Link bait title of the day: Facebook Declares War on the Blogosphere

How do you get attention when you feel you've been wronged? A time-tested technique: make wild unsupported claims and/or rush to ridiculous conclusions. ("The sky is falling.")

A blogger who uses the pseudonym "Jon Swift" reports that Facebook deleted his profile because he didn't include his real name.

As best I can tell, the company is just enforcing their terms of service on a single blogger. That's hardly a war, no "declaration" has been made, and (even if both were true), deleting accounts does not affect the blogosphere in any way.

Would a straightforward title have gotten the attention of Robert Scoble, or sparked Dennis Howlett to call Facebook Orwellian? Perhaps not, but perhaps so.

Even without exaggeration, the issue draws sympathy from Stan Schroeder at Frantic Industries blog:

Do a search for Jesus Christ on Facebook. Or Flash Gordon. Or any other obviously fake name. You’ll instantly receive hundreds, if not thousands, of results.

If you can’t uphold your own terms of service on everyone, why do it on the selected few? I don’t really see how Facebook can consistently and systematically check the truthfulness of user provided profile data.

Good point.

Speaking of Facebook, here's my gripe: requiring date of birth strikes me as an invitation to identity theft. Hmm; wonder how that would play as a headline?