Of Facebook and real names
While I’m unlikely to have any problems personally with Facebook’s current exercise in enforcing ‘real names’ (I’m using two thirds of my real name) I have a lot of problem with it conceptually. In most aspects of life we are free to use whatever names we want. As a writer or performer you can quite legitimately have more than one name. So long as there is no criminal application, call yourself as you please, so the demand for ‘real names’ is an infringement of a right we otherwise have.
Names have a cultural component. This whole ‘real name’ malarkey is already showing signs of impacting on people who do not conform to white western name standards. It doesn’t matter whether you can prove it’s your ‘real’ name, it is not ok that you get asked just because of cultural difference. Facebook is already flirting with racism on this issue, from what I’ve seen online.
Apparently the use of ‘real names’ reduces risk of online bullying. However, Facebook is not requiring all of us to prove who we say we are, it’s only if a name seems suspect to someone’s mind, that it will be questioned. So you sign up as John Smith, Alice Jones, or the like, and it looks like a regular ‘real name’ giving you all the cover you need to spew hate. This, incidentally is the same Facebook that couldn’t see any problem with a ‘sexy little girls’ page a while back and took some considerable persuading to close it down, doesn’t mind images of violence against animals or pictures of murdered girls hanging from trees. This is the Facebook that finds breastfeeding offensive but won’t shut down hate speech against women. It has some very interesting variations in standards.
Yes, predators use fake names. So do victims who are in hiding. So do people exploring their identities, people with unsafe living arrangements or a need for privacy. “Someone might use it to do a bad thing” is an approach the does not let any of us own anything harder or heavier than latex. You could kidnap someone and tape their mouth over with duct tape, so we’d better not have any more duct tape. It is not the anonymity of a false name that enables trolls online. It is the anonymity of being a tiny irrelevance in a big place, one in a thousand Lisas from Essex, or one of the innumerable Bobs and Daves from the Midlands. Anonymous because we are many, and the net huge. Some people use fake names to do bad things. Some people use guns to kill people (it’s not like they have a vast array of applications). Facebook takes no issue with pro-gun material. Some of us claim more interesting names as a way of standing out – and why the hell not?
Of course Facebook isn’t the only show in town. The power it has at present stems from being as close as we get to ubiquitous. However, that only holds up while it is a place everyone can use. Start drawing rigid lines and making demands, and there are other places to go. I also have a presence on Twitter, Linkedin and google+ and if Facebook becomes too aggressive, unreasonable and demanding I will use other spaces. I won’t be the only one. No one is obliged to show up there, and it is worth pausing to remember myspace, and before that, the yahoo groups. Nothing is forever, not even Facebook.
The right to express yourself is important. It includes the right to use whatever name you wish. It is the oldest trick in the book to bring in controlling laws on the basis that they are for your own good and to protect you. We don’t have to co-operate with that, on Facebook or anywhere else. You can stand around demanding real names, and wait for Rumplestiltskin to run off with your baby – or in this case, your supply of people on which the whole thing depends. People are the key resource here, not the website, and Facebook (like a good many governments around the world) would do well to bear that in mind.
