Facebook lets Salman Rushdie keep his name

Well that was big of them.

Writer Salman Rushdie reported on Monday that his Facebook account had been deactivated, and after Facebook demanded proof of his identity to get it reactivated, the social networking giant then automatically renamed it to Ahmed Rushdie. Ahmed is Rushdie’s first name, but he only uses it on official documents; the world knows him as Salman.

It only took about two hours of social firestorm on Twitter for Facebook to change its mind and allow him to be known as Salman Rushdie once again, but the altercation highlights the growing issue of online identity. How important is it that we are who we say we are for our various faces on the internet, and who decides what we can and cannot call ourselves?

Seems kind of important that we are who we say we are when we’re saying that we’re somebody famous. It seems even more important when we’re saying we’re somebody both famous and controversial, like Salman Rushdie.

But Twitter has some kind of system for verifying that famous people are who they claim to be. Why doesn’t Facebook?

Previously:

• Salman. Dude. You rock. I should read one of your books.