Facebook Apologizes, Promises to Update 'Real Name' Policy

Image: Mashable composite. Elizabeth Pierson/Mashable

Facebook has apologized to users affected by its 'real name' policy and said in a statement it will update its policy to allow users to identify themselves by their preferred names, even if it's not their legal name.

In the apology, issued in a lengthy statement from the company's chief product officer, Chris Cox, the company promised to 'fix the way this policy gets handled' but didn't provide specifics on how it would do so.

Cox said that the so-called 'real name' policy had been in effect for more than 10 years but clarified it 'has never been to require everyone on Facebook to use their legal name.' Instead, he said, the policy stipulated that 'everyone on Facebook uses the authentic name they use in real life.'

He said that Facebook was caught off guard by the recent backlash against the policy, which began last month after reports that several prominent members of San Francisco's drag community were being locked out of their Facebook accounts for not using their legal names.

This was caused by one Facebook user who took it upon themselves to report hundreds of accounts belonging to drag performers and transgender people as fake, Cox said.

Sister Roma, a well-known member of The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, a prominent drag group in San Francisco, was among the first to call attention to the Facebook's policy, after she was locked out of her account.

Off to @facebook representing the millions of users with chosen and protective names - your voice will be heard. http://ift.tt/1E1avam

- Sister Roma (@SisterRoma) October 1, 2014

Soon after, other drag performers and transgender people reported encountering similar issues and they and other activists took to social media to express their concern with Facebook's policy using the #mynameis hashtag. The policy, they said, not only discriminated against the LGBT community, but also endangered victims of stalking and domestic violence who many not want to use their legal name in order to protect themselves from their abusers.

San Francisco city officials soon got involved and two members of the city's Board of Supervisors condemned the policy and organized a meeting with Facebook on behalf of the community.

Following the meeting, Facebook had initially said it already provided other ways for users to identify themselves, like nicknames and fan pages. Though the social network agreed to give affected users temporary access to their accounts, it refused to enact policy changes, which prompted further criticism from within the LGBT community.

In his statement, Cox acknowledged the policy has 'not worked flawlessly' and said Facebook was working to make the policy better while still upholding its basic premise that users identify by 'real life' names.

'We're already underway building better tools for authenticating the Sister Romas of the world while not opening up Facebook to bad actors,' he wrote. 'And we're taking 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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