I'm sorry to hear you don't agree with the Facbeook's policies. I agree with most of what you wrote, including the right to privacy. The Facebook is an advertising channel, and they make money by targeting ads. So, it's not surprising they want to know more about you. Solution: Don't use the Facebook.
I don't know. It feels like she's about as interested in suffering publicly for the cameras as she is in fixing the problem. If she really just wants her Facebook profile closed (as she says), that can probably be done with back-channel methods: no need for crying at all.
I don't think Facebook's failure to 100% accommodate all of the OP's demands is really a story. I'm sure Facebook has many problems, but this story is more about the author's problems than Facebook's.
I'm sorry she had a bad experience (and if the situation was triggered by something she posted that's horrible), but from a security point of view, if the automatic security questions can't be answered and you can't provide an "official government ID", the only way that you should be able to get access back to your account is "from a favor from someone on the inside that knows that you are you".
If there's any way that she can just say she's herself and skip the security procedures on a regular basis, then they aren't security and anyone else can just do the same thing to skip the procedures, so they might as well not even have them.
also: "de-anonymizing refugees usually precedes murder on a grand scale" - that's an aggressively outrageous claim. "Bad things happen in the world" does not mean "if we ignore the world, nothing bad can happen". And I can't even argue with someone who disagrees.
EDIT: to people down-voting, how is her claim at all reasonable? there are lots of refugees that have been murdered in nameless graves. if anything, the whole "say her name" would suggest that people on facebook would be less likely to be murdered by a dictatorial state. but apparently since she doesn't want to be nice to facebook, they are literally acting as a conspirator to mass murder.
She's not saying that Facebook shouldn't have security procedures. She's saying that Facebook's security procedures aren't designed properly and that they don't work for her. Plenty of identity providers (she cites Apple's policies in particular) have more reasonable ways of recovering your account.
I suggest that the measures are largely security theatre to begin with. Consider the attached accounts of determined identity thieves (1,2). Facebook needs to inconvenience children, but also needs to acknowledge its own theatre in serious situations. Consider that many of the mechanisms that government issued ID use to prevent forgery are impossible to verify unless you're in physical possession of the ID.
It also needs to provide a mechanism by which it does not gain and store additional information during the process of someone trying to opt out of their privacy free zone.
The security questions might be done wrong, I'm more saying that "a real person on the inside who can personally verify your identity" is in fact a key part of the security process.
Doesn't FB see itself against email and would prefer to be the replacement? FB doesn't even allow reporting security issues without signing up. I found a rather strong phishing attempt going on and had no way to report it. Oh well.
They might also have data that shows people often get email compromised at the same time. Or that picking out faces works better (faster recovery?)
I'd like to see a wiki documenting the harm that comes from Facebook, sort of like how https://reddit.com/r/gunsarecool documents mass shootings.
Violet Blue is lucky because she has a platform and her problems will get notice. Everyone else just deals with their life quietly, and we the public don't get a good grasp of the problem.
Nah, it's beneficial for people to publicly complain about things like this. So long the claims are true or reasonable it's good to pressure companies into changing bad policies.
Only thing I'd question is that she's had to "bury" a lot of people due to FB and that there's such a dangerous threat to her safety from this. It could be true (especially in years past or in shitty countries) just seems extraordinary and should have citations. I'd be surprised if FB tricked users into revealing personal information, got them killed, and wasn't sued like crazy.
I respect her (disclaimer: I know her IRL from conferences and stuff) for not doing the "hey, I know a Facebook employee" solution; that is almost always my first response to problems with services, but doesn't scale, and doesn't help the actually vulnerable people who don't know people.
I stopped using Facebook a few years ago (don't remember when), because something trivial about the site annoyed me (don't remember what).
The author seems to have written many accounts of what a terrible company Facebook is, how LGBT people are treated appallingly by them, how they're starting in on refugees and how they're ruining privacy for everyone. And then jumped through every possible hoop in order to keep using their website!
a lot of people are gullible, naive, insufficiently informed, etc... This is why along with basic "buyer beware" policy most developed societies have strong consumer protection laws in place too. Facebook is just preying on such people as there are no laws to protect them from it.
> And then jumped through every possible hoop in order to keep using their website!
I don't think you read the entire article. Her goal at this point is to delete her account[1], which she cannot do until she regains control of the account. She's at a stalemate right now.
[1]"But now I just want out. I want my account deleted. I want the bullshit, inaccurate pages Facebook creates about me without my consent gone, too, but that’s just a bitter little joke for the ages, isn’t it? Facebook is just going to do whatever the fuck it wants to me. And to you."
I did read the whole thing. Her goal now is to get the account deleted. She was trying to keep using the site before they asked for an official ID.
"Facebook is just going to do whatever the fuck it wants to me. And to you."
Perhaps, I don't know what Facebook is doing to me. I didn't delete my account, I just stopped using it. It fact, I still get emails from them that are redirected to a 'facebook' folder that I haven't checked in a while.
I'll check now. Hmm 1,558 unread messages...ok...
Oh well, if it was important, they would have phoned or emailed or something :)
I tried reading the entire article, I really did. But it kept jumping around and losing focus from one thing to another that she was upset about.
Eventually I figured out the answer to the question I came here for. It turns out that the reason the author is sitting at home crying on a Saturday night is because he/she/it is an emotionally unstable wreck who can't deal with life's minor inconveniences and enjoys creating drama where none exists.
If you get locked out of your account and refuse (out of paranoia) to prove your identity to get back into it... well, there's not much that they can do for you. Don't like it? Don't use facebook.
