Facebook Might Change Its 'Real Name' Policy Today

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Sister Roma

Doug Kaye/Flickr

Sister Roma is one of the people who has been forced to use her legal name on Facebook.

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It looks like the battle between Facebook and drag queens might soon be over.

Over the past several weeks, Facebook has started cracking down on the names people are using on the site in an effort to "keep our community safe." Facebook forces people to use the name that's on their driver's license, or else their accounts get suspended.

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Among those affected by this policy are performers, including drag queens, who don't go by their legal names and are more well known by their stage names or nicknames.

Several local drag queens in the San Francisco Bay Area met with Facebook last month, but the social network refused to change the policy.

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Omn Wednesday, drag queens, as well as San Francisco Supervisor David Campos and other LGBT activists, are meeting at Facebook's headquarters again. And, according to Valleywag citing sources, Facebook is going apologize for the situation during that meeting.

Facebook is also set to discuss how it will fix the policies.

According to Valleywag's sources:

Rather than owning up to its discriminatory behavior, the company plans on insisting that it always defined "real name" as a person's preferred name. We're told the company will claim that its "real names" policy was being improperly enforced and that a "fix" is on its way.

The group is being led by Michael Williams, better known as Sister Roma, one of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. The Sisters is an LGBT organization focused on community service and drag performances. The group has been around since the late 1970s.

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Roma says that she was suspended from using the site until she adjusted it to contain her legal name. She's been using the name Sister Roma on Facebook since 2008, according to the Daily Dot.

The policy has also affected other people who use pseudonyms on the site.

We've reached out to Facebook regarding a shift in policy, and how it plans to implement it. We will update this story when we hear back.