[btilly]

In NPR they said that they had checks that your Facebook account was sufficiently well established. They didn't say the exact criteria, but my impression was that it needed to have existed for a certain time, and have had certain levels of activity on it. This is to prevent people from creating throw away accounts, commenting libelously, then disappearing.

The unintended consequence, of course, is that people who don't have a Facebook account can't just create one. Instead you have to create one, use it until you have a sufficiently well-established identity, and only then can you use their service. Which is a high barrier for people who actually don't have a Facebook account.