Facebook's mistreatment of LGBT folks is a real, documented thing that has existed for many years, and one of their pain points for that group is forcing a person to provide government ID and a "real name", which can then be used to ban the account for "misrepresenting" their sexual orientation as well as expose them to harassment from hate groups. The author is an outspoken advocate for LGBT rights, so I can see where she is coming from with this.
> It turns out that the reason the author is sitting at home crying on a Saturday night is because he/she/it is an emotionally unstable wreck...
"he/she/it", really? The author clearly identifies as female, and you just outed your own bias against the very class of people she is fighting for.
What's hilarious to me is this is one of the times, linguistically speaking, where you have an "easy out". The author could have used "they" without it being insulting since it's valid mostly normal English.
I'm not a otherwise biased person here. I seriously can't understand why anyone feels the need to make make life harder for someone over a petty thing.
Except when language matters. I often feel something I've started calling "pronoun paralysis" and it's not because I'm talking to someone that doesn't care about this and I'm attempting to "inject" bias into the conversation by awkwardly referring to a male to female post op female who identifies as female as anything other than "she". It's the opposite, when I want to talk in detail with someone about this topic who does care, or who is a member of the LGBT community, it's time to put on the linguistic bomb disposal suit and waddle my way awkwardly through a conversation like I'm recreating a scene from The Hurt Locker. Can we all just be more accepting of the use of they/them/theirs and end this mess? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they
See also Facebook's weird standards around photos of women breast feeding their babies (strictly banned for years) and terrorists beheading captured people (fine by Facebook).
That's something that has always struck me as upside-down. A sane society sees sex (and to be clear, I don't consider breast feeding at all sexual, it's Facebook making that connection) as healthy and positive, and violence as unhealthy and negative. Yet here is Facebook having zero issues with public beheadings of all things, while blocking something that isn't even sexual in nature on the grounds of public decency? It's maddening.
Copy-pasting what I said below, it applies to you more than anybody else:
Quick reality check for a moment: for some people, "using facebook" is not a choice. I mean, it is ultimately a choice, just like wearing clean clothes is a choice or paying your rent is a choice. For some people, Facebook is the only channel of communication with some people they don't want to be separated from. For some, it's how they manage their social life, or there is some form of social pressure to use it and they're not in a position to say no easily.
And I'm sure if I don't add this little disclaimer, some pompous jerk will come correct me, tell me everything about how they were pressured to use Facebook but chose not to: Yes, you can do it, everybody can do it, but you're not in a position to tell other people how to live their lives when you are the person who knows the least about their lives. And funny that, THIS is the exact same problem GP quoted.
Facebook has a lot of power and that power is not being used responsibly. Defending that is appalling.
I agree the article isn't great, but I downvoted and flagged for the "it" slur. There's no need to talk like this. And the FB issue really goes far beyond trans or lbtq or any such personal characteristic. The privacy concerns run deep and should be troubling to everyone.
I too can't help but mentally shout "Stop using Facebook!!" after reading every paragraph.
But obviously Violet finds it more beneficial to use rather than not. I know she has long had a web presence, so it's not that she's lazy (although this post is on tumblr? sigh...). Presumably being a writer/blogger/etc, there is a huge audience of people who will "follow" her since it's already in their "workflow", yet won't expend the effort to check a proper blog or learn about RSS.
But what she needs to do instead of crying, or perhaps after crying, is to get angry. Productively angry. This is the state of established webcrapps in 2015. This has been the inevitable result ever since "web 2.0" became a thing. This is why concerned hackers have been telling people to avoid webcrapps the whole time. Of course, many others sold their morals in lieu of money and social acceptance - it's so easy to use, even your parents can opt in to extra surveillance!
The tide is starting to turn as more and more people realize what they're actually giving up by living under the yoke of proprietary software 2.0. And it is going to take people who are "in it" to reverse the trend. Assuming she is willing to start putting in more effort, how exactly can she replace all these "convenient" sharecropper "apps" she's gotten used to with self-administered technology that preserves her autonomy - while still engaging the lazy people who haven't learned how to use a personal computer, and even encouraging them to make the jump to the free world?
One possible solution that comes to mind is publishing authoritatively on one's own platform, then syndicating to facebook/tumblr/whatever. Perhaps delayed by hours/days so that it's clear that the walled gardens are second class citizens. Make Facebook want your content more than you need them - similar to how unknown AOL keywords just redirected to .com.
For text this actually seems pretty straightforward. Other types of media (mobile pictures etc) are going to be harder because thorough development and advertising take money, and investors (especially VC) obviously aren't looking to fund anything that isn't a trap ready to be monetized. But that is what freedom costs - the alternative is to continue to abdicate your autonomy one polished UI hipster crapp at a time.
People accept friends requests on Facebook and social media sites from people they don't know all the time. Some seem to treat it like a game - how many friends they can collect. Others because of peer pressure or not wanting to miss out on work related opportunities and a whole host of other reasons.
Social media relationships are not equivalent as your offline friends, relatives and acquaintances.
Thanks for being mature enough to actually answer my question, as opposed to those who just downvoted.
I can honestly say I wasn't aware of that mode of usage. It seems alittle counterproductive, though I suppose you can always depend on Facebooks feed ranking to not show you posts from all the randos.
In July 2008, Blue sought restraining orders against online critics David Burch (aka Ben Burch) and Nina Alter to prohibit them from e-mailing her, editing her Wikipedia page, or writing unkindly about her online.
Mirimir might like a Facebook account, but then he doesn't have a phone or government ID. So he's just shit outta luck. He could maybe get some usable fake ID. But Facebook isn't so easy to trick with online mobile numbers.
But then, who needs Facebook?
Edit: I'm agreeing with the author that Facebook can't be trusted to keep disclosed information private. My point here is that the only reliable strategy is to avoid providing true identity. And Facebook makes that virtually impossible.
