Disabled
Last night Sister Anne posted via Twitter.
Facebook disabled my account! They claimed that SrAnne was a fake name. Please FB members, take my part and help me get reinstated!
Facebook has done other odd things in the past such as remove the Father and Sister from the front of the names of Catholic priests and religious. This is done in the name of making sure only real people are on Facebook which is an impossible task. I know one person who has a Facebook page for their dog. Now there is an understandable concern for fraud in building a fake persona, but it seems to me that if they have an account they are suspicious of they could easily ask the Facebook friends of that person or ask for some proof before disabling an account. Seems rather heavy handed.
Sister Anne who is a Daughter of St. Paul (getting disabled at the start of the year of St. Paul is mildly ironic) updates on her blog.
I used SrAnne as my name because Facebook had earlier deleted the "Sister" from "Sister Anne." I just wrote(disabled@facebook.com) to protest (mildly), saying that SrAnne was as close as I could get to my real name, given the restrictions on titles in FB. "Sister Anne" appears on my passport; doesn't that count as a "real" name?
So if you are on Facebook please write them at disabled@facebook.com as I did.
Update: Her page has been restored after she had to send a picture of a page from her Passport.
Known as 
Meanwhile, I personally know more than one person running around on facebook who just use an initial in lieu of a last name, and have seen others with decidedly "made up" names... Are the Facebook honchos all anti-religion or something?
I have an account on Facebook using "Sr" at the beginning of my name, and so far I've been lucky. I guess it's just a matter of time until I get booted off too!
They got rid of my title before as well. I know one who's gone on to use "Pater" -- which they probably think is d00dsp3@k for "Peter." There's a FB group called "Stop removing priests' and religious' titles" or something like that, to which I belong.
I agree that this is an outrage. But if Facebook doesn't like these titles or considers them suspect, perhaps they shouldn't be used. Your profile picture should be able to say what your name cannot.
Ok, wait a minute. It's considered hate speech to call someone their apparent gender if they don't wish to be "labeled" as that gender, but it's ok to prohibit public priestly and religious identity by not acknowledging titles? I hope that Dr., Esq., etc, are also disallowed, then, but even so it's not the same situation.
Do they permit religious names? John Paul, Anthony Mary, Thomas Dominic, etc, or are first + last names always necessary?
I don't really get what the big deal about facebook.com (or myspace.com) is anyway. If folks in Facebook management are being jerks (which it seems they are), why don't we all spend our time doing something other than browsing their site?
Why would anyone over sixteen or so want a Facebook or MySpace?
I have Bell's Palsy and enjoy your blog very much. First time I've commented, but have been reading here and there.
Great blog. I enjoy reading it every chance I get and value your opinions!