Facebook again made headlines this month for its refusal to allow users to represent themselves with their chosen identities. A number of users of the site, mainly drag performers, reported that their accounts had been taken down in violation of the company’s “real names” policy that requires individuals to use their legal name for personal accounts.
Opposition to Facebook’s “real names” policy dates back to the early days of the platform, not long after its public launch. In 2007, the BBC reported that certain names were being rejected by Facebook, in an attempt to prohibit abuse and profanity in the name field. Amongst those rejected were a woman named Beta Yee and another called Rowena Gay.
While these early problems were fixed, Facebook has remained steadfast about their policy, stating that, “On Facebook people connect using their real names and identities” and requiring users whose names are reported to be “fake” to submit legal identification to prove their identity.
Drag performers are not the only ones whose accounts have been shut down as a result of the policy. Over the years, a number of individuals, from Egyptian activist Wael Ghonim to author Salman Rushdie have run afoul of the “real name” rule. Michael Anti, a Chinese journalist who was told by Facebook that he would have to use his birth name – Zhao Jing – spoke out against the policy on the grounds that no one would be able to find him under that name. The Guardian reported that “[E]ven Chinese friends know him as An Ti.”
Over the years, a number of proposals have been made by activists and commentators on how Facebook could improve its policies to be more accommodating to those whose names don’t meet muster, from an “activist exception” to private identity verification for public pseudonyms. To their credit, Facebook has made some accommodations for users, allowing them to set up fan “pages” under pseudonyms or professional names (see, for instance, Lady Gaga’s Page).
But for some, the accommodations aren’t enough. A blogger in Honduras who was kicked off the site for using a pseudonym pointed to the country’s press freedom ranking, noting that pseudonyms are important because “many journalists and bloggers freely admit to self-censorship for various reasons.”
Drag performers and trans people form a different category of users for whom the policy is unfair; their gender identities are often not expressed by the name on their passport. Worse yet, as Nadia Kayyali writes: “For trans women, who make up 72% of the victims of anti-LGBTQ homicide, being forced to reveal their birth names can be deadly.” According to the Washington Post, LGBT activists recently met with Facebook to tell the company that they felt “targeted by the policy,” but Facebook was unrelenting.
Unlike in those early days, Facebook claims not to use an algorithm to detect violators of the rule. The company recently acknowledged that profiles are only taken down and requests for proof of identity sent out when an individual is reported by another for breaking the rules. The group of drag performers recently kicked off the site would then appear to have been victims of a coordinated attack aimed at removing them from Facebook.
This begs the question: What prompts someone to report another Facebook user for using a “fake” name?
Scholars Kate Crawford and Tarlteon Gillespie have studied the use of community reporting, or “flagging,” on social media platforms. In a recent paper published by New Media & Society, they describe the mechanism as “understood [by many sites] to be a genuinely important and necessary part of maintaining user-friendly spaces and learning from their community.” Flagging, they argue, “act[s] as a mechanism to elicity and distrubte user labor—users as a volunteer corps of regulators.”
Facebook relies upon flagging to apply its many rules and regulations. Rules against graphic content, nudity, hate speech, or harassment are enforced not by algorithms, but by individual users who come across such content. This is why, explained GigaOm’s Mathew Ingram earlier this year, crucial information and videos coming out of Syria frequently disappear.
In Vietnam, Facebook users have accused the government of reporting their accounts for abuse of the rules in order to silence them.
While the use of flagging mechanisms to remove threatening or harmful content might be understandable, it seems that users also sometimes employ the “report” button out of malice.
Journalist Sultan Al Qassemi has seen this firsthand. While his name (which is verified on the site) hasn’t been put into question, the art fan regularly shares notifications he receives from Facebook that indicate that someone has reported his images—typically of museum-quality art—for violations of policy.
In Vietnam, Facebook users have accused the government of reporting their accounts for abuse of the rules in order to silence them. The government employs online “opinion shapers” who recognise the importance of Facebook in the daily lives of Vietnamese citizens – and exploit that by monitoring and reporting them.
While some are able to successfully utilise Facebook’s appeals system, those whose accounts are removed for violating the name policy and who cannot– or refuse to – submit identification may be out of luck.
Facebook is well within the law to restrict content any way it sees fit, but as Jane Ruffino recently asked, “a real names policy might be legal, but is it ethical?” Invocations of the law matter little to the many users who have suffered under this policy, which is arguably antithetical to free speech.
Fortunately, there are other options. Platforms such as Google+ have relented and now allow pseudonyms, while new contenders like Ello are pseudonymous by design. Facebook users may have good reasons to stay on the site—after all, you can’t take your network with you – but in the face of the company’s stubborn unwillingness to listen to its users, perhaps they should consider making a move.