Author: India Bradshaw

Identity in Communities and Networks Social Networks

“Authentic” selves: How Facebook’s push for real names causes users wishing to explore their identity to invest in alternative platforms

Post author By India Bradshaw
Post date 15/05/2020
27 Comments on “Authentic” selves: How Facebook’s push for real names causes users wishing to explore their identity to invest in alternative platforms

On the early web, anonymity and pseudonymity were both accepted and expected (Christopherson, 2007). Today, our social web is a very different place, where users expect “authenticity” from one another (Lim et al., 2015), and major social networking services are policed by strict “real name” policies (Chen, 2018). Facebook, a social networking service with 2.5 billion monthly active users (Hutchinson, 2020), was an early implementer of real name policy, and continues to use it to police users Read more [...]

Tags Anonymity, authenticity, context collapse, Facebook, identity construction, identity exploration, pseudonymity, real name policy, social media identity