The Illegitimate Person
When I attended MIX07 at the beginning of May, I had the opportunity to talk to a couple members of the Facebook team. In addition to providing me with a chance to air some of my “issues” with Facebook, the conversations I had also offered some insight into what I will call the Facebook worldview.
When Two Worlds Collide
Aside from being informed about Facebook’s “canonicalized tagspace” (identified as a key differentiator wrt Flickr), I was also told that they did not believe in handles.
At the exact moment that the Facebook developer was telling me about their “no handles” approach, Kaliya Hamlin (a.k.a. Identity Woman) walked up and handed him her card.
I wish I could recall the exact details of the conversation that followed, but it went something like:
Identity Woman: What do you mean you don’t believe in handles? Just look at my card.
Facebook Guy: Identity Woman? But, you don’t actually use that.
IW: Yes I do.
FG: Not in work email and at conferences?
IW: Yes. I. Do.
FG: No.
IW: Yes.
He was, to say the least, incredulous.
A Name is a Name is a Name…Or is it?
I planned to blog about the above exchange in a longer post about social networking and identifiers, but in the following weeks, I was suddenly distracted (as were many others) by the sudden explosive success of Facebook.
Prior to attending MIX007, I had eight Facebook “friends”, four of which lived in the Bay Area. With one exception, they were all social networking veterans. When I returned home, I was shocked to discover how many of my other friends had suddenly joined Facebook.
Unfortunately, some of my friends were unable to join with their actual name. One girl, whose last name is “Gay”, received the following message when she tried to register:
“Please enter a legitimate name.”
She decided not to bother.
A couple weeks later she told me that her mother, whose last name is “Kiss”, also received the same message when she tried to register.
A Metablog Moment
Note: I drafted most of this post a couple weeks ago after my friend told me she couldn’t create a Facebook account with her legitimate last name. I then left it to marinate in the special blog-post purgatory where far too many of my drafts have gone to die.
Earlier this week, I read Facebook blocks ‘Gay’ as last name, but don’t push panic button, which includes the following:
Over the past few days, it’s been circulating around the Web that the social networking phenomenon won’t let people sign up with the last name “Gay,” which has led to accusations of homophobia.
Online LGBT hub GenerationQ put it in the harshest of terms, pointing out that “you’re allowed to be Hitler, but don’t even try being Gay on social networking site Facebook.”
There is indeed reason to find Facebook’s blocking of Gay as a surname a bit inappropriate. Gay is a last name, and not an inconspicuous one: According to the 1990 census, “Gay” was the 774th most-common last name in the United States; it’s no Smith or Johnson, but I’m willing to bet it outranked, say, “Zuckerberg.” It also happens to be the last name of one of my favorite contemporary authors. Additionally, there’s been a Gay Street in Manhattan’s West Village since around 1830.
But we shouldn’t be so quick to point fingers at Facebook, since this was probably the action of a very small number of developers, not the company as a whole–if it was even on the part of anyone at Facebook. The most likely scenario is that some kind of data set was put in place–the sort that would be used to prevent offensive license plate letter and number combinations, for example–to prevent people from registering with unsavory or offensive names. That doesn’t mean that “Gay” should be banned. It just means that, most likely, it was not a conscious decision on the part of anyone at Facebook and it was not done with homophobic undertones.
After reading the above, I decided to resurrect my over-marinated draft, not because of any visceral reaction that I might have to Facebook’s alleged homophobia, but because of the broader issue around any company placing it’s own restrictions on what is and is not considered “legitimate”.
Legitimate What?
I spent some time going through Facebook’s impenetrable Help files, searching in vain for more information about “legitimate” names. I eventually gave up, but only after learning that there are 17 Facebook users registered with the word “legitimate” in their name. Twelve of them contain either “legitimate name” or “legitimatename”. The funniest by far was “Francesca Legitimatefuckingname.”
A quick Google search revealed that many others have been wrestling with their apparent illegitimacy. Some examples: Gays are rejected by Facebook and Illegitimate name is legitimate name on facebook but Patrick Lord is not 
– Mobile Monday Barcelona.
I can’t help but be nostalgic for earlier “web 2.0″ days and sites like Flickr that allowed you to register with any name (my flickr handle is spam0musubi — no real reason; I just happen to like eating spam musubi. 
More specifically, I miss the heady sensation of believing in the overall intelligence and responsibility of the “community”.
Identifiers for the People?
To be honest, I kind of like using my real name. spam0musubi was a bit of one off. (Apparently I have my own Identity issues.)
And, Facebook Guy isn’t the only person who doesn’t believe in the need for handles.
There are days when I have to pinch myself to remember that most people don’t think in terms of identifiers. That is, their name is their name; in many cases it was assigned to them. They use it to get through various interactions in their lives. Why complicate things?
I can almost buy the argument against against using handles. Almost.
Then again, I’m not one of the unfortunate few who had to create a “handle” after being informed by Facebook that their name was not legitimate.
I can’t help but wonder how they came up with the criteria for determining the legitimacy of a name. Even if it’s just as simple as using a predefined data set to “prevent people from registering with unsavory or offensive names,” is it a justifiable reason?
Perhaps it’s just me, but I get nervous when random organizations (or individuals within that organization) get to make decisions that render “Legitimatefuckingname” less offensive (not to mention more legitimate) than “Gay” or “Lord” or “Kiss”.
Isn’t this a more serious issue than whether or not Facebook is homophobic?
Of course, what can you expect from somebody whose handle is a Hawaian delicacy involving sushi rice topped with processed meat from a can? 