- IndianAstronaut 12y ago
  >regex for bad names This is why you don't use something as simplistic as regex to do your automated moderation. Automated moderation is a pretty tricky area and requires something at least as sophisticated as naive Bayes.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- DanBC 12y ago
  I used to have a problem with a Google contact form because of part of my surname ("Cocks"). I posted a screenshot here and a couple of people very politely offered to help and it is, I think, fixed now. I have no idea how often my name causes communication to be silently dropped.
- specialist 12y ago
  Gah. Apple has a database of their own customers. I'm surprised they don't use that as a whitelist of known good (recognized) names.
owly 12y ago
Solution: don't use FB. Create your own social network.
- itsbits 12y ago
  its so easy to create a social network huh?!!
  - daemin 12y ago
    A social network is really just the web of personal connections in real life. We all should have one.
    - itsbits 12y ago
      Its not easy to build one with all the FB features. We do have some CMS like Ning which comes close but making your family friends join same is not that easy task.
geoffpado 12y ago
Meanwhile, my Facebook profile is entirely faked, with clearly false data and the name of a literary character; I've never been questioned about it once. Beyond an attempt to combat impersonation (which is likely going to be impersonation of real names anyway), where do Facebook or their users even benefit from the real name policy? It seems like a lot of hassle to try and automatically enforce an obviously difficult problem with little upside. Human behaviors, try as we might, are never going to conform to rigorous standards. :)
- Cthulhu_ 12y ago
  Racking my brain, I can think of two reasons: preventing anonymity (people are less of a dick on the internet when their real name is there), and findability (finding your friends while not knowing their internet moniker is hard)
  - bigiain 12y ago
    Plus, of course, Facebook's actual "users" - by which I mean their paying customers - like to be able to tie Facebook's product (yeah, you and me and your mom) to their credit card names reliably...
  - darklajid 12y ago
    I'd say the first one isn't proven (Oh great old one) and the second one is moot - if you want to connect with friends, exchange the name via side channel or use the 'friend of friend' links to connect?
sgift 12y ago
"Are you a gift shop? Our shop sign up is over here." - no, I'm not, thank you very much. It is German and means something I'd like to use on you if you don't stop bothering me ...
yummybear 12y ago
"It looks like that name violates our name standards" != Accusing native americans of using fake names
- mariuolo 12y ago
  Ok, they accuse them of having true but unacceptable names. How is that any better?
- _delirium 12y ago
  It does come across to me as accusing people of using fake names, in part because the immediate remedy they suggest is to send in scan of ID to prove that it's your real name. If they just didn't like the name, vs. suspecting it to be fake, why would they want a scan of ID?
Cthulhu_ 12y ago
The real name policy on Facebook is a load of bollocks, IMO. I have a friend who has to use a fake name to keep her stalker away (he threatened to abduct her son and stuff like that), and she's legally required to both keep a low profile on the internet and to report any and all possible interactions with the guy to her solicitor. I know Facebook probably has its reasons (mostly having to do with money, I'm sure), but they have to make exceptions.
- Padding 12y ago
  Your friend clearly has her priorities straight. One would think that if someone really had a good reason to not be found online, the first thing they'd do would be to not be in FB rather than use some fake name. Then again, maybe things aren't quite as dramatic as incinuated :>
  - gadders 12y ago
    Perhaps they don't want to let some arsehole stop them from keeping in touch with their friends?
    - Padding 12y ago
      True, but then again this is a moot point, since the person in question seems to struggle with distinguishing friends from arseholes, right?
      - EliRivers 12y ago
        Wrong. She's clearly identified him as an arsehole. You can tell because she's reports interactions with him and tries to hide from him.
  - mattmanser 12y ago
    Blaming the victim, how progressive.
    - 12y ago
Stoo 12y ago
Some members of my family have the same problem. Their surname is Money and none of them can use it on Facebook.
- DrStalker 12y ago
  Same problem here; Stalker is my surname and I had to send in a scan of my drivers license to create an account.
- nandemo 12y ago
  They could try and use an alternative form like Cash, Bond, or Banks.
nvivo 12y ago
My last name is the name of one of the largest phone companies in Brazil: Vivo. Facebook didn't allow my name either as it assumed I was somehow trying to harm the company. It allowed me to register with a fake name though. This was many years ago. I decided to just not care about Facebook and never used it anymore.

