User:Tvkaylale/sandbox

=Real-name system=

History
The introduction to real names in modern society originated from state regulations. State governments, in order to monitor and keep track of its citizens, provided citizens with surnames. This allowed them to track property ownership and inheritance, collect taxes, maintain court records, perform police work, conscript soldiers, and control epidemics.

Facebook
Though the Facebook social networking site does not directly employ the real-name system, the site's online Name Policy indicates the following: "Facebook is a community where people use their real identities. We require everyone to provide their real names, so you always know who you're connecting with. This helps keep our community safe." This means that under Facebook's Name Policy, users are strongly encouraged to provide their real names when creating an account on Facebook. This, according to Facebook, ensures that its users remain safe by knowing who they are connecting and communicating with at all times.

Facebook was first launched at Harvard, where the new social networking site provided a safe, intimate alternative to the other popular social networking sites. According to Danah Boyd, a social media scholar, “people provided their name because they saw the site as an extension of campus life.” Because of this, new users adopted the norms and practices of the early adopters and began to also see Facebook as a secure and private site. Through this early adoption, today, Facebook’s astronomical value stems from the quality and quantity of information it has about its users. The social networking site has become an identity service by creating a value proposition based on social norms in which users would naturally share their real names instead of feeling forced to.

Though requiring users to provide their real names such as the ones listed on credit cards, driver's licenses, and student IDs ensures safety for users, using real names could also be harmful. Emil Protalinski, technology journalist for The Next Web, states how many "Facebook users opt to use pseudonyms to hide from stalkers, abusive exes, and even governments that don't condone free speech." For these specific users, using pseudonyms allows for them to still be able to connect with colleagues, friends, and family without having to entirely worry about their safety had they provided Facebook with their real names that others could find more easily. This brings up the issues of privacy for Facebook users. “People feel as though their privacy has been violated when their agency has been undermined or when information about a particular social context has been obscured in ways that subvert people’s ability to make an informed decision about what to reveal.” Some users may feel uncomfortable with the knowledge that their real names would be publicly displayed and choose, instead, to use a fake name that appears real to Facebook under its Name Policy.

Twitter
Unlike Facebook, the Twitter social networking site does not require users to enter real names when creating Twitter accounts, and the site is entirely void of the real-name system. According to Twitter's current CEO, Dick Costolo, the social networking site does not care what a user's real name is as long as the site connects users to the information that they care about. Whether the information comes from an account with a real name or one using a pseudonym does not matter. Yet, Costolo also points out that Twitter is not necessarily in full support of the idea of users having pseudonyms; instead, Twitter is simply "wedded to people being able to use the service as they see fit." Twitter emphasizes care in its services that it provides for users rather than requiring real names. This does not mean, however, that Twitter ignores the issue regarding real identities. Regarding this matter, Twitter is able to verify accounts of prominent Twitter users such as celebrities in order to ensure identity fraud is not being committed on the social networking site.

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