From our favourite retired accountant we get this hysteria:
Whilst lots got excited by the royal weeding more than 50 Facebook pages were shut down against their owners will.
So much for freedom of speech in this country. Do you note any right wing ones in there?
Well, actually, to be honest, no, I don\’t note any right wing ones in there.
That would probably be because only not right wingers are stupid enough to break the Facebook terms of service.
In short there are three main ways to be on Facebook:
- With a profile – intended for real people, with a name
- With a group – a small to medium size group of people discussing something
- With a page – ‘Like’ something to get news updates from it
As far as I can determine no groups or pages have been deleted, only profiles, and all the profiles were not individual people, they were being used by organisations. Not only is this stupid (as I’ve previously explained here) but it violates the Facebook terms of service. So no leg to stand on if one is deleted.
So there you have it. Only lefties are stupid enough not to read and obey the terms of service.
Which stupidity, come to think of it, might aid us in working out why they might be lefties. They\’ve failed to read the operating instructions for the universe.
I fail to understand how a web page deletion by a company based in Palo Alto, Calif-orn-ia has any bearing on the (legally limited) right of free speech in the UK.
I suspect the evil cleggalition gubmint had other things to do today 🙂
Tim, all the pages mentioned in the link might have been violating the terms of service, but facebook does have previous when it comes to deleting legitimate pages without reasonable cause, for example read this:
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/violetblue/neowin-8217s-facebook-page-downed-by-bogus-complaints-again-updated/317
Don’t be so sure. There are violations of FB’s TOCs across the board, left and right. Question is who reports those, and how vehemently.
well they are stupid enough.
Their gaffe, their rules.
If they don’t like it, they can set up their own social network.
Whiney bastards.
You have to love Richard’s logic. Although Facebook was a private company and therefore could deal with their property as they chose, the fact that they were also incredibly successful somehow meant Facebook had transmogrified into a public property and that the owners could no longer deal with their property as they chose.
Utterly incredible.
“Question is who reports those, and how vehemently”
That’s actually a pretty good summary of how freedom of speech works in the UK today!
In other news, Ritchie claims to have employed 1000s of people…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YY0LuJlyEgM
Brilliant last paragraph, Tim!
This is par for the course for mattress stains like Murphy. The standard trope in the US is if a coffee shop throws you out for wagging your willy around over the grievance du jour. it’s a “First Amendment” issue, despite any abridgement of free speech only being unlawful when it’s the government doing it. The UK side of the pond, things get even murkier. As the most estimable David Thompson has repeatedly shown on his brilliant blog, for the tribe of oxygen thieves that infest, inter alia, Anmerkung Macht Frei, to be disagreed with after open discourse becomes silencing of dissent, and not to be obeyed is oppression.
But of you course you need to consider the spirit of Facebook’s ToSs and not the letter…
For you see, they should be there to punish those with bad intentions not those with good ones, furthermore the lefties always have good intentions while the rigth wingers, the neocons and the libertarians always have bad ones
From the comment thread of the post you link to:
“Not all the groups deleted had profiles. Definitely some of what was deleted was events. I’m told that others were groups and pages. So far they all are activist related and in uk, so until we hear of a diff group being deleted in this same round today it seems clear that this was politically motivated, and not just facebook/police picking the wedding day to bury a story of activist groups getting deleted. No, we shouldn’t be suprised by them doing this, but we should still be angry.”
So unless you have any evidence to the contrary, you’ve actually proved nothing. And even if they +were+ all profiles, should we ignore the fact that they were all deleted in a targeted and co-ordinated way in the same 24 hours as police were mounting a “pre-emptive strike” (their words) against members of the public associated with protests in the UK?
I was going to attack your arrogance and pomposity but there’s little point when better men and women than me have given up conversing with someone who behaves like he’s had his ears amputated.
My best plan for the future is simply to ignore you.
“And even if they +were+ all profiles, should we ignore the fact that they were all deleted in a targeted and co-ordinated way ”
Indeed. Because, as the lady from Faceache explained, once they find a dodgy profile, they check who it is linked to and who links to it and whether those also violate Ts&Cs. That all of the organisations deleted had a common objective and therefore were likely to be linked (directly, common friends, etc) is therefore actually a reason to presume non-NWO action rather than competence on the part of the cleggalition.
Anyway, just what sort of UK legal instruction / ruling would persuade a California company to delete “not customer really – or even subscriber” accounts? Have you ever tried to do it? I have – DMCA works but very little else. Small thing known as “The 1st Amendment to the Constitution”. Surprisingly important to our septic colleagues.