"This is reality. This is not theory. This is not assertions on Hacker News about how you must have something to hide if you want to keep something private. This is not about a man in a position of power and influence, who has industry privilege and respect for his wealth and status, at Google or Facebook saying that anonymity, or multiple online identities, demotes a 'lack of credibility’. We don’t care of you believe we’re credible, we just don’t want your willful ignorance to ruin our lives or get us killed. This isn’t about telling us that someone must have been targeting LGBT people that one time – because, wouldn’t you know, you seem to have a new reason every year. This isn’t about how many people were in your company’s Pride contingent, and it damn well isn’t about jerking around a group of drag queens – who cope with the suffering done by outing every day, and for fuck’s sake we’ve buried too many people we love – for one of your little press appeasement moments. This isn’t about YOUR beliefs, or what you think is best for us. This is about you making us live in fear. This is about the fact that you have had a chance to make it right repeatedly, and when faced with one kid saying no please don’t publish my birth name – you looked away, again. https://www.facebook.com/help/community/question/?id=1020470... "
I normally avoid tumblr like the plague, but I chose to read this post. I encourage anyone who reads this to view the full post to get complete context.
I thought it was raising some good points about Facebook's poor UX for account recovery.. until I got to this paragraph. I feel that while there may be many valid points to this article it is shrouded in certain biases and stigmas that dilute the overall positive message it was trying to make in the first place.
That link is strange. Person is using Facebook. They then voluntarily send Facebook their birth certificate and are bewildered and upset that Facebook used that info and corrected (read: edited) their profile? I really dislike Facebook but come on, you signed up for this. If you don't like Facebook's policies (and you shouldn't), then don't use it. What gives anyone the right to use someone else's service, then dictate how that service should work?
And even supposing we create some new privacy law, how would that even work? The right to identify with any name? That can't be signed away at all?
You're either unintentionally or deliberately making the extremely offensive implication that Facebook knows better than their user about what identity they want to show to the world. Facebook has no business "correcting" any field of a user's profile based on a birth certificate. They have no business asking for a birth certificate. And they wonder why people refuse to send them "government ID" when that's what they do with it.
Without even the slightest bit of hyperbole: this kind of screwing around with people can and does ruin lives.
I didn't mean to imply that and I've changed my comment to reflect edited.
I agree with you. Facebook should fuck off. Yet this is ultimately a big part of their platform, collecting data on users. This isn't much of a secret.
If your ID puts lives at risk, why send the original version to a third party with a reputation for being against privacy? If for whatever reason you decide you must deal with them, at least submit fake docs.
The birth certificate was not the only form of ID that person sent. Facebook outed the past name of a transgender person -- that's never ok, and it's a problem taken very seriously in the transgender community.
And yes, if you want, you could say that, well, trans people just shouldn't use Facebook, but given the position Facebook occupies in our society in practice, that's quite a statement.
Just as important, in cases like this, the damage has already been done -- potentially quite serious -- be the time the user might choose to abandon Facebook over the problem.
Forcing trans people to provide a bunch of ID to use the site, outing them to the world, and then saying whoops, sorry, but you can quit the site if you don't like it -- that's not ok.
And your basic attitude seems to be that trans people's own fault for being different from most people, so of course they should expect to see problems or to just stay off of common services if they don't like those problems. This attitude is part of the problem -- basic human empathy seems like it would require a more considerate attitude than that.
> Facebook outed the past name of a transgender person -- that's never ok, and it's a problem taken very seriously in the transgender community.
Why is that not okay?
I mean, if people want to change their names for whatever reason then that's fine, but that doesn't mean that everybody is obliged to pretend that your old name never existed.
If I were Hitler, living under an assumed name in Argentina, and somebody outed me as actually being Hitler, would that be okay? (Pick a non-Hitler but still criminal example if you prefer.)
Did GP really have to say "the past name of a non-criminal transgender person" to carry their point?
This is a company we're talking about. And the person in question doesn't seem to be a criminal. The name certainly wasn't outed because that person was a criminal.
I'm shocked by the atrocious quality of the comments in this thread. There's plenty to say about real name policies, yet all that people are coming up with are ridiculous strawmen. Disturbing.
Edit: Scratch that last paragraph, I didn't realize most of the nasty comments in the thread are in fact coming from you. You seem like a very unpleasant person to deal with.
Really? Trans people are criminals or even Hitler now? Ouch, that's pretty cold.
I have a lot of trans friends. Just hearing someone use their deadname (a common term in the community) can cause serious emotional pain. Having it broadcast to all their Facebook friends would absolutely be traumatic.
Look, if you don't like trans people or you think it's unreasonable to do them the "special favor" of calling them by their actual name, it's a free country and you are just as entitled to that point of view as you are to hold racist views.
I'm pretty sure that Facebook, on the other hand, would not consider it a positive to be widely known as transphobic. So if they are operating in a way that is hostile to trans people, the obvious options are for them to fix it or for trans people and trans allies to keep publicizing it until it completely blows up in Facebook's face. They would be smarter to just try to fix the problem.
It's overstepping Facebook's bounds. While legal, it's rather rude and just shows what a shitty service they are: don't trust them with your info.
At best, it's a mismatch between what Facebook thinks it is and what users are led to believe.
Though, in practise, it's doubtful that it's actually company policy to do this. It's most likely the result of crappy support departments, overloaded with tons of requests. (Users are mostly idiots, so most tickets are of poor quality, and it leads to being aggressive in "resolving" tickets, even when the user is fine and in the right.)
No, my attitude isn't anything about trans people.
