This is a terrible time to be named Isis. With the terrorist group the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria responsible for killing and injuring hundreds of people in Paris this week, and possibly hundreds more on a Russian airplane earlier this month, its acronym ISIS is everywhere.
Horrific, terrible. However, Isis has a nice connotation. It's the name of an Egyptian nature goddess. In fact, many people around the world are named Isis, after that goddess, including thousands in the United States.
That includes Isis Anchalee, a San Francisco engineer who got punished by Facebook for her name's bad association with the terrorist group. Facebook requires that people use their real name, but for some reason Isis Anchalee was blocked by Facebook for using her real name.
She took her beef with Facebook to, where else, social media. Twitter, not Facebook. (See photo.)
Isis Anchalee contacted Facebook, and sent the social media giant, which has 1.5 billion users, a copy of her passport. Facebook employee Omid Farivar apologized to Isis in a tweet and promised Facebook was working on a solution.
It turns out, Isis Anchalee isn't the only "Isis" who's been blocked by the site. So have women and drag queens named Isis.
Earlier this fall, several groups, including the Nameless Coalition, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the ACLU wrote an open letter to Facebook. They said Facebook's "authentic name" policy is broken.
Facebook VP for growth, Alex Schultz, promised there will be changes to its real-name policy. He said, Facebook is working on it. Keep reading Happening Now for updates on Facebook's real-name policy.
