On September 11, 2015 Facebook threatened to terminate the Facebook account of Ozymandius King if he did not change his name. King’s refusal to comply with Facebook policy has sparked a debate revolving around this controversial policy.
Jennifer Ceara Firehawk wrote; "It's sad FB feels they need to do this. I got hit with the name change stuff so I cannot change it to my SL name...it's an old alt name but I have too much time into the page to start a new one. If we are not using our page to abuse or grief others they just need to leave us be. We are not hurting anyone… FB does not realize some SL people earn lindens to turn into RL money and that is how they make a living. Once you force a person to change the SL name they will lose money due to not being able to find them on FB or SL as they may use FB for their buisness or advertise. So they end up losing buisness and money.”
An anonymous source suggested; "Tell him, to click on "Update" and then reverse his name, it should work :) … it works, for me it did, i had the same issue, and changed *** ***** to ***** *** and now i am still here :)"
Another anonymous source wrote; "Fb did the same to my Avs fb page. I changed the name, was allowed access to my page, then a couple of weeks later changed the name back to the original.”
Only a few days before King’s account was deleted I spoke with Ozymandius and told him about these suggestions. His reply came swift.
“I shouldn’t have to change my name or pretend to change my name to keep my Facebook account. The Facebook owners and investors profit because I have an account with them. It’s like the financial institutions and the government. This is a democracy not a dictatorship therefore the institutions exist to serve us. We’ve been so brainwashed by the mainstream media to accept the lives of slaves who spend the vast majority of our day working to make someone else rich and, when we try to escape this life of servitude with video games, “reality tv” and social networking, along comes Facebook with rules that, as far as I can tell, exist only to give people who pay for the privilege of having Facebook give their pages a publicity boost, a noticeable edge over those who can’t afford this benefit. I will not co-operate with this double standard. As I mentioned in your previous article, I joined Facebook with the sole intention of publicizing MAGE Magazine. Facebook warned me against sending friend requests to people I didn’t know but then offered to promote my website to strangers if I paid them 20 dollars U.S. per day to get an estimated 14 - 50 extra likes.”
“This is a ridiculous hypocrisy so I ignored Facebook’s warning and sent out friend requests to people who I did not know. Over the course of the next month, more than 3 thousand people accepted. One month after establishing the MAGE Magazine Group page we have over 5,000 members and more than 500 likes and I didn’t pay a single red cent for any of this. This is not to be cheap, I appreciate Facebook has created this social networking platform but I simply don’t have the advertising budget to compete with Marvel Comics or the Disney Corporation so I need to grow my audience one Facebook friend at a time. If Facebook chooses to serve the corporations by limiting our freedom of speech, our right to be heard, then I hope this article reaches a billion friends and inspires them to demand a more democratic social networking system."