Facebook is a bad force in society. It's known how anti privacy they are. So you choose to deal with them at your own risk.
I certainly would love for Facebook to be slapped down, somehow: I only desire bad things for that company. They should certainly be forced to change their policies and I enjoy seeing any pressure on them for that reason. And perhaps one day there can be a law somehow, though it probably makes more sense to allow people get to get a birth certificate with their new name as that'd be more general.
Meanwhile, if your ID docs contain such info, then perhaps maybe don't share them, maybe? Or just Photoshop your birth cert? I don't know anyone that'd give up their ID to Facebook in the first place, let alone if it was high-risk.
Ok, prefacing this: I don't use facebook, I dislike the website, I dislike the social implications of the website and I dislike the internal policies of the company in shit like asking people for ID.
BUT, quick reality check for a moment: for some people, "using facebook" is not a choice. I mean, it is ultimately a choice, just like wearing clean clothes is a choice or paying your rent is a choice. For some people, Facebook is the only channel of communication with some people they don't want to be separated from. For some, it's how they manage their social life, or there is some form of social pressure to use it and they're not in a position to say no easily.
And I'm sure if I don't add this little disclaimer, some pompous jerk will come correct me, tell me everything about how they were pressured to use Facebook but chose not to: Yes, you can do it, everybody can do it, but you're not in a position to tell other people how to live their lives when you are the person who knows the least about their lives. And funny that, THIS is the exact same problem GP quoted.
Facebook has a lot of power and that power is not being used responsibly. Defending that is appalling.
PS: This is not directed specifically to your post as I'm seeing this attitude in the entire thread. There's bubbles to pop here: Not everybody can just stop using facebook.
It's a very odd style of communication - extremely passive aggressive coupled with feigned incredulity.
Has anybody on HN ever brought up Eric Schmidt's quote to do anything other than bash it? Like "hey this guy is a real thought leader, we should listen to him."
I've no idea why she's put up with FB for long. I've none of the issues she has with Facebook, I just hate it on privacy reasons. So... I don't use it.
But if she's gotta use it just submit fake ID. Scan your license or passport, and edit information. This works fine and there is nothing wrong with it.
Complaining about their security policies... Eh I'm gonna guess that FB engineers probably want to protect user accounts as that's in their interest. It doesn't help them to lock users out for no reason. FB is a private company, and, as much as I dislike them, they can do whatever they want, including requiring ID to login.
Though, I'd imagine you could file a lawsuit to force them to delete your info, if they refuse to do so without ID. But that'd probably leak your ID in the process.
It's not public as in a utility or other government run or specially regulated utility or something. Their management and decisions regarding most of their features are private.
I don't think it changes the point of my comment at all.
I thought the obvious problems with forcing the issue with real names online was well known at this point, and that pseudonymous participation was generally accepted.
Is this really an accurate interpretation of FB policy?
friends and i have successfully evaded facebook's idiotic (read: trans-exclusionary) "real" name policy by photoshopping the text of legal documents on a few occasions. a laborious option! but worth considering.
In my most recent review of random ID-generating tools (all I wanted were plausible and random names and details), I found that many will now "generate" documents -- state drivers licenses, passports, etc. -- which could presumably be submitted.
Mind: that likely puts you solidly into fraud category.
Well, in this case, Facebook indirectly gave Violet Blue a lot of new media exposure? I had no clue to her existence until now.
I don't like Facebook, but in this case, I'm glad FB didn't cave in and give Violet Blue her account back--just because 'She has a friend at FB'. I don't like inside special favors.
1. Violet Blue has been a reasonably widely published journalist for many years now. Her bylines include CNet and the SF Chronicle, and she's written or edited a couple of dozen books. She writes both about sexuality and technology, and sometimes about the ways in which they overlap.
2. Your reading comprehension has failed you. Several different people at Facebook offered to do her inside special favors and she chose to decline that because she doesn't like that kind of thing either.
> Facebook’s account security is apparently based on its users knowing what every one of of its friends looks like (do you?) …
Well yeah. You're supposed to be able to recognise your friends in that test if it's really your account. I don't see what is the problem? I've passed these tests several time, you are presented with 6 different pictures for each friend (so it's hard to fail) and you can re-pass the test several times with different friends if you fail the first times.
I stopped reading after that. Why would I read about someone ranting about her fake facebook account being locked?
To be fair it went on several tangents. I find it an interesting phenomenon that posters here who show support for the author/article gloss over the 80% that is a tangent about LGBT issues, migrant issues, sexism issues, and act as if this is a serious article and not just another tumblr rant.. I mean look at the title for crying out loud. I think I'm going to drop in a <insert social justice issue here> to all my posts so I get more upvotes and less criticism from now on.
It works well for the way a lot of people use facebook, and very poorly for the way some people use facebook. There's a baked in assumption that you only "friend" people who you can identify from their photos.
(This one isn't a fake account, it's a "professional" account, so she's "friends" with a lot of people that she only emails for work purposes and has never met)
For a hilarious example of how this can fail, a guy I used to work with has a facebook account for his pet bird. It is friends with the pet birds of lots of other people. I was present on the occasion when he forgot the password to this account, and spent quite some time trying to guess the names of birds from their photos.
Facebook has a fallback authentication mechanism of showing them some government-issued ID (which could have worked for Violet Blue, and not for my colleague's bird).
> This one isn't a fake account, it's a "professional" account, so she's "friends" with a lot of people that she only emails for work purposes and has never met
In fairness, I don't think this is a model that Facebook can easily cater to, given that the express purpose of their site is to map relationships between groups of people what know each other in real life, and to use that information to show them ads. Not saying that I approve of that, but it'll be pretty hard for them to differentiate between a fake account trying to scam people, and this person who can't identify her Facebook friends.
