Social media juggernaut Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) apologized to drag queens and noted that it will revise its rules on how to deal with accounts that do not use their real names. The social network received staunch criticisms in the past couple of months when it was caught deleting hundreds of accounts of drag queens and members of the LGBT community.
Facebook issued an apologetic statement to the drag queens and LGBT community Thursday for removing accounts that consisted of drag queen names, such as Sister Roma or Lil Miss Hot Mess, instead of legal names, like Philip Marlowe.
San Francisco drag queens and city legislators have previously met with Facebook representatives to order the website to revise its policy on prohibiting users from utilizing online aliases – Facebook attempted to suggest to them to use two accounts: one for business and one for personal use.
The company has maintained a requirement for a long time that users list their real names on the website for security purposes. This move was meant to help Facebook be different from other websites and better target people for advertising methods. In a revision of its policy, Facebook requires people not to necessarily use their real name but a name used in real life.
“The spirit of our policy is that everyone on Facebook uses the authentic name they use in real life. For Sister Roma, that’s Sister Roma. For Lil Miss Hot Mess, that’s Lil Miss Hot Mess,” wrote Christopher Cox, Facebook’s product chief, in a blog post. “We see through this event that there’s lots of room for improvement in the reporting and enforcement mechanisms, tools for understanding who’s real and who’s not, and the customer service for anyone who’s affected
Cox added a reason why observers noticed a vast number of deletions recently. According to Cox, an individual had decided to report hundreds of accounts as fake. Apparently, these reports were a part of the several hundred thousand fake name reports it processes each week “so we didn’t notice the pattern.”
Although the name policy isn’t going away, the method in which Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) enforces it will.
It is being reported that planned protest in San Francisco will now become a street party.
