Nothing is impossible for the person who doesn't have to do it - Weller's Law
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Facebook shuts down protest pages in the UK
SOCIAL NOTWORKING WEBSITE Facebook has been accused of using the spectacle of the Royal Wedding to divert attention from a cull of political protesters' pages.
The Open Rights Group's Jim McKillock posted his response to the purge during the wedding, when he said that Facebook was targeting activist groups working to stop government cuts, and was acting on behalf of law enforcement.
"News has broken today that a number of activist groups pages and user accounts on Facebook have been deleted, mostly from the anti-cuts movement," he wrote.
"While these groups may have technically breached their terms and conditions by using a 'profile' rather than a 'page', these deletions do not appear to have happened elsewhere in Europe or the USA, which has led to suspicions that Facebook may have been acting after a law enforcement complaint."
The timing is important to McKillock, as the deletions happened to coincide with an event that had the whole world's media attention.
"As the deletions took place on a news day dominated by the Royal Wedding, this has further fuelled suspicions," he added. However, unlike Julian Assange, the group has drawn up[ short of actually accusing the social notworking outfit of being in bed with the coppers.
"Whatever the reason, Facebook are exercising very significant power over political activity and speech as a result of their huge user base. While we as users should ask ourselves whether we are content with that, we must also ask Facebook to act with full corporate responsibility", he explained. "Their policy of simple takedowns, without notification, strikes us as crude on their part."
As well as compiling a list of removed profiles, which include the UCL sit in group, UCL Occupation, the Open Rights Group has also asked Facebook to make some changes to its axe-like removal process. Although the social notworking website has apparently contacted some of the affected administrators, some are apparently left locked out of pages and removed from their contacts, which the group thinks is unfair.
It recommended that Facebook should work with administrators before closing down their pages and help them to migrate contacts and other information in order to move from the controversial profile to a page.
At press time Facebook has so far not replied to a request for comment. µ
Tags: Security
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So the headline and nature of this article is a bit misleading, and having lots of people who aren't that bright that's not helpful.
The point here is that the claim is that the UK government deliberately asked facebook to take steps against certain people at a time when it would drown in the wedding news, so it's the UK officials you should focus on and bitch about, and facebook is only a secondary target for blame.
Free speech in a Free country?????
really - what did you expect?
it's easier to work with the government than fight it - especially when there's dollars at stake.