LinkedIn, or better still, actual email would be far more appropriate for such work related purposes and also not fall into the "real name" crap policy.
> In fairness, I don't think this is a model that Facebook can easily cater to
It's not a model they're asked to cater to, it's a model they break with a poorly-thought-out verification mechanism.
It's NOT ABSURD to be friends with people whose face you don't know. And I know a lot of people with HUNDREDS if not thousands of friends on facebook, most whose names they certainly do not remember.
There's friends, and there's "Facebook friends". In reality people have thousands of different relations between people, and nuances to those relationships. Facebook has two-you're either "Friends", or "not Friends". Needless to say, this is a tremendously leaky abstraction. Thus, don't assume that because two people are Facebook friends, that their relationship in any way resemble friendship.
The words we use to describe our relationships are important, and the fact that Facebook flattens them all down to two is a significant issue. Especially when we have people who don't understand that, and seem confused why people are "Facebook friends", but not actually friends.
> it's because you know them
Sure, but that doesn't mean I know what they look like.
Why doesn't Facebook use the social graph to verify identity? Have the user contact their Facebook friends and let those friends vouch for them. Weighing friends by length of friendship, frequency of interaction, etc. so that you cannot verify your account using sockpuppets.
I'm sitting on my couch shaking my head because I fell for the bait and wasted five minutes of my life reading a few paragraphs of attention seeking nonsense.
Know what would help this person with whatever problem that they are having? Getting to the point.
Whether you sympathize with her plight or think she's ridiculous, one important issue remains for all Facebook users. Even if you quit using Facebook, there's no assurance that Facebook will stop collecting data on you, and there's no assurance that Facebook will purge data pertaining to you from their database and website. In fact, it appears that your absence does nothing to curtail their data collection, nor their fictional representation of you. That is extremely problematic. Ideally ending one's account would end the data collection and the data profile. Failing that, at a minimum, one's personal data should no longer be displayed. Unfortunately Facebook's "security" policy seems indifferent to the real-life well-being and personal security of their current and former users.
Having a profile you can "claim" is a feature, just look at IMDB actor profiles if you want a more understandable example that's not reliant on Facebook's creepy surveillance. It's not creepy to Facebook that they gather the info ergo they see no reason to not create the absentee profile since to them the profile is "look we've already done all this work for you" type bait for the few remaining internet users not on Facebook.
The entirety of your assertion is specious, but there's little value in debating it. The simple fact is that when a user closes their account, they should, at a minimum, be offered the ability to hide their profile from display. Ideally, they would be offered the ability to delete the entirety of their profile data. Facebook, as a company, is effectively stalking every man, woman, and child on the face of this planet. That is not a feature, no matter how much twisted double-speak you employ to justify their actions.
I understand this is far from the point of this piece but interesting bit anyway I think.. I don't agree with some of what she says (I've gone through this account recovery process without issue since it's been in place for quite a while--I deleted my account 2 or 3 years ago).
Twitter I expect to be a place where I am following strangers. Facebook on the other hand.. I am very much surprised to see that she could not identify people that she has 'friended' (the 'all black people look alike' Facebook bug aside). Why click 'friend' if you don't actually know the person?
Again, I understand that is not the whole point of the article but it is worth mentioning that Facebook has been pulling this stuff for years and for her to get ticked off about this stuff now seems a bit ridiculous.
Why click 'friend' if you don't actually know the person?
Perhaps someone is a relative in another country? Someone who you've never seen in person, or maybe you met for a few minutes, 30 years ago.
That's the situation with me. I created a Facebook account years ago but never used it. I recently logged in again to contact a particular individual. I had 13 friend requests pending. Which I accepted, even though I didn't "know" the people.
Those people were my cousins in another country, and their spouses, and their children, etc. Other members of my extended family interact with them, even though I don't.
So should I refuse their friend requests? No. Facebook is for more than friends that you can identify. It's a way to keep in (loose?) contact with distant relatives.
I'm sure there are plenty of other reasons why people "friend" people they don't "actually know". The real world isn't as simple as you suggest.
Despite all the best will in the world on the behalf of the developers and users of Diaspora and other platforms designed to replace Facebook, there is no alternative to Facebook until everyone moves there.
"The alternative" is almost certain not to be an alternative Web-based service, but a set of protocols allowing for interactions between independent and independently hosted systems.
Diaspora was a valient effort, but sadly, appears quite doomed (I was an early fan and user).
From everything I've seen/read during the security research phase for my project, trusting in the computational/security integrity of endless P2P nodes is not a road I want to go down.
There really is nothing _a priori_ wrong with the centralized system, PROVIDED said system/operator makes strong Privacy / Data Sovereignity guarantees from the word go.
Fair point. It's not necesarily the case that you'd see extensively P2P nodes. But again, a distributed protocol based system would allow for local supernodes, competently administered, to exist.
There's also the issue that client nodes, under any model, also require security updates and practices. The universal P2P model really isn't far from that, and certain auto-updating models seem arguably preferable to present offerings.
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[ 305 ms ] story [ 2718 ms ] threadI don't think Facebook's failure to 100% accommodate all of the OP's demands is really a story. I'm sure Facebook has many problems, but this story is more about the author's problems than Facebook's.
If there's any way that she can just say she's herself and skip the security procedures on a regular basis, then they aren't security and anyone else can just do the same thing to skip the procedures, so they might as well not even have them.
EDIT: to people down-voting, how is her claim at all reasonable? there are lots of refugees that have been murdered in nameless graves. if anything, the whole "say her name" would suggest that people on facebook would be less likely to be murdered by a dictatorial state. but apparently since she doesn't want to be nice to facebook, they are literally acting as a conspirator to mass murder.
