Rushdie's run-in with Facebook highlights an increasingly vital debate emerging over how people represent and reveal themselves on the websites they visit. -- PHOTO: BLOOMBERG
SAN FRANCISCO (NEW YORK TIMES) - The world knows him as Salman Rushdie. But Facebook deemed it fit to deactivate the famous author's account, demanded proof of identity and turned him into Ahmed Rushdie, which is the name in his passport.
He never used his first name Ahmed, Rushdie pointed out as he hit Twitter on Monday morning with a litany of exasperated posts. Would Facebook have turned J. Edgar Hoover into John Hoover, he scoffed, or F. Scott Fitzgerald into Francis Fitzgerald?
'Where are you hiding, Mark?' he demanded of Mr Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's chief executive. 'Come out here and give me back my name!'
The Twitterverse took up his cause. Within two hours, Rushdie, 64, gleefully declared victory: 'Facebook has buckled! I'm Salman Rushdie again. I feel SO much better. An identity crisis at my age is no fun.'
