I recently came across a notice in my Twitter feed that someone has started a petition to get Facebook to allow avatars to have a Facebook page.
See here for the petition.
Maybe it’s just the cynic in me speaking, but this is doomed to fail.
First – avatars are already allowed to have a Facebook ‘page.’ With a page, you can call it anything you want – whether it’s for your business (RL or SL), your stage persona, or your SL avatar name.
What people want is to have a Facebook profile using their avatar names (or whatever name they’d like to use).
I’m sure you heard the recent upheaval when several well-known drag queens took the fight over their stage names to Facebook. Facebook agreed to ‘revisit’ their real names policy.
Yeah, right.
Now, I hate Facebook. I’ve stated that several times.
It’s a great tool for communication. I get that. I just don’t agree with their policies, so I don’t use it.
People seem to forget that Facebook is a business. What does it sell?
YOU.
Your personal information – your likes, your dislikes, and whatever other information they can collect about you.
And when you sign up for a Facebook account, you agree to all of this. Including the part that says that you MUST use your RL information.
Sure, you’re free to disregard the rules and set up a profile using a different name if you want.
But that also means you agree that Facebook, if/when they discover that your account is not under your real name, can delete your account with no warning.
No one is forcing you to use Facebook.
If you don’t like their policies, there are plenty of other choices.
Take the red pill, people.
Please.
A Kat and A Mouse 
I completely understand your point of view. but as a troop we use Facebook as a working group that we can access when we’re not in world to share pictures of sets, concepts, music, ideas. We use it to work. It also allows us to have an out of world social connection. and no other platform has given us that. Having our account under our stage names is very important to many of us for many reasons. This is true for people who are in role plays groups, who have other personas for games, etc. As well as protecting women/men who are avoiding stalkers and exs who have cyber bullied them. For some people the connection that they have through the social media is a lifeline. It is important to fight it for the bigger picture.
There are other options besides Facebook that would allow the same out-of-SL connections. They are just not as popular or widely used.
I completely agree that Facebook should allow avatar/charater/RP/stage names. But the reason they don’t is because what they sell is YOU. If you are not you, but some other name, they have nothing to sell their real customers – companies who want your RL data.
By all means, use Facebook if you want to. Just be aware that the product isn’t really ‘free.’ 🙂