Well, your friends could vet for you too.
It also needs to provide a mechanism by which it does not gain and store additional information during the process of someone trying to opt out of their privacy free zone.
1 - http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-07-15/an-identit... 2 - http://resources.infosecinstitute.com/confessions-of-an-iden...
I have the 2SV thing set on my account, so haven't seen the ID challenge in a long time.
They might also have data that shows people often get email compromised at the same time. Or that picking out faces works better (faster recovery?)
Violet Blue is lucky because she has a platform and her problems will get notice. Everyone else just deals with their life quietly, and we the public don't get a good grasp of the problem.
And it works out great for most of us.
Want to deal with facebook? Use facebook. Don't want to deal with facebook? Don't use facebook. Not that tricky.
Only thing I'd question is that she's had to "bury" a lot of people due to FB and that there's such a dangerous threat to her safety from this. It could be true (especially in years past or in shitty countries) just seems extraordinary and should have citations. I'd be surprised if FB tricked users into revealing personal information, got them killed, and wasn't sued like crazy.
I stopped using Facebook a few years ago (don't remember when), because something trivial about the site annoyed me (don't remember what).
The author seems to have written many accounts of what a terrible company Facebook is, how LGBT people are treated appallingly by them, how they're starting in on refugees and how they're ruining privacy for everyone. And then jumped through every possible hoop in order to keep using their website!
Is she just confused about how boycotts work?
I say if you hate a website just don't use it. It's really simple.
I don't think you read the entire article. Her goal at this point is to delete her account[1], which she cannot do until she regains control of the account. She's at a stalemate right now.
[1]"But now I just want out. I want my account deleted. I want the bullshit, inaccurate pages Facebook creates about me without my consent gone, too, but that’s just a bitter little joke for the ages, isn’t it? Facebook is just going to do whatever the fuck it wants to me. And to you."
"Facebook is just going to do whatever the fuck it wants to me. And to you."
Perhaps, I don't know what Facebook is doing to me. I didn't delete my account, I just stopped using it. It fact, I still get emails from them that are redirected to a 'facebook' folder that I haven't checked in a while.
I'll check now. Hmm 1,558 unread messages...ok...
Oh well, if it was important, they would have phoned or emailed or something :)
Eventually I figured out the answer to the question I came here for. It turns out that the reason the author is sitting at home crying on a Saturday night is because he/she/it is an emotionally unstable wreck who can't deal with life's minor inconveniences and enjoys creating drama where none exists.
If you get locked out of your account and refuse (out of paranoia) to prove your identity to get back into it... well, there's not much that they can do for you. Don't like it? Don't use facebook.
> It turns out that the reason the author is sitting at home crying on a Saturday night is because he/she/it is an emotionally unstable wreck...
"he/she/it", really? The author clearly identifies as female, and you just outed your own bias against the very class of people she is fighting for.
I'm not a otherwise biased person here. I seriously can't understand why anyone feels the need to make make life harder for someone over a petty thing.
Except when language matters. I often feel something I've started calling "pronoun paralysis" and it's not because I'm talking to someone that doesn't care about this and I'm attempting to "inject" bias into the conversation by awkwardly referring to a male to female post op female who identifies as female as anything other than "she". It's the opposite, when I want to talk in detail with someone about this topic who does care, or who is a member of the LGBT community, it's time to put on the linguistic bomb disposal suit and waddle my way awkwardly through a conversation like I'm recreating a scene from The Hurt Locker. Can we all just be more accepting of the use of they/them/theirs and end this mess? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they
Copy-pasting what I said below, it applies to you more than anybody else:
Quick reality check for a moment: for some people, "using facebook" is not a choice. I mean, it is ultimately a choice, just like wearing clean clothes is a choice or paying your rent is a choice. For some people, Facebook is the only channel of communication with some people they don't want to be separated from. For some, it's how they manage their social life, or there is some form of social pressure to use it and they're not in a position to say no easily.
And I'm sure if I don't add this little disclaimer, some pompous jerk will come correct me, tell me everything about how they were pressured to use Facebook but chose not to: Yes, you can do it, everybody can do it, but you're not in a position to tell other people how to live their lives when you are the person who knows the least about their lives. And funny that, THIS is the exact same problem GP quoted.
Facebook has a lot of power and that power is not being used responsibly. Defending that is appalling.
> he/she/it
That's very unnecessary. What's wrong with 'she'?
And she didn't jump through every hoop. She didn't upload her ID.
But obviously Violet finds it more beneficial to use rather than not. I know she has long had a web presence, so it's not that she's lazy (although this post is on tumblr? sigh...). Presumably being a writer/blogger/etc, there is a huge audience of people who will "follow" her since it's already in their "workflow", yet won't expend the effort to check a proper blog or learn about RSS.
But what she needs to do instead of crying, or perhaps after crying, is to get angry. Productively angry. This is the state of established webcrapps in 2015. This has been the inevitable result ever since "web 2.0" became a thing. This is why concerned hackers have been telling people to avoid webcrapps the whole time. Of course, many others sold their morals in lieu of money and social acceptance - it's so easy to use, even your parents can opt in to extra surveillance!
The tide is starting to turn as more and more people realize what they're actually giving up by living under the yoke of proprietary software 2.0. And it is going to take people who are "in it" to reverse the trend. Assuming she is willing to start putting in more effort, how exactly can she replace all these "convenient" sharecropper "apps" she's gotten used to with self-administered technology that preserves her autonomy - while still engaging the lazy people who haven't learned how to use a personal computer, and even encouraging them to make the jump to the free world?
