Facebook Asks Page Owners to Prove Authenticity
Creating a page on Facebook is pretty easy — so easy, in fact, that a lot of “unofficial” pages have sprung up for brands and celebrities. But Facebook is trying to make pages an integral part of its advertising products, so it wants the brands themselves to own their presence on Facebook. This means the company regularly takes “unofficial” pages and folds them into the official ones; and now, it is also pushing a stricter process for proving that one owns a page.
Last week, apparently, it introduced a new verification process. It has been emailing large page owners, according to the guys at Lonely CEO Media, asking owners to confirm that “I am the Authentic Representative of the Entity that my Page Represents.” In this form, available here, Facebook says it will “only provide publishing rights to a Page if the admin is an authentic representative of the Page’s name.” It’s not clear how broadly Facebook will demand this sort of certification.
It gives three different ways of certifying page ownership.
- “Add a badge or a Fan Box widget to your website that links to your Facebook Page.”
- “Add an email address that is officially affiliated with the entity of your Page to your personal Facebook account. You can also add the email address of a company authorized to manage your brand (e.g., management or PR firm).”
- “Add another admin to your Page who has an email address that is officially affiliated with the entity your Page represents.”
The latter two options are straightforward. The first one is more interesting, as it cleverly both proves that the page owner has control over their own web site, and gets the owner actively promoting the page (and Facebook itself).
As large pages grow to have millions of users — many of whom comment, “like,” or otherwise engage with the page regularly — the real estate value is continuing to go up. And just like real estate in real-life, this means more shady characters will try to fraudulently claim pages as their own. To that end, Facebook is also introducing a way to resolve ownership conflicts.
From the site:
When a Page appears to be authorized, often we’ll receive a complaint for removal from another claimed representative of the entity promoted on the Page. Sometimes this is caused by the complaining representative being unaware of the Page administrator’s affiliation. As a courtesy to you, we forward your contact information in such circumstances to the complaining party in an effort to facilitate a quick resolution. Please check the ‘I Agree” box below to acknowledge that you agree to this process.
This new authentication form is hardly the end of the problem. Twitter, for example, has also recently rolled out a verification process for accounts, yet people continue to make fake ones. Facebook may now have more questions to answer, as the Lonely CEO guys note: “What legal obligations does this create for Facebook? Is Facebook suddenly responsible for the accuracy of pages? To what degree are these communities responsible for the identities they present? In addition, what will happen to abstract pages (like “Ice Cream” or “Pizza”)? Many legal and practical implications will continue to pop up as the issue evolves….”
October 13th, 2009 at 2:56 am
[...] InsideFacebook // SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "Facebook quiere comprobar tu identidad", url: "http://www.theinquirer.es/2009/10/13/facebook-quiere-comprobar-tu-identidad.html" }); [...]
October 13th, 2009 at 7:31 am
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November 6th, 2009 at 10:07 pm
Thanx for the valuable information. Twitter launched its verified accounts, although as Eric Eldon at InsideFacebook says, they haven’t exactly stopped the creation of bogus ones. keep posting. Will be visiting back soon.
April 26th, 2010 at 1:45 pm
This “verification” process doesn’r do jack sqaut. A student who makes a page for their high school OBVIOUSLY in most cases will have a .edu email address to go with it. So how do you know that he is administrative staff for the school? YOU CALL THEM or look on the official website that they so stupidly provide to get a fan page, and read exactly who the staff are at the institution, or have the person submit business TAX records or court documents where they registered their stupid “1million fans for this VS that” titles “business”.
I and I’m sure a lot of others have told FB exactly what they need to do to curb this. Require verification BEFORE a page is created by submitting the above documents along with being in a WORK / city government / college network.
How hard is it to understand when someone reports a page for a CITY GOVERNMENT, because that admin is in a HIGH SCHOOL network and hasn’t even graduated, that he/she is not the city clerk or city manager and does not have the right to own that page. Get a CLUE FB.
Same goes for high schools. One was created by someone in NO network. That’s even more attrocious since pretty much ALL schools now have email, and those reps along with lots of others should get a clue, use your freakin official email address, and join your freakin network.
It seems people are stupid(how can one NOT question their friends “hey what’s that network status thingy on your ptofile for Harvard, Microsoft, so and so high school?”), lazy, or lying about their education or work. I don’t trust anyones profile info unless they are in a network; because it requires an OFFICIAL, traceable email address.
October 15th, 2010 at 3:07 pm
Good for Facebook. Not so good for all users. Thanks for the post!
February 8th, 2011 at 4:45 am
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