The Many Sides of Being Social
by Alannah Berson
In 2014, several drag queens found themselves locked out of their Facebook accounts because their names weren’t “authentic”. [1] The accounts had been flagged after Facebook instituted a “Real Name” policy that limits what types of usernames are allowed on the site and seeks to tie people’s online presence with their legal names.
While this connection already feels dangerous for many people, queer people are particularly vulnerable as legal documents do not always match someone’s name and gender identity.
Limiting you to a single account also merges social groups, putting friends, family, and colleagues all in one place. This makes it hard to control what aspects of your identity you share with each group. While you might want to share photos of Halloween with your friends, do you really want your grandmother seeing the same ones? The “invisible” audience of your account can make it hard to write posts, because each social group expects something different from you. [2] Your uncle might expect you to be quiet and have nothing to say about politics, while your peers might know you to be outspoken about issues you really care about.
The Problem of “Authenticity”
Both platform algorithms (the programs combining the social media sites) and the sites themselves assume that there is one “truer” person behind multiple accounts. [3] This is unrealistic though, as many people have multiple sides to their identity: the respectful child, the goofy friend, the fanfic loving cosplayer, and whatever else strikes your fancy. For queer people, this tension is extra toxic because not everyone can or wants to be “out” and others might want space to try out new names and pronouns or ask questions without being identified before they are ready.
Why is This Happening?
Social media companies, especially those owned by Facebook (Facebook, Instagram, etc.), are instituting these changes in the name of cutting down on misinformation, online deception, and bullying. [4] One concern is so-called “sock puppet accounts”, which are multiple fake accounts created on a single platform in order to harass another user or manipulate a discussion. [5] However, this push for online “authenticity” also makes it easier for social media sites to sell targeted advertising and mirror governments’ interests in online surveillance. [6] This is only the latest issue in a long history of queer identities being erased online or targeted for censorship, but instead of the traditional routes of marking queer identities as obscene, they are marked as “inauthentic”. [7, 8]
What Do Algorithms Look for?
Facebook’s real name policy does not allow users to have a name with characters in multiple languages, puns, or titles (professional or religious). [9] Users are allowed “fan pages” for non-traditional names, like drag queens who often feature puns in their names. Any additional names must be listed as “aliases”. [10] It’s hard to imagine that most people want their pen names, real names, and deadnames all listed together in one place.
Instagram looks at whether the majority of your followers are in a different country than you and for instances of “coordinated activity,” but does not explain what this means. [11] So good luck if your Instagram page is popular in Asia while you live in Canada. However, the platform does not require your username or handle to match your legal documentation, which gives you slightly more wiggle room and creative space.
Both Facebook and Instagram can require you to show copies of your legal documents if your account gets flagged as violating their rules around names and/or authentic behavior. However, Instagram will not require you to share your legal name with your followers because “pseudonymity is still an important part of Instagram”. [12]
What You Can Do:
- Express your different sides on different platforms not owned by Facebook. Consider Nicole Lee’s Endgadget article, where she discusses using a network of Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram to express her various sides. [13] Twitter in particular does not have a real name policy and has very few rules about what can or cannot be used in an online handle. [14] For instance, you could put your family on Facebook, your artistic side on Instagram, and your goofy/sarcastic side on Twitter.
- When choosing usernames, if you feel comfortable, consider crafting a pen name that follows established US English naming conventions, even if it is not your legal name.
Recommendations:
- Do your research and be deliberate about how you use a particular platform. Each platform has distinct aesthetics and conventions, so lean into them like Dolly Parton did in her famous January 2020 meme about profile photos on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and Tinder [15, 16].
Image shared from @dollyparton on Twitter under Twitter’s Terms of Service.
- Check your privacy settings on a regular basis to make sure you are only sharing things with the people you want to be seeing them.
- Follow the artistic tradition of using a pen name and/or pseudonyms to help distinguish between one or more accounts and what part(s) of your identity they express. [17]
- Only choose names that you are comfortable with. Your names and identities are all real and valid parts of who you are, so don’t let this note change that.
Do you think having multiple identities online is useful or important? Why? How do you manage your identities online? If you have any tips and tricks of your own, please add them in the comments if you feel comfortable doing so.
References
[1] Kitzie, V. (2019, April 10). “That looks like me or something I can do”: Affordances and constraints in the online identity work of US LGBTQ+ millennials. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 70(2), 1340-1351. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.24217
[2] Boyd, D. (2014). It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens. New Haven; London: Yale University Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt5vm5gk [Note: this resource is not open access]
[3] Haimson, O. L., & Hoffmann, A. L. (2016). Constructing and enforcing “authentic” identity online: Facebook, real names, and non-normative identities. First Monday, 21(6). https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v21i6.6791
[4, 6, 10] (2016). Queen don’t compute: reading and casting shade on Facebook’s real names policy. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 33 (1), 6-22. 10.1080/15295036.2015.1129430 [Note: this resource is not open access]
[5] Kumar, S., Cheng, J., Leskovec, J., & Subrahmanian, V.S. (2017). An army of me: Sockpuppets in online discussion communities: Proceedings of the 26th International Conference on the World Wide Web. International World Wide Web Conference Committee. https://arxiv.org/pdf/1703.07355.pdf
[7] Duguay, S. (2018, December 6). Why Tumblr’s ban on adult content is bad for LGBTQ youth. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/why-tumblrs-ban-on-adult-content-is-bad-for-lgbtq-youth-108215
[8] Brethour, P. (2007, January 23). Little Sisters closing in on legal battle. The Globe and Mail. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/little-sisters-closing-book-on-legal-battle/article17989595/ [Note: This resource is not open access, but is accessible by making a free account]
[9] Facebook. (n.d.). What names are allowed on Facebook?. Facebook Help Center. https://www.facebook.com/help/112146705538576
[11, 12] Instagram. (2020, August 13). Introducing new authenticity measures on Instagram. https://about.instagram.com/blog/announcements/introducing-new-authenticity-measures-on-instagram#:~:text=We%20want%20the%20content%20you,pattern%20of%20potential%20inauthentic%20behavior.
[13] Lee, N. (2016, March 4). Having multiple online identities is more normal than you think. Engadget. https://www.engadget.com/2016-03-04-multiple-online-identities.html
[14] Twitter. (n.d.). Help with username registration. Twitter Help Center. https://help.twitter.com/en/managing-your-account/twitter-username-rules
[15] Grey Ellis, E. (2020, January 24). Dolly Parton’s meme exposes social media’s masquerade. Wired. https://www.wired.com/story/dolly-parton-linkedin-facebook-instagram-tinder-meme/
[16] Parton, Dolly [@DollyParton]. (2020, January 21). Get you a woman who can do it all [Tweet]. Twitter. https://twitter.com/dollyparton/status/1219681321762656256?lang=en
[17] Brewer, R.L. (2020, January 14). How and when should writers use a pen name or pseudonym?. Writer’s Digest. https://www.writersdigest.com/publishing-insights/how-and-when-should-writers-use-a-pen-name-or-pseudonym#:~:text=To%20use%20or%20not%20use,similar%20to%20your%20actual%20identity)
Written by Alannah Berson
Edited by Rachael Bradshaw
Featured image from “What do CEOs think of social media” (2014) used under Creative Commons 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication
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