One possible solution that comes to mind is publishing authoritatively on one's own platform, then syndicating to facebook/tumblr/whatever. Perhaps delayed by hours/days so that it's clear that the walled gardens are second class citizens. Make Facebook want your content more than you need them - similar to how unknown AOL keywords just redirected to .com.
For text this actually seems pretty straightforward. Other types of media (mobile pictures etc) are going to be harder because thorough development and advertising take money, and investors (especially VC) obviously aren't looking to fund anything that isn't a trap ready to be monetized. But that is what freedom costs - the alternative is to continue to abdicate your autonomy one polished UI hipster crapp at a time.
This isn't central to the post or anything, but uh, is this really that uncommon...?
Social media relationships are not equivalent as your offline friends, relatives and acquaintances.
I can honestly say I wasn't aware of that mode of usage. It seems alittle counterproductive, though I suppose you can always depend on Facebooks feed ranking to not show you posts from all the randos.
In July 2008, Blue sought restraining orders against online critics David Burch (aka Ben Burch) and Nina Alter to prohibit them from e-mailing her, editing her Wikipedia page, or writing unkindly about her online.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violet_Blue
Mirimir might like a Facebook account, but then he doesn't have a phone or government ID. So he's just shit outta luck. He could maybe get some usable fake ID. But Facebook isn't so easy to trick with online mobile numbers.
But then, who needs Facebook?
Edit: I'm agreeing with the author that Facebook can't be trusted to keep disclosed information private. My point here is that the only reliable strategy is to avoid providing true identity. And Facebook makes that virtually impossible.
I normally avoid tumblr like the plague, but I chose to read this post. I encourage anyone who reads this to view the full post to get complete context.
I thought it was raising some good points about Facebook's poor UX for account recovery.. until I got to this paragraph. I feel that while there may be many valid points to this article it is shrouded in certain biases and stigmas that dilute the overall positive message it was trying to make in the first place.
And even supposing we create some new privacy law, how would that even work? The right to identify with any name? That can't be signed away at all?
You're either unintentionally or deliberately making the extremely offensive implication that Facebook knows better than their user about what identity they want to show to the world. Facebook has no business "correcting" any field of a user's profile based on a birth certificate. They have no business asking for a birth certificate. And they wonder why people refuse to send them "government ID" when that's what they do with it.
Without even the slightest bit of hyperbole: this kind of screwing around with people can and does ruin lives.
I agree with you. Facebook should fuck off. Yet this is ultimately a big part of their platform, collecting data on users. This isn't much of a secret.
If your ID puts lives at risk, why send the original version to a third party with a reputation for being against privacy? If for whatever reason you decide you must deal with them, at least submit fake docs.
And yes, if you want, you could say that, well, trans people just shouldn't use Facebook, but given the position Facebook occupies in our society in practice, that's quite a statement.
Just as important, in cases like this, the damage has already been done -- potentially quite serious -- be the time the user might choose to abandon Facebook over the problem.
Forcing trans people to provide a bunch of ID to use the site, outing them to the world, and then saying whoops, sorry, but you can quit the site if you don't like it -- that's not ok.
And your basic attitude seems to be that trans people's own fault for being different from most people, so of course they should expect to see problems or to just stay off of common services if they don't like those problems. This attitude is part of the problem -- basic human empathy seems like it would require a more considerate attitude than that.
Why is that not okay?
I mean, if people want to change their names for whatever reason then that's fine, but that doesn't mean that everybody is obliged to pretend that your old name never existed.
If I were Hitler, living under an assumed name in Argentina, and somebody outed me as actually being Hitler, would that be okay? (Pick a non-Hitler but still criminal example if you prefer.)
This is a company we're talking about. And the person in question doesn't seem to be a criminal. The name certainly wasn't outed because that person was a criminal.
I'm shocked by the atrocious quality of the comments in this thread. There's plenty to say about real name policies, yet all that people are coming up with are ridiculous strawmen. Disturbing.
Edit: Scratch that last paragraph, I didn't realize most of the nasty comments in the thread are in fact coming from you. You seem like a very unpleasant person to deal with.
I have a lot of trans friends. Just hearing someone use their deadname (a common term in the community) can cause serious emotional pain. Having it broadcast to all their Facebook friends would absolutely be traumatic.
Look, if you don't like trans people or you think it's unreasonable to do them the "special favor" of calling them by their actual name, it's a free country and you are just as entitled to that point of view as you are to hold racist views.
I'm pretty sure that Facebook, on the other hand, would not consider it a positive to be widely known as transphobic. So if they are operating in a way that is hostile to trans people, the obvious options are for them to fix it or for trans people and trans allies to keep publicizing it until it completely blows up in Facebook's face. They would be smarter to just try to fix the problem.
At best, it's a mismatch between what Facebook thinks it is and what users are led to believe.
Though, in practise, it's doubtful that it's actually company policy to do this. It's most likely the result of crappy support departments, overloaded with tons of requests. (Users are mostly idiots, so most tickets are of poor quality, and it leads to being aggressive in "resolving" tickets, even when the user is fine and in the right.)
Facebook is a bad force in society. It's known how anti privacy they are. So you choose to deal with them at your own risk.
I certainly would love for Facebook to be slapped down, somehow: I only desire bad things for that company. They should certainly be forced to change their policies and I enjoy seeing any pressure on them for that reason. And perhaps one day there can be a law somehow, though it probably makes more sense to allow people get to get a birth certificate with their new name as that'd be more general.
Meanwhile, if your ID docs contain such info, then perhaps maybe don't share them, maybe? Or just Photoshop your birth cert? I don't know anyone that'd give up their ID to Facebook in the first place, let alone if it was high-risk.
