Gay Pride Month starts with a small protest from the LGBTQ community at Facebook's Menlo Park headquarters

Jun 2, 2015 10:18 GMT  ·  By

The LGBTQ community is back with a vengeance, protesting again in front of the Facebook Menlo Park offices, taking issue with the company's "real name policy" which got many of its members banned from the site.

Starting the Gay (LGBTQ) Pride month in style, a group of drag queens gathered in front of the Facebook HQ sporting signs that read: "Facebook condones cyber bullying," "Dear Facebook: I am a real person, my name is my business," "Facebook: stop badgering people for I.D., My name is as real as yours," "Facebook: remove the fake name reporting option."

They all stood in front of a board painted in the LGBTQ rainbow colors with a giant "Like" icon overlaid on top, shouting their disapproval at how Facebook treats people with business or stage names.

What was the protest about?

Facebook's problems with the LGBTQ community started in the autumn of 2014, when a user went on a spree, reporting and getting multiple accounts belonging to drag queens banned from the network.

Facebook later apologized for the issue but continued with its regular policy, allowing users to report any other Facebook member that's not using his real name.

The apology did specify that a user's real name didn't have to be his legal name, but apparently LGBTQ members continued to get banned from the site, which got the community enraged again.

This is the second time members of the LGBTQ community protest Facebook's headquarters, and this time they're asking for the service to completely remove its fake name reporting option.

Their arguments are that Facebook has other ways of reporting fake accounts, and its members are subject to abuse by other users on the site.

But their requests didn't end here. Protestors also want Facebook to stop asking for legal IDs when validating accounts, and want the company to provide a way for them to answer and appeal an account ban.

Facebook's response was quicker than you'd expect

Hours after the drag queens’ demonstration, the Facebook Safety page was updated with a new message, detailing how the company plans to handle future occurrences regarding the issues brought up by the protestors.

First and foremost, the fake name reporting tool will not be removed, since it "has defined and distinguished our service from its earliest days," the Facebook post explains.

Second, an update was made to the social network, currently available for the US alone, that will allow banned accounts access to their timeline for seven days to validate their identity, having the fake name report dismissed.

Changes were also made to the language used on the site, which now doesn't say anything about users having to use their "legal" names anymore.

Regarding the documents needed to validate a person's identity, these were also expanded to include more than IDs, credit cards, and driving licenses, now reported members being able to verify their name using more trivial documents like a magazine subscription or a library card.