If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. You can even subscribe by email! Thanks for visiting!
At least they had the grace good sense to apologise.
Recently a mini-blogstorm erupted over a well-known blogger and Amazon reviewer Jon Swift.
I put his name in italics because it’s not his real name. As he says on his blog,
I am a reasonable conservative who likes to write about politics and culture. Since the media is biased I get all my news from Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and Jay Leno monologues.
Earlier this week I logged into Facebook and discovered that without warning my account had been deleted. According to Facebook, I am a fake, a charlatan, a nonperson and all of my more than 200 Facebook friends are the victims of a cruel hoax. My crime? Violating Facebook’s Terms of Service by not using my “real name.” What’s next? Will Second Life require people’s avatars to be a perfect likeness?
“Jon Swift” is a name I took as a tribute to the brave Swift Boat Veterans (and which I was forced to adopt because of some misunderstandings with creditors), but does that make my name any less real than the name “Aubrey from Facebook”? What exactly does “real name” mean? Would Bob Dylan be banned if he didn’t sign up as Robert Zimmerman? Would someone searching for their friend Carlos the Jackal have to know that his “real name” is Ilich Ramírez Sánchez? Would Malcolm X have had to sign up under his slave name if he were still alive? Would Eric Arthur Blair have been banned from joining Facebook under the name George Orwell if he weren’t dead, too. Or is Orwell actually alive and well and running Facebook?
The ‘Aubrey from Facebook’ that he refers to is the Customer Support Representative who replied to his enquiry when he quite rightly asked why his Facebook account had been deleted without his knowledge or consent.
Aubrey’s email read:
Hi,
Fake accounts are a violation of our Terms of Use.
Facebook requires users to provide their real first and last
names. Impersonating anyone or anything is prohibited.
Unfortunately, we will not be able to reactivate this account
for any reason. This decision is final.
Thanks for your understanding,
Aubrey
Customer Support Representative
Of course, the blogosphere does not take such draconian matters lying down. Never has, never will.
Jon immediately blogged about it in a brilliant post, it was picked up by a few powerful ’sneezers’:
Support is pouring in from the blogosphere from such heavy hitters Robert Scoble, Dennis Howlett, Stan Schroeder, and Rob Hyndman. Steve Rubel has Twittered me (which is legal in most states now). Monkey has created another Facebook group called “Who Is Aubrey from Facebook?” And the pain of being booted from Facebook has been eased a little by the news that this modest blog has been nominated for a 2007 Weblog Award for Funniest Blog.
All of a sudden Facebook had a PR firestorm on their hands.
Says Jon:
And who exactly am I supposed to be impersonating? Has it ever occurred to you, “Aubrey from Facebook,” that whoever I am supposed to be impersonating could actually be impersonating me? In fact, a search for the name “Jon Swift” reveals 99 profiles, many of which seem no more “real” than mine. Why out of all those Jon Swifts was I singled out? And, by the way, searching for for film director “Alan Smithee” yields 85 profiles and “Jesus Christ” turns up more than 500. At least I can be assured that all of those have been vetted by Facebook’s crack investigators and are certified as being “real.”
A Facebook group was started, ‘Let Jon Swift Back into Facebook’, and scores added their voice to the protest. A ‘Who is Aubrey From Facebook’ group was even started.
Soon enough, Facebook had the common sense to back down and let Jon back in.
Hi Jon,
Upon further review, we have decided to reactivate your account. Our Terms of Use, to which all users agree when they first sign up for the site, stipulate that you must not “impersonate any person or entity, or falsely state or otherwise misrepresent yourself, your age or your affiliation with any person or entity.” However, since others on the site seem to know you by this name, and since you don’t appear to be using the name to impersonate or to hide your identity, we have determined that you are not violating these Terms. We apologize for any inconvenience this has caused. Please let me know if you have further questions or concerns.
Thanks for your understanding,
Jerry
Customer Support Representative
Some of the comments on Jon’s post about this are truly wonderful, like this one from g4rg4ntu4, who said:
I’m appalled at how unprofessional these farcebook people are. I myself had a similar problem when I tried to create an account under my pseudonym (g4rg4ntu4). After much harassment and threatened litigation I had no choice but to go with my real name (which of course is Francois Rabelais).
