[liberationtech] Fw: [progressiveexchange] Facebook interfering with activism Pages

[David-Sarah Hopwood]

Katrin Verclas wrote:
> Thoughts, colleagues! 
> 
> ------Original Message------
> From: Colin Delany
> Sender: Progressive Exchange
> To: Progressive Exchange
> ReplyTo: Colin Delany
> Subject: [progressiveexchange] Facebook interfering with activism Pages
> Sent: Sep 20, 2010 3:34 PM
> 
> Activists upset with Facebook
> http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0910/42364.html
> 
> Claims they've violated terms of service.  Discuss.

The same thing happened with the "save Bradley Manning" page:

# 20100914 Bradley Manning Support Network newsletter
[...]

# Facebook -- What Happened to Our Page with over 10,000 Supporters?
#
# For those of you following along on facebook.com/savebradley (over 10,000
# friends!) you might notice that the URL leads to a dead page. The page can
# now be found at
# https://www.facebook.com/pages/savebradley/114129961964452?ref=ts
#
# You'll notice that the page, with over 10,300 supporters, is rather quiet.
# That's because the Bradley Manning Support Network's administrative rights
# to the page have been revoked due to a 
violation of the terms of service.

#
# We have not violated the terms of service.
#
# We are currently unable to post information or links on the page. Other
# users (non-admins) can post to the wall, but the administrators of the page
# cannot.
#
# We have sent a letter of appeal to Facebook instructing them to reinstate
# our publishing privileges immediately. As of this writing, we have gotten
# no response. We have not even received information on how to appeal this
# restriction.
#
# With just days to go before our International Days of Action, this could not
# happen at a worse time.


This is consistent with what the POLITICO article says at the start of page 3:

# A Facebook official confirmed that they don't check who's behind a page
# until it reaches a certain size, which he declined to specify. One social
# media consultant said that practice causes confusion.
#
# "It really does have a big effect when 10,000 people or 100,000 people
# join a group, and they change the rules midstream," said Dorian Benkoil
# of New York-based Teeming Media. "Then, they try to thread the needle by
# saying you can still have a page, but we're not going to let the admin
# post ... They say it violates their rules. Then they say, we'll go halfway."

I agree completely; it's bad policy and completely unreasonable to effectively
change the rules without any warning. If the page admins had been given
no reason to believe that they were violating the ToS before the page was
suddenly blocked, it's disingenuous for Facebook to claim that they are now
violating them just because a page has 10,000 supporters. And as the article
points out, this does have the effect of favouring corporate interests
relative to anti-establishment campaigns.

-- 
David-Sarah Hopwood  ⚥  http://davidsarah.livejournal.com

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