The problem comes at the interface where this notion collides with reality. Names aren’t that simple and the reasons people use names are also not that simple. It’s been covered a thousand times before. We use names that don’t match our ID on Facebook for safety, or because we’re trans, or because we’re just straight up not known by our legal names.

Having chosen its policy, Facebook has to enforce it. And because its policy attempts to hammer the reality of names into a constrained model they end up having to make a trade-off in the edge cases. Some people are not allowed to use their names so that everyone else’s can be enforced.

Worse still, they allow people to report each other for using “fake” names. People know this, and they use it as a mechanism to kick each other off the site. If you’re a marginalised person, such as a trans person, you may be left with no way to get back on. Facebook have handed an enormous hammer to those who would like to silence us, and time after time I see that hammer coming down on trans women who have just stepped out of line by suggesting that perhaps we’re being mistreated. In fact, it happened to me shortly after commenting on a Facebooker’s post that Facebook needs to step up on this issue.

Facebook is a vital tool for community, especially for those of us who are marginalised. It withholds our access to friends and support in order to enforce their policy, and in so doing we are faced with a stark choice between a name we do not identify with and do not want to use, or being disconnected. If we make the choice to stay we find ourselves increasingly recognised by other people by that forced name.

By forcing us to change our names on the site, Facebook changes the names we are known by in real life — whether we like it or not.

I really cannot understate the impact being kicked off the site can have. Facebook is my main way of communicating with much of my social circle. It’s how I’ve found housing and housemates. It’s where I’ve found job leads, received support in hard times, and helped other people through theirs. My legal name is long since changed and perhaps that’s enough to tip the balance towards using it, but I have not once seen a trans person return to the site under their old name no matter the costs of leaving the site permanently.

It’s an insult that Facebook is sponsoring Pride in SF, marching and flying the rainbow flag and helping everyone change their profile picture, when they cannot fix this simple thing.

Facebook needs to do better than this. Technology is not neutral, and a technology that a billion people use to communicate has the power to warp and change reality around itself. Adding custom gender was a small change, yet it hit the front page of CNN, angered Fox News and got its own segment on The Daily Show. It encouraged other large sites such as Google Plus and OKCupid to handle nonbinary gender too. It exposed the world to the notion that gender might not be a binary. That’s profound. It’s time for Facebook to step up and do the same thing for names.

Update: We’re protesting this policy by deactivating our accounts for a day. #LogOffForPride and make engagement drop instead of rise.

Update update: Hi, press people. You can refer to me as “Zip”, “@zip” or “Zoë Cat”.

* Belated edit: I regret this phrasing. Others had made progress before me, and many many people made it happen. A huge portion of the project happened after I left, and I feel that in my haste to write this I took more credit than was merited. There were at least three other trans people who worked on the project other than myself. I’d also like to make clear that this was more Alex Shultz’s baby than mine and without him it wouldn’t have been politically possible. He did incredible work. Please remain mindful of that when he speaks on behalf of FB on the subject of names.