Facebook apologizes because its ‘real name’ policy doesn’t work so well for drag queens

They now understand "how painful this has been".

Facebook apologizes because its ‘real name’ policy doesn’t work so well for drag queens


I tried one of those online drag queen name generators. It said my drag queen name would be Devine Breeze. Hey, I could have done worse. Zuckerman! You think I’m going to stand for one moment for your discrimination against me?
http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Facebook-offers-apology-for-real-name-flap-5794875.php

 A campaign to change the policy began last month after a group of drag queens, along with San Francisco Supervisor David Campos, argued that it compromises the privacy, health and safety of many LGBT users. The campaign was fueled by the anger of several drag personalities who were locked out of Facebook accounts that used their drag names. The push expanded to include other groups such as domestic violence survivors and immigrants, who also argued that being unable to use a pseudonym may compromise safety.
http://blog.sfgate.com/techchron/2014/09/12/sf-drag-queens-pressure-facebooks-name-policy/

On Wednesday, the social network sat down for negotiations with representatives from many of the groups. After that meeting, Chief Product Officer Chris Cox issued an apology on his own Facebook page.
https://www.facebook.com/chris.cox/posts/10101301777354543

“In the two weeks since the real-name policy issues surfaced, we’ve had the chance to hear from many of you in these communities and understand the policy more clearly as you experience it. We’ve also come to understand how painful this has been,” he wrote. “We owe you a better service and a better experience using Facebook, and we’re going to fix the way this policy gets handled so everyone affected here can go back to using Facebook as you were.”

But the apology did not go so far as to admit that Facebook’s widely criticized policy was incorrect. The accounts of drag personalities, he said, were deleted only after another user falsely reported that they were fake.

“Our policy has never been to require everyone on Facebook to use their legal name,” he wrote. “The spirit of our policy is that everyone on Facebook uses the authentic name they use in real life.”

Oy.

The real name policy, in my view, was one of the things that made Facebook stand out from other online forums in its infancy. On various and sundry message boards across the Internet, people made up all kinds of screen names for themselves - such that active members could conceivably talk to each other regularly for years but never know each other’s real names. That wasn’t possible on Facebook, and that was the whole idea. The guy you had always known as MedicineMan0452 was now Dr. Jim Cooper. Your old friend PhillyRangersFan would henceforth be known as Mike Johnson.

People would deal with each other as actual people, not as online identities.

It’s not Facebook’s fault some people refuse to be who they are, but Facebook apparently feels the need to apologize anyway because we’re at a point in our culture when it’s simply too much trouble to leave certain people offended, even if they are offended over absolutely nothing.

By Dan Calabrese