I must confess that when I started my business Peterbphotos I was tempted to change the name on my account to something to identify with my photography. Then I remember when I first signed up for an account eons ago while I was working in technology a friend & rep from Microsoft came to see me for our monthly meeting, gave me a tip about this new thing called Facebook, he said it was going to be the next biggest thing, recommended I get an account. On signing up I realised I couldn’t choose a nickname like I had on my ICQ or MySpace accounts, I had to use my real name. Must confess at the time I was a bit annoyed about this but I had a look at Facebook’s Real name policy which advised strongly against using a fake name. It stipulates that “people use their real identities” and “provide their real names, so you always know who you’re connecting with.” The rule is designed to “keep the community safe. So I followed their instructions but didn’t use the account for years until everyone was talking about it. Then I started using it to connect with old school friends & family across the pond, people who I hadn’t seen in ages.
Years later when I decided to start planning to take photography to another lever I learnt that I could set up pages so I created a fan page and started posting some of my photos on there also linked it back to my website.
Earlier today I heard a rumour that Facebook was deleting accounts then a friend contacted me asking about someone else account & their profile now says “Sorry, this page isn’t available”. Now this could be a coincidence but I looked around for a bit & seems quite a few profiles now say the same thing. I’ve also heard this is a scam but, is it? Or has Facebook started to enforce its terms which it seems everyone clicked “I Agree” to but no one ever reads when they signed up but decided not to follow-up on. Some people have also had their profiles changes to pages in cases where Facebook thinks the profile looks like it represents a business.
Have any of your friends accounts mysteriously gone missing? There are speculation about the motivations behind the name purge.
If your real name isn’t listed on your account, and you are worried about losing your account then Facebook has a link in their help pages that says “ please change it now. If you’re unable to change it, learn more here “.
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