Facebook sparred with the drag queen community over its recent "real name" crackdown, but the social network is hoping to make things right.
In a Wednesday post, Facebook's Chief Product Officer Chris Cox apologized to "the affected community of drag queens, drag kings, transgender, and extensive community of our friends, neighbors, and members of the LGBT community for the hardship that we've put you through in dealing with your Facebook accounts over the past few weeks."
"We owe you a better service and a better experience using Facebook, and we're going to fix the way this policy gets handled so everyone affected here can go back to using Facebook as you were," Cox said.
The mea culpa comes after Facebook last month locked the accounts of several drag queens and ordered them to change the names on their personal profiles and set up separate fan pages for their drag personas. One affected individual, Sister Roma (pictured) from the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, was forced to change her name on Facebook to her legal name, Michael Williams.
"Our policy has never been to require everyone on Facebook to use their legal name," Cox said. "The spirit of our policy is that everyone on Facebook uses the authentic name they use in real life. For Sister Roma, that's Sister Roma. For Lil Miss Hot Mess, that's Lil Miss Hot Mess."
He added that "there's lots of room for improvement in the reporting and enforcement mechanisms, tools for understanding who's real and who's not, and the customer service for anyone who's affected."
The company is building better tools for authenticating "the Sister Romas of the world," and taking steps to provide better customer service to those accounts that get flagged, Cox said.
The move comes after San Francisco Supervisor David Campos and Sister Roma met with Facebook officials today.
"The drag queens spoke and Facebook listened! Facebook agreed that the #RealNames policy is flawed and has unintentionally hurt members of our community," Campos wrote on Facebook. "We have their commitment that they will be making substantive changes soon, and we have every reason to believe them."
Facebook's apology follows the debut of Ello, a new social network that does not have a "real name" policy like the one that troubled the San Francisco drag community.
Off to @facebook representing the millions of users with chosen and protective names - your voice will be heard. pic.twitter.com/OxPGw4FiDW
— Sister Roma (@SisterRoma) October 1, 2014