Facebook’s ‘Real Name’ Policy is Keeping Native Americans Out
Identity Crisis
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Facebook’s recent no-nonsense approach to names is intended
to keep people from making spam or joke accounts, but it has had an unexpected
side-effect. Numerous members of the Native American community have found
themselves unable to create accounts because the site refuses to recognise
their name. Many Native Americans, of course, have very literal names built out
of adjective/noun conjunctions, something Facebook obviously didn’t anticipate.
One particular victim of the oversight, Dana Lone Hill,
filed a class action suit against the social media colossus, coaxing them into
making an active effort to restore her account. Sadly, Facebook’s singular
effort to help Lone Hill isn’t universally applicable yet and many other Native
Americans are still struggling to get in, having to go to great lengths to
confirm their identities.
A very similar incident occurred in 2013, when numerous drag
queens, transgender individuals and other members of the LGBT community hit the
same wall, since they were trying to register their accounts under assumed
names, stage names or pseudonyms. The issue was eventually resolved and Facebook
apologised, but it took the better part of a year to reach that stage and
progress has been similarly sluggish here.
Facebook’s argument is that strictly adhering to real names
reduces any chance of anonymity, which in turn prevents people from accessing
the site under false pretenses in order to spread prejudice and abuse. The
policy also cuts nicknames out of the equation, even if they’re just used as
middle names. I was Callum ‘Silver Fox’ Davies for a long time on Facebook, for
instance, owing to my streak of extremely premature grey hair (on my head, you
pervert), but this policy put an end to that, I logged in one fateful day and
the moniker had simply vanished.
What Facebook clearly didn’t consider is that anonymity can
protect the abused as much as it can enable abusers, since knowing someone’s
real name makes it that much easier to harass them and even threaten them with
violence, something the LGBT community has to deal with a great deal, sadly.
It’s likely that even as they try and patch the flaws in
this policy, Facebook will continue to encounter issues. Beyond Native
Americans, people who wish to use a different name for particular privacy
reasons (like teachers who don’t want their students to see their account, for
instance) may still encounter issues. Facebook might want to consider going back
to the drawing board on this one.
Callum Davies
Callum is a film school graduate who is now making a name for himself as a journalist and content writer. His vices include flat whites and 90s hip-hop. Follow him @CallumAtSMF
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Facebook’s ‘Real Name’ Policy is Keeping Native Americans Out
Reviewed by Unknown
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Monday, March 02, 2015
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Reviewed by Unknown
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Monday, March 02, 2015
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