118 points by jpatokal 12y ago

“You have one identity,” he emphasized three times in a single interview with David Kirkpatrick in his book, “The Facebook Effect.” “The days of you having a different image for your work friends or co-workers and for the other people you know are probably coming to an end pretty quickly.” He adds: “Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity.”

hamburglar 12y ago
Ironically, one of the reasons I have a second, fake facebook profile is that I don't trust the integrity of the facebook privacy settings so I want to see what my profile and posts look like from a non-friend 3rd party.
- geon 12y ago
  > I don't trust the integrity of the facebook privacy settings LOL. I use fb as a completely public forum. I assume everything I post can be seen by anyone. That is the only sane way to use it. fb has repeatedly shown that they don't give a s*it about your privacy or the settings you pick for it.
ssclafani 12y ago
You should probably edit that quote so people know it's by Mark Zuckerberg (from 2010). Zuckerberg did back off that position in a more recent interview though: http://www.forbes.com/sites/tarunwadhwa/2014/02/03/zuckerbergs-embrace-of-anonymity-marks-shift-in-tech-industry-attitudes-toward-privacy/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/tarunwadhwa/2014/02/03/zuckerber...
hessenwolf 12y ago
The chap with a bit of blind luck, who lives off the personal data of others, accuses anybody of a lack of integrity? The chap who runs the website with constantly changing, fantastically obfuscated privacy settings? I'll have as many faces as there are people who face me, thank you.
_cudgel 12y ago
This made me do a spit-take. No sane individual should take advice or direction on _integrity_ from Zuckerberg.
- vidarh 12y ago
  The logical extension of that is that we should all expect him to tell the public all the same things he tells his wife.. I suspect it is one of those ideas that would fall apart very quickly if he was actually put in a position where he was called out on it every time he himself demonstrated such supposed lack of integrity. To me it indicates he'd never seriously thought about how people actually interact, and that's quite scary.
kbart 12y ago
Bullshit. How does having several online identities differ from wearing different social masks every day? I do want my boss to see me differently than my close friends, my family to see different than friends etc. I like having as many online identities as I see fit and don't see how that's "coming to an end pretty quickly". It's not like pretending or lying, just the same person seen from different angles with different emphasis. Of course, it would be convenient for Zuckerberg and the like to have a single entry for every person in a db, but I'm not going to buy it.

jameshart 12y ago

One more to add to Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names (http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/ http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-b...): Real names don't contain combinations of normal words like 'creeping bear' or 'lone hill'...

tracker1 12y ago
The only rules I've ever entered regarding real names... is at least two characters, though I tend not to allow numbers, but /([a-z][a-z' -]{,48}[a-z])/i generally speaking... even then, I had to bump that up from 25 characters once.
- mercurial 12y ago
  Can't Chinese last name consist of a single Hanzi character?
  - dnr 12y ago
    Yes, actually they almost always do. Two-character last names are pretty rare (and of those, many are transliterations from other languages).
  - geon 12y ago
    I don't think [a-z] covers hanzi anyway...
- saraid216 12y ago
  Which is honestly still pretty restrictive. I can immediately think of two cases you'd be throwing out erroneously.
- eru 12y ago
  People have names outside of [a-z]. (Me, for example.)
  - lucaspiller 12y ago

timothya 12y ago

This isn't really too surprising; this is the kind of problem you have when you try to automatically enforce real name policies. When you try to create a system which separates real names from made up ones, it's a lot harder when real names can have common English words which aren't ordinarily found in names. Google+ had similar problems, if I remember right, and they ultimately solved the problem by getting rid of the real name policy entirely.

_cudgel 12y ago
Do people not realize that _all_ names are "made up" by someone?

Dylan16807 12y ago

>Native Americans Say That's an odd phrasing for something that should be very easy to verify.

prawn 12y ago
I think Dylan's point is that the headline could be something like this: "Facebook Is Disallowing Native American Names"
- Dylan16807 12y ago
  Yes. Is there another way to read my comment? I'm a bit confused by the downvotes.
  - tempestn 12y ago
    I don't see another reading, but perhaps people are misunderstanding you to mean that you don't believe the Native Americans. Perhaps if you suggested an alternative title?
  - rodgerd 12y ago
    I imagine it's getting downvotes from people who tire of the tendancy of a chunk of the HN commentariat to dismiss anything as "not a real problem" if it doesn't impinge of straight white guys, and have assumed your response is a thinly-veiled version of that.
  - lmm 12y ago
    Pedantic complaint about the headline, rather than engaging with the article? Ample reason for a downvote in my book.
pjc50 12y ago
Newspaperese much prefers to construct everything out of statements that other people have said. Rather like wikipedia.

