ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how the catechism of Silicon Valley frames integrity as a matter of simple, consumer-friendly choices we make in an increasingly convergent media marketplace. It discusses Mark Zuckerberg insists that Facebook users’ resistance to the “real identity” policy is evidence of a “lack of integrity” among users. Silicon Valley refuses to acknowledge how its products and services are implicated in emergent issues of political fragmentation and economic inequality. Facebook's “real identity” policy, which prohibits pseudonymous profiles, exemplifies the merger of human virtue and market values by refusing any meaningful distinction between online profiles and what Zuckerberg calls the “real self.” Facebook's “real identity” policy sparked resistance from domestic abuse victims, political activists, and other marginalized groups. Zuckerberg's presumptuous statement about identity and integrity is both naïve and revealing. Corporate notions of personal virtue are “underpinned by an immense privilege” since those who boast of having nothing to hide rarely identify as racial, political, or sexual minorities.
