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Time Facebook Fixes "Real Names Only" TOS

6/3/2014

4 Comments

 
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On June 1st an outdated and completely illogical Facebook® (FB) policy that has infuriated 1000's of SecondLife® (SL) users over the years finally hit me - the real person - in the gut.
My "Toysoldier Thor" Facebook

account was disabled

MY FACEBOOK ACCOUNT & COUNTLESS OTHERS WERE DESTROYED
BY AN OLD COMPLETELY OUT-OF-TOUCH FACEBOOK POLICY
IT'S TIME FOR LINDEN LAB AND SECONDLIFE RESIDENTS TO DEMAND A CHANGE
FOR THE GOOD OF ALL  -   INCLUDING FACEBOOK THEMSELVES
I was lured and deceived into setting up my Toysoldier Thor FB account about five years ago when Linden Lab (LL) promoted to its customer base to set up Avatar Facebook accounts (like they did) as a place to interact with them.  I was reluctant at the time to join FB as I didn't see the value of FB for a marketing tool but I wanted to keep in touch with what LL was up to.  So I created my Toysoldier Thor account.  I was later surprised - like many others - that LL never had an agreement with FB to allow us all to violate FB's ill conceived "real names only" TOS.

Also, as has been the case with the vast majority of SL residents, it was and still is an imperative for me to maintain anonymity of my real life (RL) identity.  My Toysoldier avatar name and avatar has his own existence in SL.  More importantly, Toy interacts with the 1000's of my friends and acquaintances who only know me as Toysoldier Thor.  If any of my countless friends and others in the SL community want to find me - they would NEVER EVER look for me nor even know my RL name.  

Is this a situation unique only to the SL virtual world community?  NOT BY A LONG SHOT!  Think of the many other virtual world communities with avatars.  Think of the countless MMOG gaming environments where players are only known by their game name.  Think of the authors, bloggers, and artists that have established "Pen Names".  Think of the RL individuals (such as women & children) that establish anonymous names on the Internet to protect themselves for personal security reasons.  

When you add up all the people within each of these examples, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that any online social networking or online services business would be extremely foolish to NOT ACCOMMODATE wishes / requirements of this huge online user base.  It would be a massive population to to ignore.  And yet, ironically, this is exactly what the largest social media company on the Internet has been doing from its inception.  Yes, FB has a very strict, short sighted, and crystal clear Terms of Service (TOS) policy that does not allow any of its potential Users from using any identity other than their real name that the Government has validated.  Notice I did not say FB's customers as their customers are all the advertisers wanting their ads to be placed on all our user pages to be viewed and even clicked on.  The more user pages and the more active a user page - the more revenue FB gains from its customers.  Remember this for later.

I will get back to why this FB policy is so out of touch and slapping users in the face while hurting themselves.  I first must point out that like the countless SL customers who have set up and spent countless hours to groom and establish heavily followed / viewed pages, I knew there was always a risk that one day the FB Real Name cops would eventually target me and shut down my account.  I saw FB do their SL Avatar Witch Hunts taking down large batches of SL avatars over the years.  Its one of FB's never-ending administrative battles since many SL avatars simply create a new account.  

But this past weekend I was still shocked and devastated when they disabled my account and destroyed the massive time and effort I put into making my Toysoldier Thor account an extremely powerful and effective tool to promote my personal interests in SL as well as promote countless activities, events, milestones, and celebrations of my large community of SL friends (with over 500 followers and friends).  It was the #1 way for me to know what was happening in SL.  Toysoldier's FB account was also my voice to raise interest to important causes in the SL community.  Sadly.... devastatingly.... its all gone.


Now lets talk about the reasons why its finally time to for FB policy makers to make changes that shuts down this discriminating and self-damaging policy.  Its very clear how this FB policy hurts a large population of the online community, but why does it also hurt FB and not make sense for them?

  • Remember again who is the FB customer that is generating the bulk of their revenue?  All those advertisers that pay for their ads to be strategically placed on all our User FB pages.  Like most other ad revenue sites, FB generates more revenue when there are more page views / activities.  The busier and more popular a User page - the more ads being viewed and potentially clicked on.  It doesn't matter to the advertiser if the ad on a User page is a real name or an avatar name - the relevant ads will be placed on our pages when viewed by real humans - regardless of the name.  So why would FB want to shut down all these FB User pages simply because they are not a real name?
  • Lets go one step further on this.  I will use me as an example.  I violated two FB policies.  The other policy is that I actually had two FB accounts.  One was my Toy account.  The other is my RL named account for my RL family and friends.  My Toy FB account had 500 followers / friends and about 100 to 200 views / activities.  My RL account has a couple dozen friends and I log into it once every few weeks.  FB has shut down my Toy account.  Guess which of the two accounts is most valuable for FB to generate ad revenue?  YUP, my Toy account.
  • Lets mention another mis-aligned logic in FB's real names only policy.  Recently Mark Z. of FB decided to spend over $2 Billion to acquire the Oculus Rift technology.  The Rift is clearly an virtual reality (VR) tool best designed for virtual worlds like SecondLife and MMOG's.  One of the clearly primary target markets for FB's new expensive Rift technology will be virtual worlds like SL.  If so, why would Mark Z. maintain a policy that discriminates against the actual user bases of these target markets?  Seems like FB's "real names only" TOS policy is in conflict with their latest Rift acquisition.
  • Finally, think how much wasted effort FB's Real Name Witch Hunters have to expend to find, shut down, and then go through the process of the appeals and debates and efforts from each user that fights the shut down.  Not to mention finding many of these same TOS violators later as most of them have created another account - again in violation of their TOS.  Imagine if FB changed its policy and allowed non real named accounts.  How much staffing effort on administration could be spent time doing better more useful things??

