Photography with the Left Eye

But it doesn’t treat its customers as if it cares too much about them. One of its (IMO, somewhat strange) obsessions is that it wants all of users to be “real people.” Never mind that it might be a bad idea to disclose some information about that real person in a public way. Never mind stalkers. Never mind that your prospective employer might look for clues about you. Anyway, they’re now kicking users off when they think you have a fake name (from the SF Chron):

Alicia Istanbul woke up one recent day to find herself locked out of the Facebook account she opened in 2007, one that Facebook suddenly deemed fake.

“They should at least give you a warning, or at least give you the benefit of the doubt,” she said. “I was on it all day. I had built my entire social network around it. That’s what Facebook wants you to do.”

Let’s see. The easiest thing to do is the think of a plausible, fake name. So FB is going after the implausible names (i.e., the ones more likely to be real). And they don’t bother to even ask. That’s just stupid.

Oh. And I care, a little. FB seems to have kicked me off. They didn’t give warning, or a reason. I just couldn’t log in one day. Fortunately, I had not done what Ms. Istanbul did (although one client emailed me with some alarm)….I did not build my social network around FB. And I won’t rely very much on any service that can act in a simply capricious way and decide (or have ‘bots decide) that you don’t fit them, today.

Deluxious and Kamilion, a few days ago.