My facebook saga

Unless you are completely uninterested in how social media works or you are devoid of any friends that use a nom de guerre - i.e. authors, visual artists, performers, drag queens or goths - you have probably heard of facebook's "real name" policy and the problems it has caused to many individuals over the years.

Most recently many drag queens in the USA had their accounts suspended due to this policy which is part of facebook's campaign apparently aimed at ensuring that people cannot hide under false names so as to curb bullying, online crime and terrorism! The company also maintains that this also helps them farm out our personal details to third parties to ensure targeted ads so that the revenue from these can fund facebook and all the server space and infrastructure required to support our ever increasing waist size of family holiday photos.

All fair an good you may think as we all like our free social networking, and up until here I couldn't agree more. Recent events however have made me rethink my view on how much power we have handed over to our social networks which after all are corporations just like Coca-Cola, Nestle', Bayer and Monsanto and which have clearly proven to have the same disregard for individuals as their multinational cousins.

I have been using a pen name since the very beginning of my online life many many years ago back in the 90s and in fact the very same pen name. RaDaemon.
If you google the name the first thing that pops up is my deviantART profile.

I use the same name as e-mail, twitter, google+ and instagram. I used to use it on myspace before everyone migrated. Recently Star Wars episode VII got a pilot called Poe Daremon! I am not saying they copied me but it sounds cool doesn't it!

It even got to the point where many of the friends I have made online over the past 25 years like to call me Ray - hi Lauren! - and generally all of my friends and family know who that name belongs to. THAT is the way to find me if you lose me online!
BUT alas, I have not had it changed legally and this is where the problems start - in regards to facebook at least!

A few weeks ago I attempted to check my facebook from my phone to see what was happening in the world and source something to do that evening - dinner with friends, a glass of wine at the pub or movies at home with the cats - strangely I was taken to a screen that said I had temporarily been logged out of facebook and suggesting I try and log in via desktop or laptop.

When I attempted to log in from my laptop I received a message saying I was suspected of using an alias - yay way to go there facebook hounds, you caught me!

I was asked to update to my real name - pronto!

I attempted to comply, I thought wtf, resistance is futile and I want to stay in touch with my friends. Unfortunately my real name apparently does not meet community guidelines there fore I was then herded to the screen you can see below!!!

I was asked to upload a valid photo ID - including ID card, passport, valid driving license OR credit card!! When did a credit card become a valid ID document???

That was it! No contact button. No way to appeal and no way to access either my account or my freelance artist page.

I was cut out. Blocked.

I am not sure what annoyed me most, the way I was asked to provide proof like a criminal or the fact I had no way to decline.

I never liked playground bullies and this is exactly how facebook behaved.

The assumption was you either comply or bie bie. And mind you I would not have had any issue with the bie bie option had I been allowed to access my account to delete my uploads and inform my friends that I would be leaving facebook. Instead what happened is I was completely cut off anyone whose phone number or e-mail I didn't have - including many clients who had contacted me via facebook to purchase illustrations or casts.

Friends started calling, texting and e-mailing to find out if everything was ok. A few were rather distressed as I am generally an active poster and my complete disappearance  had worried them that something may be wrong.

But it didn't end there. All the websites I had logged into using the extremely convenient "Log In with Facebook" button e.g. Spotify, were locked and all my details irrevocably lost to me unless I agreed to provide facebook with my passport.

To add insult to injury within the first three days of not complying to the request I received more than nine e-mails from dear ole facebook telling me how many status updates from my friends I had missed and how many unread messages I had received. When these stopped I kept receiving extremely annoying "do you know these people" e-mails from facebook with lists of people I had never even heard of.

Talk about dangling the carrot, or...  showing a junky his next fix eh facebook?!
I guess that's how much you want our personal details.

The reasons why I chose an alter ego are irrelevant here, but the reasons why I use it are multiple.

I come from an emotionally abusive household and first and foremost I want to ensure that certain people from certain parts of my family are unable to see what I do with my life.

I could use my real name and set the settings to private but whilst I value my privacy, I am at the same time a freelance artist that requires visibility - in the words of Lexa Rosean "yes, I contain multitudes".

I was never an adherent to the "if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear" philosophy. In my opinion if you have nothing to hide you are a rather boring individual or, as Sean Connery so eloquently put it in The First Great Train Robbery, "No respectable gentleman is THAT respectable!"

I don't want my full time job to intermingle with my freelance - and I know for a fact that my boss appreciates that our clients are unable to find and see what I do in my free time. Not because I am involved in anything illegal but because when you work for a multinational company at a client facing level you don't want people to see nekkid pictures of you - and NO I don't think there's anything wrong with nekkid! 18th century morals don't apply here, it's just unprofessional in certain circles but as I said I contain multitudes and I want all the circles.

Many of my friends are music promoters, burlesque artists, authors and drag queens and most of these people have had their profiles suspended or received warnings.

Unfortunately facebook has become a leviathan with the vast majority of users on there. G+, ello and co. just don't hold up at the moment against the networking prowess of facebook and they know it.

Up until now I had no issues with facebook but after this, and seeing how they are trying to make money out of the very individuals that made them as big as they are - see paying to promote posts for artists pages, reduced visibility etc-  I get angry.

In Greece we say "you don't sh*t where you eat!" and facebook you just shat on us big time.

I will be back on facebook because I need my networking as an artist, because I do enjoy chatting with my friends, because it's easy to organise and check out wher eto go and with who but I also don't forget that the system can only be changed from within.

Sharing this story is the first step. Signing the petitions to allow artists to create profiles in their own chosen names - as opposed to sponsored/paid for pages that require extra remuneration to boost posts- is the second.

Using separate logins for the various websites regardless of how convenient suing fb for everything is will be the third and so on.

In this day and age freedom is a dying commodity as the Occupy movement across the globe has proven many a time. In the end I had to roll over, play dead  and obey like a good doggie.

I ended up showing my "PAPIEREN!!!!" to the besandaled boy mark Zuckerberg and his gang of bullies in order to be allowed back in the playground.

I should be careful what I say lest the facebook enforcers wash my mouth with soap, after all certain innuendos just like nipples - tres offensive- are verbotten on facebook unlike promoting animal cruelty or white supremacist posts because according to the global way everyone has a right to express themselves but not to use a pseudonym...

Let's not forget Hollywood movies taught us that the hero must unmask at the end otherwise he's just another villain.

 Pol RaDaemon