[babalu1997]

i was readung aboyt thus social network.

i think at the moment the only soical netwitk i belong to is BBO.

i was a part of some networks before, but after a while the stuff is meaningless, there is only so many friends one can have. (At least at bbo you can pass the time with the 'friends' playing or discussing one of the 53 billion deals)

What amused me in this article was google's and facebook requirement og a real "Name"n since at BBo i have played bridge with Che Guevara and Omar Sharyff.

Can I join facebook as John Smith? that is a real name, tho not my own.

[Elianna]

 babalu1997, on 2011-November-14, 13:15, said:

i was readung aboyt thus social network.

i think at the moment the only soical netwitk i belong to is BBO.

i was a part of some networks before, but after a while the stuff is meaningless, there is only so many friends one can have. (At least at bbo you can pass the time with the 'friends' playing or discussing one of the 53 billion deals)

What amused me in this article was google's and facebook requirement og a real "Name"n since at BBo i have played bridge with Che Guevara and Omar Sharyff.

Can I join facebook as John Smith? that is a real name, tho not my own.

Yes you can. Although there have been cases of people with the name Kate Middleton (who were not THE Kate Middleton) who had their FB accounts shutdown due to suspicion of fake names.

[barmar]

Sure, you could join Facebook with a fake name, but what's the point? A big use of social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn is to find old friends and colleagues. If you don't use your real name, how will people find you? Who's going to friend you with your fake name?

They're different from forums and blogs, where the important thing is the subject matter of the site, and anonymity is sometimes important. If you post comments on a YouTube video, no one really cares who you are.

[gwnn]

 babalu1997, on 2011-November-14, 13:15, said:

Can I join facebook as John Smith? that is a real name, tho not my own.

I think John Smith is one of the less real names (which one was the movie that claimed that 'Smith' is the most widely made-up last name?). A lot of people use it for fake name purposes.

[kenberg]

Maybe Shakespeare?

[hotShot]

Do those who oppose ID-Cards and reject laws that require people to register their addresses at their local governments, have facebook profiles with their address on it.

Have people who use twitter or facebook to announce that they are absent ever heard of http://pleaserobme.com/ ?

Isn't it great if dictators can identify freedom fighters by their google+ / facebook / twitter id ?

I'm sure your boss will respect your right of free speech, when you post about your day at the job.

Surely police, FBI and the like as well as journalist will get more inside information about crimes and scandalous developments, if the one giving it to them is known by his real name.

Surely pedophiles will appreciate that facebook surfing will get them pictures of children, their real name and address and -with a little luck- where to find the kids right now .

Using real names is one of the best ideas Internet illiterates ever had.

[barmar]

If you don't want to be found, don't create a facebook page in the first place. It just seems silly to create a facebook page, but then say you want anonymity.

And Facebook has privacy controls that allow you to restrict visibility to your friends. And what kind of idiot would tweet about their crimes?

[mycroft]

It is almost imperative in this society, especially the <30 part of this society, to have a Facebook account - that's where (one group of) your friends do all their organization for friday night.

You don't necessarily want to have anything *on* your page, or to be findable - my "friends that organize friday night stuff" know who I am on Facebook, but most regular people won't figure it out. And that's a plus. But you need a Facebook account.

Also, "restrict to friends" is troublesome in many ways. First, I have many friends; my friends at work don't know or need to know about my friends in the bridge community (and vice versa); my "out east" friends are another group altogether. And then there are "friends" who are not friends - there's only one category of relation on Facebook, so if I want to release something to my family, then they have to be "friends" (and suddenly all my family crap is available to the people I TD at the next tournament. Wheee!); employers have requested-and-required "friend" status to their employee's Facebook account,...

Never mind the fact that Facebook's "restrict to friends" is leaky and transitive, in ways most Facebook people don't understand, and in ways Facebook is notorious for making different (and usually more leaky by design, instead of just by side-effect) at random times.

Now, to the search feature. I *don't* want to be findable by any random person - I have a unique net.presence in my real name, and I'd like to keep that mine, TYVM. I don't want anyone I'm applying for a job to see what else I do, necessarily; I don't want people from history to be able to find me, especially the ones that come under the heading "if I ever see them again, it will be too soon."

Lastly, you are not Facebook's customers - you are their *product*. Their customers, especially, don't need to know my name, thanks. That goes double for G+ (who, I will admit, are trying to get the "there are multiple kinds of friends" thing right; but their "thou shalt give thy Passport Name to us and our advertisers, and anyone else who can game our security, which won't be very good, really, because we intend to *be* an identity service; on pain of losing all your other Google access and any history you may have under those systems" policy means that G+ is a no-go, thanks).

Unfortunately, "why would you have a Facebook account if you don't want to be found" is the thinking of someone who hasn't had to work out "I want to be found. I just don't want to be found by *him*."

Never mind the fact that Mycroft has a very good life online; I don't really want to kill him because someone else wants me to be my Passport Name all the time. There are other named personalities that are also me - which I am not going to detail here, because the whole point is to have them be different "people" - that I don't want to kill off either.

As far as twitter goes - no, I'm not going to tweet about my crimes online - that would be idiotic. But one of my criminal buddies gets picked up. They troll through the twitter "follow connections" to find people who have a higher chance of also being criminals, and start watching them. Hmmm. Interesting. And what if I'm one of this criminal's poker buddes, who knows nothing of his "real life" and am not a criminal? What if I'm in a country where "suspicion" leads not to surveillance, but to "disappearing"?

[barmar]

This seems like a good place to remind everyone that today is National Unfriend Day.

http://abc.go.com/sh...friend-day-2011

I cleaned out more than half my Facebook friends last night. Most of them were old business acquaintances, that's what LinkedIn is for.

[phil_20686]

 gwnn, on 2011-November-15, 02:36, said:

I think John Smith is one of the less real names (which one was the movie that claimed that 'Smith' is the most widely made-up last name?). A lot of people use it for fake name purposes.

John smith used to be the name used by English coroners for unidentified victims. Similar to John Doe in the US.

I don't know if it is still in used or not.

[mwalimu02]

you sure can!

[barmar]

 mwalimu02, on 2011-December-11, 11:57, said:

you sure can!

Who can do what?

[hotShot]

Today I learned a new Facebook feature.

If someone uses a Facebook App, the supplier of that App get all his Facebook data and as an added bonus all the bios, birthday's, ...job informations of all of his friends.
So unless you found the security page and disabled this feature, your friends will spread your data without knowning it.

[Free]

I think Babalu is inspired by American Pie 2. Do you have a CB radio already?