jasonjei 12y ago

I'm reminded of being unable to schedule Genius Bar appointments because my last name was a banned name. Given my Cantonese romanization, Jason Hung was apparently denied AppleCare support from geniuses. (I do understand why'd they regex for bad names since at one point Apple publicly showed who was enqueued for support, but not very helpful to tell someone their last name isn't good when they already need help! Not trying to be sensational, but they could have just flagged it for human review to see if the name was an obvious joke, or better yet, not display names publicly) Edit: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/1491462 https://discussions.apple.com/thread/1491462

tsotha 12y ago
"Hung" is a pretty common name. You'd think it wouldn't be on the list for that reason alone.
IndianAstronaut 12y ago
>regex for bad names This is why you don't use something as simplistic as regex to do your automated moderation. Automated moderation is a pretty tricky area and requires something at least as sophisticated as naive Bayes.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
DanBC 12y ago
I used to have a problem with a Google contact form because of part of my surname ("Cocks"). I posted a screenshot here and a couple of people very politely offered to help and it is, I think, fixed now. I have no idea how often my name causes communication to be silently dropped.
specialist 12y ago
Gah. Apple has a database of their own customers. I'm surprised they don't use that as a whitelist of known good (recognized) names.

owly 12y ago

Solution: don't use FB. Create your own social network.

itsbits 12y ago
its so easy to create a social network huh?!!
- daemin 12y ago
  A social network is really just the web of personal connections in real life. We all should have one.
  - itsbits 12y ago
    Its not easy to build one with all the FB features. We do have some CMS like Ning which comes close but making your family friends join same is not that easy task.

geoffpado 12y ago

Meanwhile, my Facebook profile is entirely faked, with clearly false data and the name of a literary character; I've never been questioned about it once. Beyond an attempt to combat impersonation (which is likely going to be impersonation of real names anyway), where do Facebook or their users even benefit from the real name policy? It seems like a lot of hassle to try and automatically enforce an obviously difficult problem with little upside. Human behaviors, try as we might, are never going to conform to rigorous standards. :)

Cthulhu_ 12y ago
Racking my brain, I can think of two reasons: preventing anonymity (people are less of a dick on the internet when their real name is there), and findability (finding your friends while not knowing their internet moniker is hard)
- bigiain 12y ago
  Plus, of course, Facebook's actual "users" - by which I mean their paying customers - like to be able to tie Facebook's product (yeah, you and me and your mom) to their credit card names reliably...
- darklajid 12y ago
  I'd say the first one isn't proven (Oh great old one) and the second one is moot - if you want to connect with friends, exchange the name via side channel or use the 'friend of friend' links to connect?

sgift 12y ago

"Are you a gift shop? Our shop sign up is over here." - no, I'm not, thank you very much. It is German and means something I'd like to use on you if you don't stop bothering me ...

yummybear 12y ago

"It looks like that name violates our name standards" != Accusing native americans of using fake names

mariuolo 12y ago
Ok, they accuse them of having true but unacceptable names. How is that any better?
_delirium 12y ago
It does come across to me as accusing people of using fake names, in part because the immediate remedy they suggest is to send in scan of ID to prove that it's your real name. If they just didn't like the name, vs. suspecting it to be fake, why would they want a scan of ID?

Cthulhu_ 12y ago

The real name policy on Facebook is a load of bollocks, IMO. I have a friend who has to use a fake name to keep her stalker away (he threatened to abduct her son and stuff like that), and she's legally required to both keep a low profile on the internet and to report any and all possible interactions with the guy to her solicitor. I know Facebook probably has its reasons (mostly having to do with money, I'm sure), but they have to make exceptions.

Padding 12y ago
Your friend clearly has her priorities straight. One would think that if someone really had a good reason to not be found online, the first thing they'd do would be to not be in FB rather than use some fake name. Then again, maybe things aren't quite as dramatic as incinuated :>
- gadders 12y ago
  Perhaps they don't want to let some arsehole stop them from keeping in touch with their friends?
  - Padding 12y ago
    True, but then again this is a moot point, since the person in question seems to struggle with distinguishing friends from arseholes, right?
    - EliRivers 12y ago
      Wrong. She's clearly identified him as an arsehole. You can tell because she's reports interactions with him and tries to hide from him.
- mattmanser 12y ago
  Blaming the victim, how progressive.
  - 12y ago

Stoo 12y ago

Some members of my family have the same problem. Their surname is Money and none of them can use it on Facebook.

DrStalker 12y ago
Same problem here; Stalker is my surname and I had to send in a scan of my drivers license to create an account.
nandemo 12y ago
They could try and use an alternative form like Cash, Bond, or Banks.

nvivo 12y ago

My last name is the name of one of the largest phone companies in Brazil: Vivo. Facebook didn't allow my name either as it assumed I was somehow trying to harm the company. It allowed me to register with a fake name though. This was many years ago. I decided to just not care about Facebook and never used it anymore.