Facebook is joining the fight against terrorism – one woman named Isis at a time.

Isis Anchalee, an engineer based in San Francisco, complained on Twitter on Tuesday afternoon that her Facebook account had been disabled, and suggested it was because of her name.

“Why would you disable my personal account? MY REAL NAME IS ISIS ANCHALEE /facepalm,” she tweeted at Facebook.

@facebook why would you disable my personal account? MY REAL NAME IS ISIS ANCHALEE /facepalm — Isis Anchalee (@isisAnchalee) November 16, 2015

One of her Facebook friends noted that their message thread had been marked as spam. “Facebook thinks I’m a terrorist and froze my account,” she replied.

She said she sent Facebook a screenshot of her passport, proving that her birth name was Isis.

@facebook I sent you my passport but it's not good enough for validation? — Isis Anchalee (@isisAnchalee) November 17, 2015

Facebook thinks I'm a terrorist. Apparently sending them a screenshot of my passport is not good enough for them to reopen my account. — Isis Anchalee (@isisAnchalee) November 17, 2015

She said the third effort she made to verify her identity proved successful.

Third time sending in my information is the charm I guess. I'm back in :) pic.twitter.com/m0demGZitw — Isis Anchalee (@isisAnchalee) November 17, 2015

A Facebook researcher, Omid Farivar, tweeted at Anchalee publicly to apologise eight hours after her initial complaint on Tuesday. “Isis, sorry about this. I don’t know what happened. I’ve reported it to the right people and we’re working on fixing it.”



Earlier this year Facebook cemented a policy requiring people to use their real names. Users are asked to refrain from adding symbols, punctuation, unusual characters, professional or religious titles, or “offensive or suggestive words of any kind” to their names to “keep our community safe”.

But execution of that policy has been uneven, as Nadia Drake wrote in Wired in June.

“Part of the motivation is stopping the proliferation of celebrity imposter accounts and profiles made for pets. But it’s also allowed Facebook to shutter the accounts of real people, based on ‘authenticity’. What does ‘authentic’ mean, though? It’s both confusing and contextual, because identity itself is confusing and contextual,” she wrote.

“Despite those complexities, Facebook believes it can determine authenticity for you.”

A Facebook spokesman told the Guardian the error was made as part of “a fake account reporting process”, and apologised for the trouble it caused. “It was not connected to the individual’s name and her account has already been restored.”

Anchalee did not respond to requests for comment. Anchalee told a reporter from Tech Insider that she wanted to avoid a “media storm” over the issue: “I just wanted my account back 😊”.

Days earlier, Anchalee had vented her frustration with ride-sharing service drivers’ remarks about her name.

I wish I had $5 for every time a Lyft or Uber driver asks me about my name. It's starting to make me angry. — Isis Anchalee (@isisAnchalee) November 15, 2015

NO I will NOT change my name. Wtf people — Isis Anchalee (@isisAnchalee) November 16, 2015

An online petition calling for media to “stop calling terrorists [Islamic State] by our name” closed on 24 August with more than 56,800 signatures.



Its founder, Isis Martinez of Miami, Florida, said women named Isis were “facing the unnecessary backlash of this irresponsible choice by the media”.

“We are grateful for the response and coverage we have received from the media, but most media outlets continue to desecrate our name and even go as far as misquoting the president of the United States saying Isis, when he only refers to the terror group as Isil. Please sign and help the thousands of women and little girls named Isis who are suffering from this backlash caused by the media. Help us take back our name.”



Martinez quit Facebook in January after the Twitter page of the United States Central Command, part of the country’s military, was hacked by a group claiming to represent Isis.

“Pretty sure the hackers aren’t actual terrorists, just digital aholes,” she tweeted on 13 January. “No thanks to media outlets who continue to call those monsters by our name and have been relentless in using it despite the havoc it has caused so many of us, especially the little ones and their parents.”

Today, this Isis surrenders to the media and holds them accountable for the irresponsible and widespread distortion of our name. #signingoff — Isis Martinez ॐ (@IsisMiami) January 13, 2015

Isis Anchalee, meanwhile, is in favour of referring to the group as Daesh.



Can I get a "yes yes" to forever call them Daesh? — Isis Anchalee (@isisAnchalee) November 17, 2015

The term Daesh has been used by some world leaders, including François Hollande, to refer to Isis. Where Isis is an acronym for the term “Islamic State in Iraq and Syria”, Daesh is an anglicised version of the acronym when written in Arabic.

It is close in appearance to the word daes, meaning “someone or something that crushes”. Some Arabic speakers say the word sounds ridiculous, while others say the shape of the word is reminiscent of Arabic words used in the dark ages, and so seems old-fashioned and barbaric.