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A campaign has been started to make Facebook reconsider its decision to make Chipps Chippendale use "William" instead of the name he is known by. The "Reclaim Chipps" campaign has been liked by 1206 people, many of them bike industry types. Chippendale is an industry veteran, editor of Singletrack MTB magazine, and is known to all as "Chipps".
The campaign aims to "persuade Facebook that Chipps Chippendale is the day to day name that the mountain bike journalist from Singletrack Mountain Bike magazine goes by."
Chipps says: "I was christened ‘William’ but since the 1970s, I’ve been known as Chipps and since 1992 I’ve been published in mountain bike magazines as Chipps Chippendale."
He added: "Everyone I know calls me Chipps (apart from my mum and siblings) and when I joined Facebook 10-15 years ago, I joined as Chipps Chippendale and existed happily for years until one day Facebook contacted me to say that it didn’t look like I was using my real name and my account was locked until I gave them my government-approved name."
Despite "countless message exchanges" with Facebook the social media giant has so far not budged, insisting that Chipps has to be William.
He says he has sent "details of bank accounts, professional qualifications and the offer of 20 years of magazine mastheads all under the name of Chipps Chippendale … Still no joy."
According to Facebook’s own rules people should "use the name your friends call you in real life."
Chipps says: "I reckon that of my 1800 [Facebook] friends, 99.8% of them know me as Chipps rather than William."
Facebook has told Chipps:
"Unfortunately, we can’t change your name to the name you want. Facebook is a community where people use their authentic identities, so you always know who you’re connecting with. This means that only using the first initial or a part of your name isn’t allowed. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your understanding."
