Honolulu’s KITV television station requires readers to sign in before posting comments on their website. This is common across most websites. Yesterday I received an email from KITV that a Facebook account is now required to post comments. A portion of the email is below:
We wanted to take a moment to tell you about an important site improvement that will affect the way in which users comment on news stories on our website. Following a site improvement on October 20 commenting on news stories will require signing in through a Facebook account. This improvement will allow even more of the community to engage in news story commenting and provide a better overall site experience for all of our users. Because of the transition, existing commenting accounts will no longer be able to login.
Signing in with your Facebook account displays your real name or at least the name on your Facebook account. Some people use an alias when they post comments. Will this drive users to create dummy Facebook accounts increasing Facebook’s membership? What do you think about the requirement to use a Facebook account when logging in to another site?
