Facebook is cracking down on pseudonyms. I do not believe them when they say they are doing it for the safety of the community. There are any number of reasons why a pseudonym is safer than using a real name. 1. I live alone. I dont want someone searching public records for my name to find where I live. 2. Similarly, if I have posted when I am traveling, I dont want someone searching public records to find out when to burgle my house. 3. In the past, I had professional reasons for wanting to keep my private life private. 4. Some of my friends in the Guerneville area are drag queens. They go by the name of their public persona. I do not know the legal name of several of them and do not care to know. When I interact with them on line using their pseudonyms, I know exactly the person I am interacting with, just as they know who I am. This crackdown is disproportionately hitting the LGBTQIA community. 5. There are victims of domestic violence or harassment or any number of other actions who may well want not to be found by their abusers or harassers. I see no reason to require that they use their legal names on FB. 6. We have been interacting with the Internet long enough to know that people we have not met in person may not be at all like the person being portrayed on line. Schools and parents and friends should be vigilant in teaching that knowing someone on line is not the same as knowing someone in person. You can be fooled, even by people using their legal names. It seems to me that the reason for the crackdown, rather than for the safety of the community, is to enhance the earnings of FB. The data they mine on us is far more valuable if they can connect it with legal names. As Deep Throat said, Follow the money.
Posted on: Sat, 20 Sep 2014 19:15:24 +0000
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