My stepdaughter is an artist, photographer, and occasional model. She promotes her work, among other ways, through a personal website and a Facebook page. I prefer to check out the latter, as there’s a not-zero chance that I’ll encounter nudes of her and of one of my nieces on the webpage but not on Facebook. Unfortunately, she was recently locked out of the FB page because it was named pseudonymously for privacy reasons, which seems all kinds of fucked up to me.
But that’s just me. Facebook users: would you be bothered if an artist’s page had such a name–“Cinderella the Rhymer”, say, rather than “Jessica Rhymer”?
She needs to set it up as a Page (like a business would) as opposed to a profile, then she can name it anything she wants.
Anything she posts to that, she can then post to her personal page, via that page, and eventually get enough people liking her ‘business’ page that it should be able to carry it’s own weight without her having to promote it all the time.
As for what you were talking about it, while I don’t really care, I do think it’s odd when people do that. I suppose I actually get mildly annoyed. But, either way, it’s always been FB’s policy that it supposed to be you’re real name and they do sort of police it, kinda.
I get annoyed. It’s awkward to tag your friends in posts or to refer to them when they have weird ass names. And I don’t see why they have to be special snowflakes with secret identities.
It’s extra weird when you interact with people you don’t know in a FB Group situation. Especially when the name is like “JimAndJenny Smith” and you gotta refer to them as “JimAndJenny” to tag them or just in general blah.
And I agree with Joey. Make a professional page so your friends don’t have to interact with you as a business. It just gets messy otherwise.
No, it doesn’t bother me at all. I have quite a few former students (who are still in high school) as friends, and they seem to change their names at the drop of a hat.
However, like ZipperJJ, I dislike the AnnnAndy Dahl or FredAndEthelFlintstone. It always seems like one of them doesn’t trust the other enough to allow him or her his or her own page.
Of course it wouldn’t bother me. It’s bad enough that some websites try to force you to use your real name. I’d be a hypocrite if I thought I’d have the right to enforce it.
I cite the policy as all the proof you need that you are the product on Facebook. There’s no other legitimate reason to require a real name. And I’m actually hoping there will be a legal issue, soon, since there’s actually legal problems in enforcing that restriction on minors. It’s why Google+ can’t force that issue anymore.
She should set up a Page, rather than a profile - it works much better for business use anyway, and then she can name it whatever she likes
Just one slight tip though - you can convert a profile to a page - what might work for you is to set up a profile WITH THE SAME OR SIMILAR NAME YOU WANT FOR THE PAGE, invite your friends to like it, send out friend requests (pages can’t make friend requests) and then when you get up to a few hundred friends convert it to a page - all the friends will be turned into fans, so you have an automatic kick-start on your fanbase
But, just to be clear, if you use a fake name, you’re unlikely to have any issues, it’s the people that use the name “Katy ObamaIn2012 Jacobson” or “Laura QUEEN_OF_ZION Smith” that have Facebook asking for a picture of their photo ID. If your real name is Susie Oberman and you set your account up as Susie Smith you should be fine. In fact, it’s very common for teachers to set their accounts up either with their first and last name being the first name/maiden name or first name/middle name to make it a little harder for students to find.
What’s the legal problem with forcing a minor to use their real name?
I know a few model/performer types who have both their personal FB profile and another, pseudonymous one for their work. I think it’s a damn good idea, and am always vaguely surprised when I see someone who uses their FB page for their work (in any field) and doesn’t do that.
Facebook has Opinions about this, which pretty much amount to ‘make it a Page, not a Profile, so that we can make the most money off you’. However, as with basically every other opinion that comes out of that company, I disagree. (Previous examples of such opinions include “People don’t actually care about privacy”, “You want to see this anti-vaxxer BS posted by someone you last saw in Junior High” and “PHP is an acceptable tool for use in web development”)
You don’t really need to have a fake name to hide yourself on Facebook. Using privacy settings properly, nobody can search google and come up with my facebook profile, nobody can find my profile if they’re not logged in, and if they log in and search for me, they get to see my profile icon (not my face), my cover photo (innocuous), and that I am indeed female (the one thing facebook doesn’t let you hide is gender). And that’s it. Unless you want to hide the fact that you’re on facebook whatsoever, there’s no reason to use pseudonyms for average people. Your employer can’t find jack about you if you set it up properly.
Anyway, reiterating the fact that a page, not your profile, is the best way to go about the professional side of your business.
And due to the privacy stuff available listed above, someone using a fake name makes me think they’re kinda dumb and shouldn’t be using social media if they don’t understand how to manage their visibility.