So why should Ebbe Altberg, CEO of LL want to lobby Mark Z. and FB on behalf of all SL's residents to address this FB policy or work with FB to come up with a solution that fairly ends this discrimination?

  • Lets remember that on a few occasions - even recently - LL has tried to integrate FB's service with SL's service.  In fact, even though LL very well knew of FB's TOS against avatar names being used, they still released a new feature in the viewer code that allowed SL residents to post directly from inworld to their respective FB account.  When Firestorm later released the feature, it didn't take long for the spike of activity from SL into FB to be noticed and countless SL resident SL FB accounts were disabled by FB for those that used the feature.  IF Ebbe could negotiate a solution with FB to remove this policy, LL could return this feature and actually start integrating into FB with no guilt or risk of angering their own customers.
  • Secondly, SL has a set of utterly useless social networking tool inworld to allow effective inter-communication / promotion of SL activities, events, happenings, and Avatar promotion to occur.  Their Avatar profiles site is barely used as well since it pales in comparison to the features and capabilities and performance of FB.  Solving this major roadblock by formally outsourcing this external social network to FB would safely allow LL to promote the use of FB to promote SL's inworld activities and make SL more enjoyable which retains and attracts more SL accounts.

So if ending this FB "real names only" policy benefits all, what are a few solutions that Ebbe and Mark could discuss to fix the problem and benefit ALL?

  1. The first idea may seem the most obvious solution but has as issue.  That would be for FB to simply change the policy that allows any new FB user to create any account they want using what ever name they want.  Problem solved - right?  Well not exactly.  FB would know accept the result - one that is similar to the problem that faces LL now.  FB would likely get an onslaught of ALT and BOT FB accounts owned by the same users.  FB would not accept this solution.
  2. So FB could come up with a new technical solution that allows control freedom for FB users to created a couple or three visible FB User Pages but no more.  How?  FB would require all users to register as a REAL LIFE user with a validated credential and then keep this validated account information internal only to them.  Then each of these registered accounts would be allowed to create no more than three independent and full featured User Page profiles.  One of the three accounts must be a real name user page - which would be used by the user to maintain the users main account.  The other two User Pages would only be counters to the first but in ON WAY could anyone else ever find out who the real life user is to these other two accounts.  This solution would require FB development - maybe even extensive.  So maybe FB would not be interested in all this effort to solve the problem.  The long term would be good for FB.
  3. The third option is one I personally think would be the best solution for everyone and the quickest to deploy.  This would be for FB to create a new special instance of FB specifically deployed to service the VIRTUAL WORLD communities.  They could brand this as FACEBOOK-VW or VW-FACBOOK.  Since FB already has agreed after all these years that they were not interested in their main FB service to service non real name accounts, they should not care when a large populous of online users from the VW, MMOG, Pen Named people, etc. would use this new instance.  LL would be able to promote the use of FACEBOOK-VW for their users to register onto and use.  Advertisers would still be very interested in posting ads to this new and more specific base of users on this instance.  AND... SL residents as well as so many others would have a FB service that maintains their privacy.


NOW A CALL TO ACTION FOR EBBE ALTBERG, LINDEN LAB, AND ALL VIRTUAL WORLD USERS THAT WANT TO SEE FACEBOOK FIX THIS OUT OF TOUCH POLICY.....

Share this blog post on twitter, facebook, inworld, or any other way.  Post your own Twitter tweets, write your own blogs, email, IM, and talk about this topic to Ebbe, LL decision makers, Mark Z., FB decision makers, or anyone else that can influence Mark Z. and the FB architectures / decision makers to address this problem.

We need this topic addressed for all our benefits.

What are your thoughts?

Toysoldier Thor
4 Comments
Thea AKA Rachael link
6/3/2014 11:59:48 pm

I don't agree that ending this Facebook term of service does benefit all. I have posted about that on my own blog so will refrain from extended comment about what I have already written there. http://dametheadee.tumblr.com/post/87787897720/facebook-and-real-names if you'd like to read my thoughts.

I think Linden Lab has plenty to do to keep Second Life functional for its users without getting actively involved in this. I would MUCH rather prefer them to use the time, resources and energy to improve in-world fucntionality of the tools that are available to us there so that we don't have to rely on Facebook or other external services for promotion of our in-world activites and businesses.

