After weeks of backlash over Facebook’s real name policy, namely from members of the LGBT community who have had their Facebook pages suspended due to drag names, Facebook has met with members of the community and apologized for any hardship they might have caused.
Facebook’s VP of Product Chris Cox made a statement today on Facebook apologizing (on behalf of the company, it seems) for any pain caused, and explaining how this situation came to be. The statement also included promises to improve the current real name policy to include all different types of people without risking the safety of other users.
You can read the whole post below, but the gist of the explanation goes as follows:
A single user flagged hundreds of Facebook pages of drag queens (BI reports that a Secret user has claimed responsibility for this) for using fake names, and as part of standard operating procedure, Facebook did a sweep of the profiles without realizing the attack pattern against drag queens using drag names on their Facebook profiles.
However, Facebook met with a group of people from the LGBT community today to discuss ways to make the system better.
This will include “better tools for authenticating the Sister Romas of the world while not opening up Facebook to bad actors,” along with taking further “measures to provide much more deliberate customer service to those accounts that get flagged so that we can manage these in a less abrupt and more thoughtful way.”
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