Over the past week, a number of users of the popular photo sharing app Instagram and parent company Facebook have been locked out of their accounts and prompted by both services to upload images of their government issued photo IDs to regain access, as CNET [1] first reported on Tuesday.
Via Hacker News [2], “Instagram Asking For Your Government Issued Photo IDs Now, Too [3]”.
I'm not sure how I feel about this. I mean, there was the Google Plus real name controversy [4] a year and a half ago and that didn't go over so well and now we have FaceBook [5] (who owns Instagram [6]) possibly, maybe, pushing rather silently, a “real name” policy for its site.
On the one hand, it's a company, and a company can run its site as it sees fit, and we, as potential users, can use or not use that company as we see fit. But the whole FaceGoogleBookPlus social space does seem to be taking over the Internet these past few years and it's my fear that the only way to use the Intarwebs will be through one of these large social networking sites.
I think overall, I find it spooky.
(Oh, and Rebel One? That's his real name. Just look on his driver's license. Okay, okay, it's not really Rebel One—that's just a nickname for his real name, The Rebellious One.)
[1] http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57565293-93/instagram-account-
[2] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5120496
[3] http://idealab.talkingpointsmemo.com/2013/01/instagram
[4] https://www.google.com/search?q=google+controversy+real+name