I don't really think the connection that he tries to make between Facebook's real name policy and the need for anonymity for whistleblowers/oppressed regimes is really fair.
Facebook wants to be a social portal were you feed your desire to be seen and make stupid updates about your life and contact your friends when you go out with them.
I don't really think that Facebooks policies are crucial for whistleblowers :D
What should be done?
Stop using Facebook. Everybody has e-mail, it's quick enough, it's fun and people tend to think before they send off an e-mail (something i miss with instant messaging).
The niveau on facebook has been hiding under the table since i don't know when and that is true for their policies and for how people use facebook, so instead of trying to force the niveau to come out, how about giving up already?
If Facebook is such an important part of one's life that even while being unhappy with their policies you can't give up on the service, then that's just sad....
I do not believe that for one second. As someone who has interviewed hundreds of candidates, there are many things a prospective employer really, really does not want to know. Religion, sexual orientation, veteran status, the list goes on... A company that finds out these things and rejects a candidate for any reason, even a legitimate technical one, is begging to be sued.
The laws about these things are there because at least some employers do want to find out these things. Some of those employers would love a more innocent-sounding way of finding out those details exactly to reduce the chance that the candidate will think they have grounds to sue.
Then use it for exactly that. The point is if i use facebook for having a profile cause my employer wants me too then i can afford to (mostly) ignore facebooks policies on privacy or real name policies, because i want my real name to begin with and don't give them every crappy detail about my life...
or explain to your employer why you don't use facebook and see how he reacts!
I read once about some security expert who had to deny connections to hackers as part of his job and then instead of doing that explained to his employer that he is part of the hacker community and is speaking at hacker conferences etc and what he considers to be a hacker etc and it turned out to not be such a big deal as he thought in the beginning....
What should be done? Stop using Facebook. Everybody has e-mail, it's quick enough, it's fun and people tend to think before they send off an e-mail (something i miss with instant messaging).
The niveau on facebook has been hiding under the table since i don't know when and that is true for their policies and for how people use facebook, so instead of trying to force the niveau to come out, how about giving up already?
If Facebook is such an important part of one's life that even while being unhappy with their policies you can't give up on the service, then that's just sad....