Sister Roma who spoke today with representatives of Facebook about the real names issue has posted an update on her facebook page.
Since people have been speaking up this story has been mentioned on CNN, NBC and all over the net.
Although many SL avatars have moved to Google+, most of us still prefer to use Facebook because it is just so handy, especially for communities.
If we are forced to create a page, we lose the ability to be in a group, organise and invite to events, etc, etc.
Maybe one day Linden Lab will create a facebook clone just for avatars on the Second Life website.
Till then we are stuck with Google+ or pretend to be real people on Facebook.
Anyway, here is the update from Sister Roma her facebook page;
Facebook refuses to agree that the legal name policy is unfair and discriminatory.
They acknowledged that although Facebook has the legal name policy they do not enforce it.
They acknowledged that the current rash of suspended and deleted profiles have been under attack by users of the Facebook community who report the profiles for using “fake” names. Once a page is flagged it is reviewed by living human beings who police the site all over the world. If they determine that the person is not using their legal name on their page it is suspended for being in violation of the Facebook terms of use agreement.
While we could not get them to budge on the actual policy they did seem more open to considering that there are flaws in the complaint review process.
We met with Susan Gonzales, a public liason, and via skype with Monika, the person in charge of content policy. We also meet with members of the Facebook LGBT alliance. The purpose of this meeting was to establish an open dialogue and that’s what happened. I was very impressed by our team. Everyone spoke very eloquently and intelligently. Our broad community was well represented by David Campos, Steven Heklina Grygelko BeBe Sweetbriar, Tom Temprano, 3, Carmen, Nadia Kayyali, Dottielux Smith, Trisha Fogleman, Matt Cagle, Gabriel Haaland, Lil Miss Hot Mess, Alex U Alex U. Inn. Adam from Scott Wiener‘s office and Mark Snyder from the Transgender Law Center. Thank you all for your passion and dedication.
We left the meeting with an agreement that they would continue to meet with us to further hear our concerns and work together to find a compromise.
Conversations with LGBT employees of Facebook after the meeting left me feeling a little more hopeful. They hinted that this issue has been raised internally and there have been heated debates on both sides of the legal name policy. We definitely have allies working “on the inside.”
Shortly after the meeting Facebook announced that they would reinstate profiles of members of the LGBT community that had recently been targeted, suspended or removed. The statement further goes on to say that Facebook hopes that within 2 weeks time the users will either confirm their real identity, change to their legal names, or move to a fan page. While at first glance this seems like a grand show of support for our community it is actually a completely hollow gesture. Basically they offered to give us our profiles back so that two weeks later they could suspend them, demand we comply to their unfair and discriminatory policy, and if not, take them away again. This is completely unacceptable.
To Facebook this is an issue of broader consequence that could take years to review, rewrite or rescind. We do not have that kind of time. Our communities profiles and identities are disappearing daily. We could be wiped out entirely in a short period of time. If we do not get adequate action from Facebook in a few weeks time I would say that we’re ready to go back to our original idea and hold a protest at their campus. They might be able to wipe us off Facebook but they’ll know we’re still here!
We will not rest until not only drag queens, but everyone, has the right to CHOOSE how they wish to be identified on Facebook.
Stay tuned. This is not over! #MyNameIsRoma
If only Facebook Pages came with more options, it would make everyone happy.
Jo Yardley's Second Life 
One thing we all must remember, FB name policy supports their core business model. They need REAL people so they can sell data to their advertisers. PERIOD. So they have no use for or desire to serve those who they can not properly datamine.
I for one knew that I was targeted. I knew it wasn’t just random. I was watching who got kicked at the same time. There was a pattern. I have my suspects. At times I have wanted to report them. But that is childish behavior.
In RL, I have been stalked and harassed and threatened. I am VERY careful how and where I expose myself now.
The world we play in (Second Life) is full of great people trying to do a good thing and have fun. BUT there are a larger number of evil vindictive people who are out for themselves and will do anything to succeed, even intruding into the real personal lives of others.
For me I can’t understand why SL and LL continue to so closely associate with FB. SL is about building community and social settings. One cannot build a community via a Fan page.
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Yes petrvanbeeck, it’s about money. As Sister Roma describes in her post, Facebook is great at giving out hollow platitudes to sensitivity and empowerment just so they can continue to marginalize and mistreat us.
What I don’t understand is, AVATARS SPEND MONEY! And so, no doubt, does Sister Roma. Assuming Mark Zuckerberg is not actually the NSA’s top agent, then who cares what name is printed on your birth certificate? If “Sister Roma” or “Vanessa Blaylock” or any other identity is Persistent, Profilable, can be Targeted with Ads, and Spends Money online, what’s the problem? I’ve always felt that because avatars are so comfortable online and spend probably more hours online, playing, shopping, chatting, everything, that we’re potentially BETTER customers!
If you’ve studied your Social Network Ancient History, you’ll recall that Friendster sort of had visions of being a dating site and so they too were obsessed with “real names” even though users were excited by the opportunity to hack identity. Also bands wanted to be on Friendster, but you can’t date a band. So Friendster kicked out all the “fakesters” and bands.
Then MySpace came along and said to the bands, “what if we did this for you, would that be helpful?” And the bands were shocked, “Wait? You’re not telling us to take a hike, you want to help us??” And like Twitter, MySpace was fine with pseudonyms.
It’s worth noting that Google+’s Nymwars were worse than the Facebook purges. VP Vic Gundotra officially launched the “Google witch hunts” pushing users to out pseudonymous users so they could be banned. At first they even banned users from Google products that had never had a real name policy and had, in some cases, been used by the individuals for years prior. People lost access to Google Docs, Gmail etc.
After 3 years of persecuting pseudonyms, no, Vic didn’t have a conversion on the road to Damascus, he was fired. Google+ had become Google’s “Internet Explorer.” They fired Gundotra and after persecuting pseudonyms for 3 years, Google said, “never mind, just do whatever you want.”
Corporate marketing decisions effect “real” lives on the ground. I don’t actually think Google or Facebook or most of these other players strive to “be evil.” Rather I think they are a culture that promotes their own norms. As you probably know, Silicon Valley skews to Young, White, Male, Affluent. So the engineers there don’t say “we want to screw people,” but what they do is create Code (as in “Code is Law”) that reinforces the cultural norms that they’re aware of and that make sense to them.
Since dissident bloggers, abuse survivors, drag queens, identity hackers, and avatars do not, as a rule, work in Silicon Valley, there aren’t so many engineers there to understand and code our way of life.
As I’m sure you already know, “If you don’t like our terms, you don’t have to use our service,” isn’t really a solution when a Public Utility like Facebook is the new global phone book.
Thanks again Jo for your continuing coverage on this topic!
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SL creating a Facebook clone would just be the flip side of the problem. We are most likely in Facebook because family, friends and/or co-workers are there. If we were to go to an SL specific service, most likely those people (unless they already had SL accounts) wouldn’t be there.
We all have reasons for using our SL pseudonym. Could be something as simple as it is the only name you know me by, or something really tragic as using that ‘real’ name can compromise my or my families safety.
Back before everybody was issued an internet account at birth, it was common practice to NOT use your real name for obvious security reasons. Those reasons have NOT gone away, in fact they are more prevalent today. Some things should stay private. If you don’t want the world to know about something, don’t post it on line (like your real name, phone number). Sure that organization says they are all about your privacy, but tomorrow when they get bought out by xyz company the policy might change or they lied to you, or maybe Joe Blow intern took the company laptop home and it was stolen and user information was on it. It’s not like a hacker would never think about taking advantage of system vulnerabilities.
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