In a Facebook post, the company’s chief product officer apologized to “the affected community of drag queens, drag kings, transgender, and extensive community of our friends, neighbors, and members of the LGBT community.”
A sign at Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif.
AP Photo/Ben Margot, File
In an apology to the LGBT community Wednesday, Facebook said it promises to make fixes to how it enforces a long-held policy requiring users to display their "real names" on personal profiles. LGBT community advocates have railed against the policy in recent weeks, saying it unfairly affects transgender users and drag queen performers.
"We owe you a better service and a better experience using Facebook, and we're going to fix the way this policy gets handled so everyone affected here can go back to using Facebook as you were," said Chris Cox, the company's chief product officer, in a statement on Facebook. "[W]e see through this event that there's lots of room for improvement in the reporting and enforcement mechanisms, tools for understanding who's real and who's not, and the customer service for anyone who's affected."
The development comes after LGBT community advocates met with Facebook representatives, including Cox, at the company's Menlo Park, Calif. headquarters on Wednesday. Mark Snyder, who was present at meeting and who serves a communications director at Transgender Law Center, said he welcomes the company's apology and plan as "significant progress."
"I think that Facebook is going to make sure everyone in our community is able to be their authentic self online," Snyder told BuzzFeed News when reached by phone. "We are grateful for this apology and we look forward to working with Facebook on specific solutions in the coming months. It was a very productive meeting."
In his statement, Cox did not say what specific changes would be made to how the company handles profiles that have been reported to be in violation of the "real names" policy.
In recent weeks, LGBT advocates raised concerns that Facebook's policy requiring documents to prove users' "real names" disproportionately impacts the LGBT community; particularly, transgender users and drag queen performers who often use names on their personal profiles that don't match forms of identification the social network requests for verification.
"Facebook's requirement that users provide a form of identification to prove their 'real names' is unfair and disproportionately impacts our already vulnerable communities," advocates — representing numerous LGBT, immigrant, and anti-violence groups across the country — said in a letter presented to Facebook at the meeting. "This policy lends itself to abuse; some people are using this tool to target and harass our communities with the intent of erasing our identities. Many people need to use a chosen name in order to feel safe or to be able to express their authentic identity online."
The advocates first met with Facebook officials on Sept. 17, which resulted in the company temporarily reinstating hundreds of accounts that were recently deleted due to reports that the users were violating the policy by using their preferred names or performer names. However, Facebook refused to budge on changing the policy at the time.
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