You could shorten the headline of this article to be simply: "Facebook fails."

How many people who are outraged about this will be closing their Facebook accounts so they do not have to support it?

I imagine some bigots are trolling the LGBT community flagging profiles for scrutiny.

I use FB to follow the drag community in Seattle. It's clear that isn't really viable any more. The result for me will simply be greater reliance on blogs like SGS and Slog.

This article waits until the end to get to the most important point. Facebook is not going after drag queens, it is acting on the "report name" button next to every account. I'm much more concerned about survivors of abuse and domestic violence with real documented legal issues being outer than I am about whiny drag queens. (I love my queens.) It's not about drag queens. Stop writing stories and headlines saying Facebook is targeting drag queens. Facebook isn't targeting, some trolls are. Drag queens are pretty low on the scale of people with something to hide. And yeah, they probably DO belong as fan pages, regardless of what name they have for personal use.

The report name button is a tool of abuse for trolls and haters. When someone clicks it, FB disables your account until you send them ID. No matter how normal sounding your name is. And then you have to use the name on your ID, even if it is some strange non-anglicized spelling and your FB name is anglicized. It's an easy way to ruin someone's week with a dead FB account, just by hitting a button.

FB is wrong, but none of these articles get it right either.

They should just admit it's ultimately about the money. Allowing anyone to set up a FB page using any identity seems to demonstrate they're not concerned about "protecting the community," since you could still use a page to harass / stalk people. I'd also like to see someone in the press ask FB officials about victims of domestic violence who are using an alias to keep in touch with family members without being found by their abuses; take the performer / artist / writer aspect out completely (thereby eliminating the canned "set up a page" response) and turning the "safety of the community" issue around.

Thanks for this. Signed and shared!

They accept magazine subscriptions as proof of identification?? So all a queen's gotta do is buy a 1-year subscription to "Working Mother" on Amazon.com, address it to *her*self, submit a copy of the address label and she's done? (Or if the crowd has been giving shit for tips lately, "Family Circle" is only $5.99! Plus, those are some great articles.)

Also, Facebook could really help things along by allowing performers to convert their profiles to pages. We're still faced with the larger problem of trolls (who can just report the pages), but it would provide a temporary solution and keeps friend networks intact (and gives the performer / artist / writer the opportunity to direct fans / friends to their new social media sites).

Question regarding drag queens:

Do most queens see themselves as the character, in the same way a trans man would see themselves as a man? I was under the impression that drag queens are putting on a costume and putting on a show, but still retaining their original identity as their "self."

If that is the case, couldn't they set up a performer/artist page on Facebook and essentially just use that as their default profile? I understand of course why this would not work with trans people or abuse victims.

Forgive me if I am misunderstanding drag queens or Facebook profiles, I have little real world experience with either.

We could start a slog library that gives laminated cards for your favorite name...

So dumb. FB shoots self in foot, then tries to cover it up with flappy talk about 'safety'. Meanwhile, trolls get to fuck-over people, exposing them to danger.

Facebook has everyone where they want them because they are still simply the best social network around. People will only leave when something better comes along.

@10 It depends on the performer. I've known some queens for years and seen them both in and out of costume yet rarely heard their birth name. Even dressed as a boy they will go by their drag name. But presumably at their day job they do go by their birth name.

I know many other people who introduce themselves by different names than are on their birth certificate. Foreign born people who have adopted an "American" name. People who use their middle name. People who use a nickname like Bob or AJ or Pam. Why should Facebook care if you get mail addressed to Bon or Robert?

However, most of these people are not subject to trolling so there are never any "complaints".

You could always, I don't know, not use Facebook?

The fact that there's a quick button to share this on Facebook at the bottom of the article causes me no end of amusement.

@9, you can convert a personal page into an artist page intact. But...

@10 artist pages don't have the interactivity that personal pages do. It's much harder to create events and invites, share photos, write comments, etc, as an artist page.

@16, in reality land Facebook has become a very basic method of interaction, communication, and basic business. Opting out of Facebook is closing yourself off socially, and in many cases, to business. You're expected to be there.

So, in order to prevent a nominal policy to prevent harassment, they're letting FB users harass drag queens into either outing themselves or shutting down their accounts.

Either a high-level manager at FB is aware of this complete contradiction of policy versus implementation, or they just don't care, and just want to appear as though they're acting in the interest of an ideal. I'm guessing that the latter is the case.