BUT, quick reality check for a moment: for some people, "using facebook" is not a choice. I mean, it is ultimately a choice, just like wearing clean clothes is a choice or paying your rent is a choice. For some people, Facebook is the only channel of communication with some people they don't want to be separated from. For some, it's how they manage their social life, or there is some form of social pressure to use it and they're not in a position to say no easily.
And I'm sure if I don't add this little disclaimer, some pompous jerk will come correct me, tell me everything about how they were pressured to use Facebook but chose not to: Yes, you can do it, everybody can do it, but you're not in a position to tell other people how to live their lives when you are the person who knows the least about their lives. And funny that, THIS is the exact same problem GP quoted.
Facebook has a lot of power and that power is not being used responsibly. Defending that is appalling.
PS: This is not directed specifically to your post as I'm seeing this attitude in the entire thread. There's bubbles to pop here: Not everybody can just stop using facebook.
Has anybody on HN ever brought up Eric Schmidt's quote to do anything other than bash it? Like "hey this guy is a real thought leader, we should listen to him."
But if she's gotta use it just submit fake ID. Scan your license or passport, and edit information. This works fine and there is nothing wrong with it.
Complaining about their security policies... Eh I'm gonna guess that FB engineers probably want to protect user accounts as that's in their interest. It doesn't help them to lock users out for no reason. FB is a private company, and, as much as I dislike them, they can do whatever they want, including requiring ID to login.
Though, I'd imagine you could file a lawsuit to force them to delete your info, if they refuse to do so without ID. But that'd probably leak your ID in the process.
Facebook is a public company. I'm surprised anyone reading HN would have missed their rather high profile IPO.
A "public company" or "publicly traded company" is a company traded on the stock exchange.
A "state company", or "publicly owned company", or "public sector company" is a company owned by a government and not traded at all.
The terms here are a regrettable accident of history, which often confuses people.
I don't think it changes the point of my comment at all.
Is this really an accurate interpretation of FB policy?
Mind: that likely puts you solidly into fraud category.
I don't like Facebook, but in this case, I'm glad FB didn't cave in and give Violet Blue her account back--just because 'She has a friend at FB'. I don't like inside special favors.
2. Your reading comprehension has failed you. Several different people at Facebook offered to do her inside special favors and she chose to decline that because she doesn't like that kind of thing either.
Well yeah. You're supposed to be able to recognise your friends in that test if it's really your account. I don't see what is the problem? I've passed these tests several time, you are presented with 6 different pictures for each friend (so it's hard to fail) and you can re-pass the test several times with different friends if you fail the first times.
I stopped reading after that. Why would I read about someone ranting about her fake facebook account being locked?
(This one isn't a fake account, it's a "professional" account, so she's "friends" with a lot of people that she only emails for work purposes and has never met)
For a hilarious example of how this can fail, a guy I used to work with has a facebook account for his pet bird. It is friends with the pet birds of lots of other people. I was present on the occasion when he forgot the password to this account, and spent quite some time trying to guess the names of birds from their photos.
Facebook has a fallback authentication mechanism of showing them some government-issued ID (which could have worked for Violet Blue, and not for my colleague's bird).
In fairness, I don't think this is a model that Facebook can easily cater to, given that the express purpose of their site is to map relationships between groups of people what know each other in real life, and to use that information to show them ads. Not saying that I approve of that, but it'll be pretty hard for them to differentiate between a fake account trying to scam people, and this person who can't identify her Facebook friends.
LinkedIn, or better still, actual email would be far more appropriate for such work related purposes and also not fall into the "real name" crap policy.
It's not a model they're asked to cater to, it's a model they break with a poorly-thought-out verification mechanism.
It's NOT ABSURD to be friends with people whose face you don't know. And I know a lot of people with HUNDREDS if not thousands of friends on facebook, most whose names they certainly do not remember.
The words we use to describe our relationships are important, and the fact that Facebook flattens them all down to two is a significant issue. Especially when we have people who don't understand that, and seem confused why people are "Facebook friends", but not actually friends.
> it's because you know them
Sure, but that doesn't mean I know what they look like.
It just doesn't seem very clever to me to rant about using facebook in a way it was not intended to be used.
Know what would help this person with whatever problem that they are having? Getting to the point.
Twitter I expect to be a place where I am following strangers. Facebook on the other hand.. I am very much surprised to see that she could not identify people that she has 'friended' (the 'all black people look alike' Facebook bug aside). Why click 'friend' if you don't actually know the person?
Again, I understand that is not the whole point of the article but it is worth mentioning that Facebook has been pulling this stuff for years and for her to get ticked off about this stuff now seems a bit ridiculous.
Perhaps someone is a relative in another country? Someone who you've never seen in person, or maybe you met for a few minutes, 30 years ago.
That's the situation with me. I created a Facebook account years ago but never used it. I recently logged in again to contact a particular individual. I had 13 friend requests pending. Which I accepted, even though I didn't "know" the people.
Those people were my cousins in another country, and their spouses, and their children, etc. Other members of my extended family interact with them, even though I don't.
So should I refuse their friend requests? No. Facebook is for more than friends that you can identify. It's a way to keep in (loose?) contact with distant relatives.
I'm sure there are plenty of other reasons why people "friend" people they don't "actually know". The real world isn't as simple as you suggest.
Diaspora was a valient effort, but sadly, appears quite doomed (I was an early fan and user).
There really is nothing _a priori_ wrong with the centralized system, PROVIDED said system/operator makes strong Privacy / Data Sovereignity guarantees from the word go.
There's also the issue that client nodes, under any model, also require security updates and practices. The universal P2P model really isn't far from that, and certain auto-updating models seem arguably preferable to present offerings.