Lastly, just because a company acquires a product (Oculus) that is useful for people who participate in Virtual Reality, it does not mean that they will co-mingle the businesses, nor does it mean that they should be expected to change Facebook terms of service to allow alternate personas or fictional characters to create profiles. I suspect the acquisition is far more likely about future financial gain than anything else anyway.

Reply
Toysoldier Thor
6/4/2014 12:53:23 am

I did go through your blog to explain how changing the policy might NOT benefit all. I didn't read any reasons that explained how it was not benefiting. I did read arguments that said FB's service is good enough:

1) the pages off a profile could be used - which although improved they are still limited and yes they still do not address the anonymity issue.
2) that FB is a social media network and being a anonymous defeats this objective so why be on FB if you are hiding. You know as well as every other SL account that SL Avatars are not hiding. They are simply interacting within the large social sphere that they exist in. My Toy account on FB has a MUCH MUCH larger sphere of friends than my RL FB account ever will have. So I am surely not hiding and FB's objective of being a social network for me sure works.
3) You comment that you don't see a need to hide and hiding only brings on trolls and harassers. I agree that it could but not if FB set up their structure that tied their profile to an internal RL account name that only FB sees.

As for LL's priorities... All my post was suggesting was that Ebbe from LL lobby FB. This is not a matter of LL getting into the weeds and developing something - which we all know really does put LL into the weeds. SL clearly needs a mature full featured social network that works with inworld. Its invaluable. LL are surely not experts in developing this - as their current profiles site shows. So Do not make LL develop something that another partnering company does far better as its core competency. FB is far better than LL in making a social networking space. Outsource it.

FinallyI disagree with you on a company that makes such a large investment in a new product / company doesnt need it to tie to its current strategies / products. Although this does happen, most acquisitions are brought on to strengthen or expand the company's current product / service position. FB's stock dropped big after they bought the Rift. Why? Because investors could not see how it would tie to FB's current products.

But thanks for the comments Rachael.

Reply
Toysoldier Thor
6/4/2014 05:13:51 am

This morning I had a relatively brief yet informative SL IM (albeit via my smartphone offline emailed messages for me) conversation with a highly respected SL blogger - leave her name out of it - on this topic. She mention that FB makes more revenue by harvesting and selling REAL NAME and related personal information to "buyers" than from ad view / click revenue. As such, she believes FB would see the allowance of pen name profile accounts to be a detriment to FB's current revenue model as buyers would not want to buy FB's user base info that included "non real" accounts as part of the harvest of us users they sell.

We talked about FB possibly entering a new - although not huge - revenue source by offering outsourced instances of the FB service to target customers like Virtual World and MMOG that have a need for AVATAR profiles. It was a thought for her but she didnt believe it was worthy of the effort for them.

It was great input.

Reply
Thea AKA Rachael link
6/4/2014 09:26:12 am

Thanks for taking the time to read my post. Your points above paraphrase a portion of what I was trying to convey, and I feel that your words imply a tone that I didn't intend. If your readers wish, they can follow the link in my first comment and read for themselves. I don't seem to make myself clear enough there so I will reiterate here.

If SL users or any other users wish to use a different name for their online identity it is ABSOLUTELY their choice to do so. I do believe in and support the concept of online privacy or anonymity if people choose it. But I do not support the idea that everyone should have the right to do whatever they want whereever they want. It is not allowable under the current Facebook Terms of Service for users to establish an account that is not under their real, legal names. People do it all the time and when they get caught at it, which happens ALL the time, they get their accounts revoked or are given the option to come into compliance with the terms. Second Life users are NOT the only ones having accounts revoked under this rule, but because of the way the Second Life community does interact, I think we notice it and hear about it more.

If people are needing to remain so compartmentalized in their lives that they don't feel safe or comfortable using their legal identity, then they need to find other places to establish themselves where it is permissible and in compliance. The fact that you had more engagement on Facebook as your SL avatar is NOT Facebook's issue. If you choose to game the odds and you lose, is it really the fault of the body that has enforced and maintained the ruleset all along?

As far as the investment that Facebook has made into Oculus... I did not say that they don't need to tie the new tech to the current revenue stream. I did say and still maintain that it does not require a complete change in the Facebook setup to allow other than legal names to be used to set up a primary account. If they make an interface between Facebook and any virtual world, Second Life or other, that should not require a change in Facebook's primary TOS or interface to do so.

With regards to the seemingly increased motivation for Facebook to weed out "fake name" accounts, I will concede that it appears to be largely driven by the need for revenue. Since Facebook does not charge personal users to set up accounts, they have to make money somehow, mostly through ads and marekting revenue. Those things only work under a reasonable ability to track demographics and measurable data and if those paying the money feel like that is not being reflected accurately due to the number of untrackable accounts, I think Facebook is going to go to great lengths to protect their revenue stream.

All of this being said, I do agree that there is an increase in removal of alternate name accounts on Facebook, but I still think that we are each responsible for our choices when we click that box that says we agree to the terms of service of Facebook or any other service provider. The reasons we make the choices we do is not the issue of the service provider.

Reply



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