As someone in the tech world, I cannot understand why they cannot just implement a policy of verification through a secret backend channel. Sure, FB can know my name to make sure they have a handle on me in case I harass others, but I can present how I like. Harassment is wrapped up in behavior, not an identity.

Gah, I misconstructed my first sentence. I meant:

"So, in order to *implement* a nominal policy to prevent harassment, they're letting FB users harass drag queens into either outing themselves or shutting down their accounts."

@12 - Exactly. Facebook even go through the trouble of verifying celebrities, even if their using a stage name.

I wish I had a contact so you could hear the details, but an acquaintance of mine (and a group of drag queens and folks from their community) met with Facebook about two weeks ago to discuss this issue. They left the meeting very frustrated.

@18

"Opting out of Facebook is closing yourself off socially"

HAHAHAHA, only possible if you are a complete dork, devoid of engaging in reality.

I am in my mid 30s, tech savvy and never once considered having a FB account. I've survived just fine with the rest of the internet and can guarantee my social life is way more interesting than yours.

Who would ever want to have a central repository of personal info for all the jealous creeps, ex's and shit starters to judge?

The McDonald's of the internet indeed.

Does anyone remember a while back when Facebook announced there were now something like 200 gender identities available and (mostly) everyone cheered? This whole "real name" thing is a bit like they turned around and changed it to two checkboxes:
Do you have a penis?[ ]
Do you have a vagina?[ ]
That's all the input we need. We'll decide what your gender is from here.

I was put in the slow reading group when I was in first grade because I couldn't find my desk the first day. It wasn't because I couldn't read. It was because the name tag was my legal name, which no one had ever called me since about the second week of my life. I'd never heard it. I can hide from virtually anyone who knows me by using my legal name.

Youtube used to have a process that let anyone in the world claim a video was violating their copyright. Famously, some nobody shut down Justin Bieber's actual account by claiming the songs were his. They weren't, but Youtube didn't care, they closed the channel based on one "troll's" bogus email.

SO, since FB has made it so easy to shut down "fake name" accounts and will do it with just one report.

Everybody should just report EVERYBODY. Make it as uncomfortable as possible to make it a nightmare for FB. Say you suspect every name as fake.

Drag Queens and activists and whomever else doesn't like this policy should make it EVERYONE'S problem. Report the grandma's and the house husbands and the everyone.

If it's enough of a hassle for Joe Lunchpail, they'll have to revisit it. Until it's a mainstream problem, it won't change. And FB has made it easy to make it a mainstream problem.

Considering that Facebook added 50 gender options, or what the fuck ever, recently, it's baffling that they've coughed up a policy that's so obviously hostile to trans people, especially given how many trans women work for tech companies these days.

Ah, the nymwars:

http://www.jwz.org/blog/2011/08/nym-wars…
http://epeus.blogspot.com/2011/08/google…
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/07/ca…
http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archive…
http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Who_i…

As you can tell from the dates of the post, this isn't new. First, they came for the furries, then the virtual-worlders ... now this.

@23, I quit tech to babysit rock stars for a living. I guarantee you my social life is more interesting than yours.

If your social life involves going to events with music, the arts, special events at restaurants, etc, then Facebook was involved by the people who made it happen, even if not by you personally.

Drag Queens, or anyone using a stage name is so concerned about thus crackdown because Facebook is a primary promotion and communication platform.

Facebook also seeks to be a forum for comments, and campaigns, often political. False reports by users who have a political axe to grind or a wish to silence their opposition aren't any more palatable in my book than pedophiles trolling the younger Facebook members.

For almost 5 years, I used Pepper Potts as my Facebook name (this, after multiple instances of weirdo stalkers and random friend requests from ex-boyfriends using "a friend's" facebook account to harass me). That is until this week. You see, I engaged in healthy, spirited (but respectful) discourse with a pro-union IAM member. I stand firmly anti-union and stated as much as well as my logical reasoning behind it. This person made mention that Pepper Potts was not my real name and I responded why would I plaster my legal name all over Facebook to be harassed again? Apparently he didn't like this, or the fact that he couldn't track me down my my legal name to try and recruit me to his cause because he reported me and Facebook forced me to change my name back to my legal name or wouldn't allow me to log into the account at all.

Friday will be my last day on Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg can suck it.