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Isis crisis: Facebook makes Bristol lass an unperson

What's my name, fool

Not so long ago you could barely move on Facebook for all the exquisitely crafted beheading videos. Now you can’t even watch a cute cat video – if your first name is Isis, anyway.

Spare a thought for Isis Thomas, a 27 year-old from Bristol, who found this out when she was locked out of her Facebook account.

Isis has fired off her ID to the social networking site in an attempt to prove that she is not a recruiting sergeant for religious psychopaths, but has yet to hear back.

Isis will regain visitation rights soon, and Facebook will surely relax its Isis unperson filters soon. If not, a change of name to avoid Facebook oblivion could be the answer – just as that well-known terrorist training camp-cum-special needs school, Isis Academy in Oxford, did in February. On second thoughts, how would that sit with Facebook's real names policy, something that really got up the noses of drag queens, among others?

Name check

Isis's misfortune provides us with a handy illustration of the Scunthorpe Problem, albeit with the mistaken blocking of words that might be used by Islamic terrorists advertising their hatred, rather than the more common obscene language variety.

Mind you, Scunthorpe also has a Scunthorpe Problem on Facebook. In April 2016, the band October Drift fell foul of Facebook's profanity filters when trying to buy boosted posts to promote a gig in the town. In a post on their Facebook page the band wrote:

We tried to boost our posts to promote the Scunthorpe show, but Facebook is having none of it due to the town name containing a really rude word. That's utterly bonkers.

Sort yourself out Zuckerberg you crazy bastard

(shit... can't boost this one now either!)

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