Isis Anchalee, the female platform engineer who was at the center of the #ILookLikeAnEngineer campaign earlier this year, made a public outcry via Twitter this week about the fact that Facebook had locked her out of her personal account apparently because her name is Isis. This happened Monday, as Facebook was clearly initiating a new crackdown on ISIS-sympathizing accounts, but it seems bizarre that they wouldn't have checks in place to detect when Isis was in fact being used as a woman's first name.
As KTVU reported, Anchalee provided her passport as documentation, but it still apparently took a couple of days for the issue to be resolved. She has since been allowed back into her Facebook account.
@facebook why would you disable my personal account? MY REAL NAME IS ISIS ANCHALEE /facepalm
β Isis Anchalee (@isisAnchalee) November 16, 2015
Facebook thinks I'm a terrorist. Apparently sending them a screenshot of my passport is not good enough for them to reopen my account.
β Isis Anchalee (@isisAnchalee) November 17, 2015
@facebook I sent you my passport but it's not good enough for validation?
β Isis Anchalee (@isisAnchalee) November 17, 2015
@bromid thank you so much! I really appreciate itπ
β Isis Anchalee (@isisAnchalee) November 17, 2015
After her image was splashed across BART stations in San Francisco via a recruitment ad for her company OneLogin, where she is a full-stack engineer, Anchalee penned this Medium post in August about the weird reactions it had elicited, especially among her mostly male colleagues. In response, she initiated the hashtag campaign #ILookLikeAnEngineer to spread awareness about diversity, and the need for more of it, in the field of tech.
Though discussing one's being labeled a terrorist because of your name on Twitter is a sure way to attract some media attention, especially when you have 17,000 followers, Anchalee claims she was not seeking media attention from this.
@4evrmalone lol I'd rather not have a media storm happen from this... I just wanted my account back
β Isis Anchalee (@isisAnchalee) November 17, 2015
In other news, you should be careful when posting anything relating to the Bob Dylan song, "Isis." This, however, has not yet been deleted from YouTube.