Submit your ID for SL user name on Facebook

[THEHERO Snowfall]

Hello,

I have been using the name, THEHERO Snowfall, as my user name on Facebook, but now they are asking for my real life identity. Is this happening to anyone else?



 

[Amethyst Jetaime]

Facebook has a policy that only RL people can have a page there that give RL info.  No avatars are allowed.  Many have had there FB page for their avatar deleted I know.  Others that tend to have RL names for their avatar may not, unless they are reported or FB hasn't found them yet.

You can use your RL information to start a business page there though under your SL name to use to promote it.

[KarenMichelle Lane]

Well that's the end of your secret identity. The Facebook management will not let you keep a pseudonym name.

 

 

[Perrie Juran]

There have been a few instances of Facebook targetting and "purging" SL named accounts.

https://community.secondlife.com/t5/General-Discussion-Forum/Facebook-disabling-SL-accounts/td-p/2810778

http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2011/05/facebook-deleting-second-life-avatar-profiles.html

https://www.facebook.com/secondlife/posts/200414546670520

But in general this goes on all the time on Facebook.

[Syo Emerald]

You basically violated facebooks ToS by picking a name that is not yours. You aren't allowed to create user accounts for game characters and such. The only reason you find people with SL user names on their account is luck. Pure, simple luck. Because either facebooks own mechanisms didn't catch them yet or nobody hasn't reported them yet.

[Magnus Brody]

Apparently they were supposed to be relaxing this, certainly I have been known by my SL name for nearly 10 years now and I would absolutely defend, when it comes to my DJing and broadcasting, that it is the name I am known by.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/nov/02/facebook-real-name-policy-protest

[Alwin Alcott]

there is nothing against using your sl name on FB as ALIAS... not as main

[Freya Mokusei]

---

Magnus Brody wrote:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/nov/02/facebook-real-name-policy-protest

"people can confirm their name with many forms of non-legal identification, including things like utility bills, a bank statement, a piece of mail, a library card, a school ID card or a magazine subscription label. The company

does not, however, allow people who are known by a different name online and off- to provide evidence supporting their online persona on Facebook.

"

---

This doesn't apply to online personas (personae?), as outlined in the quote above (form the very article you linked ). Reason being, Facebook exist to make money off of you - and they can't do this against a persona, but they can if it's a pseudonym in real life. If you pay bills under a pseudonym then your information can probably be sold to marketing companies, as you probably have an age, assets or shopping habits associated with that name. Online personas - by and large - can't be guaranteed* to have any of these, and so is not convertable to money in Facebook's eyes.

No monetisation prospects for your identity? Find another social network. Facebook is clear on this.

In my case, I receive mailings under a variety of names in real life (which is legal to do in my country) and so I have the ability to pick from that set of names. Facebook doesn't get my legal name, my persona, nor much of anything else.

* =

If you're unlikely to buy any of the following under the name you give to Facebook, they have every reason and incentive to kill it.

- Insurance

- Magazine subscriptions

- Holidays / Cars / big ticket items

- Debts/Loans

- Online shopping (for real life items or web-hosting services)

- etc...

 

[Darrius Gothly]

Your point about monetisation of the customer base is exactly why I have refrained from opening a Facebook account under my real name AND using my business identity here in SL. Facebook and Mark Zuckerburg have been very clear from the date of inception that their sole and primary purpose is to use their customers for income.

On the face, that goal is precisely what most businesses do .. obtain and retain customers for the purpose of deriving income. However "most businesses" also make their goals and methods fully transparent, displaying in plain sight their methods and mechanisms for deriving that income.

Facebook, and sadly to an ever-growing extent, many other "modern" businesses engage in income derivation practices that are explicitly hidden from their customers and, even worse IMO, place undue or unjust burdens on their customers. Some even go so far as to place their customer's private information and financial viability at risk.

An all too common example of the latter are the rash of "As Seen on TV" companies that resell your name, address, phone number and use of a credit card or debit card to disreputable merchants. I've been subjected to phone calls from people who misrepresent themselves as agents of the orignal merchant, attempting to get me to divulge my full credit card details for the purposes of "verifying my order" when in fact they were only intending to use that info to place bogus or fraudulent charges against it. And that's from just ONE purchase over 3 years ago.

(Yes, I still get phone calls from time to time about it!)

IMO Facebook engages in practices that are, although not exactly the same, have the same "flavor" and moral rectitude. And it is for this very reason I do not open any accounts with them at all. I have been told that I am denying myself many opportunities to attract and obtain new customers. But that loss is more than fully compensated by the lack of exploitation I believe I would suffer just so Mark Zuckerburg can make another few bucks.

[Freya Mokusei]

That's my reading of Facebook's business practices, too.

The additional risk isn't worthwhile. I can already post pictures for free, I can already send messages for free. Facebook adds no value except:-

• Knowing that parts of my body become shameful if posted there.
• Seeing videos and other content ripped from other ecosystems
  .
• Laughing at old memes that the SL (and other online communities) have been scoffing at for decades.
• Seeing ads for payday loans, scams, pills, pay-to-play MMORPGs and other really junky products that don't interest me or any other human-being. It's the sort of ad ecosystem
  .

People in my age/interest-group have been forsaking Facebook for years, it's not done anything to win us back and I doubt it will. Pretending to care about how we choose to identify ourselves (rather than how marketing companies identify us) is not even in the right ballpark. It's still occaisionally good for communicating with older relatives, but my peer-group socialising moved off of FB a long ways back. I don't know that it's been 'growing' for a while, it just doesn't know it's dead yet.

[Nyles Nestler]

Glad to see I'm not alone in my impression of FB.

 

I used to be semi-active but have recently ripped the app from my phone and have been loggin in desktop-style about once a month, just so some of my friends won't think I'm dead.

 

My reasoning falls in line with most of what has been mentioned in the previous posts, and in addition:

 

The one "opt-in" feature that uses your devices microphone to listen to you / your environment, ostensibly to record a few seconds of any music you may be playing on your radio / home sound system, then run it against their database, in order to identify the song so that you can share it without having to explicitly provide the title of the song yourself.

Wow - how did I live all these years without that! I think I'll pass...

 

And....

 

I few months ago, I set up a capturing proxy that sits between my web browser and the internet, then logged into SL.

In the upper left hand corner, right next to the address bar, an icon indicates "This site collects no personal info". But upon logging in, I find that my avatar name and UUID are passed to a domain called "adroll.com"

I know what is commonly collected with cookies and session tokens etc, and understand the whole paradigm but especially in light of the fact that so many people here practically live their life as their avatar, this is getting a bit much.

Note too that if you read the page source, you'll never find the code responsible of that HTTP request, as it's loaded into your bowser via an external JS file from a repository.

I'm sure that's the tip of the iceberg, as a lot of the data passed is encrypted or base64 encoded....

[ScooterinAB]

I use Facebook to coordinate volunteer efforts, keep in touch with family and friends, network with other teachers, and help stay on top of news.

 

But whatever. To each their own.