Norman P said:
When I read your post this morning, I asked myself as I always do, “What would Jesus do?”
But you’ve noted that there are 500 people named Jesus Christ on Facebook, which means that I may very well get 500 different answers.
This is yet another outrage perpetrated by the Internet. In the old days, if I wanted to talk to Jesus, I only had to pray and the one Jesus would listen. Now I have to send someone a message on Facebook and I have no idea which Jesus is the real Jesus. You’d think that Aubrey of Facebook would be trying to narrow the field down by 499 “faces” (or even 498, since the Anti-Christ is probably also on Facebook and it would be VERY helpful if we only had to figure out who was whom from a field of two rather than a field of 500.)
It could be, of course, that Aubrey from Facebook is him or herself the Anti-Christ. I may have to float this possibility in a massive chain email to 500,000 Evangelicals I know.
Gwyneth Llewelyn said
One wonders if the lawyers writing up these ToS ever read the international legislation on the right of writing under a literary pseudonym and the protection of intellectual property granted to pseudonyms.
It’s not as if they’re “new” laws. The Berne Convention on Intellectual Property was held in 1866. Granted, the US just became a signatory in the last quarter of the 20th century, but it’s not if it’s a revolution. Pseudonyms have established legal rights. Refusing to accept a pseudonym is actually more illegal than breaking a ToS that is, by itself, in contravention of international copyright laws.
So, like everything else in legal matters, it’s never a simple case of “you broke their ToS, why are you complaining?”. A nice lawyer will point out that Jon never violated any laws — Facebook did, by ignoring the legislation that protects the right to copyright your work under a pseudonym — and so this would be an interesting legal question to raise at a court.
Obviously nobody will sue Facebook for ignoring copyright laws (pseudonyms being covered under them), since the world simply doesn’t work that way. Unless you can establish a massive loss of money due to your Facebook account having been cancelled, it’s very likely not worth the cost of legal action. Facebook knows this and will certainly continue to ignore IP regulations regarding the use of pseudonyms until one day he cancels, say, Stephen King (also a pseudonym) and he files a suit
Code Red reported a number of name violations: Santa Claus, his Reindeer, Jesus Christ, John Wayne, the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, Pablo Escobar, George Bush, Billy the Kid, Monopoly, Night Rider, Green Martian, Black Beard, Sam I Am and the Gingerbread Man, amongst many others.
Another blogstorm, another day. I just love the blogosphere!
—–
Currently listening to: Douglas Adams - Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Pt 2 Disc 1 - ‘There is a theory’
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
red mum 11.03.07 at 12:12 am
As I commented on swift’s site the same thing happened with me, (mustve been a bug because it didn’t appear on the blog).
I write under the name Red Mum, and have a column under that name here in Dublin but they were unyielding in their ‘no nicknames’ rule, even though it is not a nickname.
Glad he was reinstated and I have now emailed them asking why I was treated differently when I had sent more than enough evidence to show it is not fradulent, deceptive and an actual working name. Everybody knows its me!
What I didn’t like was the highlighting others who have escaped the Facebook radar, ie Jesus Christ and the others. I have come across loads of people with names that are obviously not real but I wouldn’t dream of flagging them for deactivation.
Capri 11.03.07 at 6:02 am
Facebook should give people the option at least, to use their pen-name or nicknames on the site, even if they do require people to register using their rl full name. And yes, it’s really ludicrous that John got zapped when so many other fakers escape Facebook’s notice. I’d like it if FB would give us the option to use a handle instead of our real names in their groups, one of the reason I don’t post on groups and networks over there as a rule is because I don’t want my full name splashed all over a whole network of complete strangers. Your post brought up some great points about Facebook breaking laws that protect pseudonym use. And I think I might join that Who Is Aubrey from Facebook group to see what’s going on. I’m checking out John’s blog and some of the other links you included in this post, great work. Worth bookmarking.
Ann O'Dyne 11.03.07 at 9:16 am
comiserations.
there are 52 ‘Denny Cranes’ on farcebook.