To those of you who follow me on facebook, you may no longer find me there. Here's why:

When I registered by facebook account I decided that I would register with the name Timothy Jedi McDonough. If you are familiar with my online presence than you understand that "Jedi" might as well be my middle name. This account and many other accounts I use online are a play on "Jedi" (Idej is Jedi spelled backwards). This is what I saw when I tried to log in earlier:



Facebook pinned me as having a fake name. Is this right? People have said to me upon first IRL interactions "oh, I've seen you on fb, you're Tim Jedi, aren't you?!" I checked the facebook Terms and only once do they come anywhere close to making an argument for rightfully disabling my account. These two sentences are written under the User Conduct heading in the Terms section of facebook.com:

"In addition, you agree not to use the Service or the Site to:

...impersonate any person or entity, or falsely state or otherwise misrepresent yourself, your age or your affiliation with any person or entity"

AND

"use or attempt to use another's account, service or system without authorization from the Company, or create a false identity on the Service or the Site."

This is especially annoying because all sorts of new shit is being added to my account from my recent trip to England. I fired off this angry email to privacy@facebook.com as soon as I learned of their transgression (and not mine):

"Dear Facebook Staff,

To start, forgive me if this was sent to the wrong address and please forward it
to a department which is concerned with these issues.

Earlier today my facebook account was disabled under what I believe to be false
pretenses. When attempting to log into the account a received a message stating
that my name was in fact fake. I referred to the facebook terms of use in order
that I may further understand why this happened. Only twice in the extensive
terms page is there any mention of using a fake name. They are as follows:

In addition, you agree not to use the Service or the Site to:
- impersonate any person or entity, or falsely state or otherwise misrepresent
yourself, your age or your affiliation with any person or entity
AND
use or attempt to use another's account, service or system without
authorization from the Company, or create a false identity on the
Service or the Site.

If you can prove that I have done any of these things I would appreciate how and
under what circumstances you decided to delete my account. I have been
completely honest about who I am and the relationships I have on the site. I am
recognized by the name I registered with is by my family, friends and peers.

I understand the need for you too keep the site clean and free from from people
taking advantage of its anonymity but arbitrarily deleting accounts without
provocation seems over the top. I put years of work into maintaining my page
and creating friendships through your service and it would be sad to see that
all go to waste. I know that one person isn't going to matter all that much to
you, but If you cannot restore my account I will not be creating a new one and
will refuse to recommend your site to anyone."

I am not creating a new account if my old one can not be restored and I encourage everyone to find new means of keeping your friends up to date. You only really have 10 friends anyhow, those 1,492 other people are hardly even acquantiences. Leave those shmucks in the dust and start taking full advantage of your email and blog.

Meanwhile, this is the best place to find me. You can get stumbleupon and twitter updates and soon a link to my picasa web album. Enjoy.