Facebook has long become much more than a teen or university social network fad. It is part of what the internet is evolving to (whatever that may be) and with the tens of millions of users and exploding number of new facets of it, it reflects society at large. It is of course not a community like Dkos with the more direct democracy and inherent policing with its mostly successful rating and hide system. And DKos is of course more focused than Facebook which contains everything from the sublime to the ridiculous (not that DKos does not span that continuum as well). But the big brother top down structure of policing in Facebook has been losing control of the use and abuse within it. DKos is huge for a blog and influential but still much tighter and self monitored compared to Facebook. And DKos has a better way of dealing with saboteurs and abusive trolls and more importantly troll here cannot game the system to ban members here they disagree with, and in particular, high profile members. Very different at Facebook. The implications for democracy in Facebook and in particular the health and survival of single issue groups within it is cause for alarm.
More of our democracy and public discourse is becoming web-based and any fascist tendencies in in the way it is run or structured must be identified and confronted early. But why is this happening at all? Law and order just like always... the reasons for more anti-democratic trends is how it is policed and why. Facebook for example has had a lot of criticism for things that are arguable mostly beyond their direct/immediate control. Stalking, abuse, and other related problems have been in the news a lot and they have means to deal with them of course. Their reporting system... the report button has automated functions and optional administrative intervention within evolving guidelines works up to a point but it often banning abusive people does not happen right away or people who don't appear to have broken any rules are summarily banned without any warning. And Facebook has evolved a growing list of ban-able offenses not all of which are made public. To combat spamming and other problems they have decided not to make all the details public... but as a growing and anarchic social and semi-political entity having secret crimes and little recourse when convicted is not a good omen for the future.
Just Google "facebook disabled my account" = 35 million hits.. no small potatoes... and you quickly find that people are often banned for no sensible reason at all... or it may be that Facebook feels that they have too many friends, they post too much ...on a social network that is a crime??
We decry the Great Firewall of China and their heavy handed attempts to control the internet in China... with mixed results to be sure, but regardless of all the ways people find to evade and circumvent strictures many more are hampered or cut off with little recourse. And in a way we are edging closer to the Chinese model. If Net Neutrality is scuppered and more and more important web presence becomes more dictatorial and arbitrary with less reason to listen to feedback or grievances the future looks a bit bleaker than it should. And any political or controversial groups, topics will be the first to be suppressed one way or the other.
On to specifics. There are a huge number of groups on facebook, plus causes and fan pages. A fair number are political or are advocates for a particular position or goal. And here is the problem: Like all of the net every group attracts the odd troll who is just there to play and cause dismay or unrest and mostly they are just an annoyance that people come to expect to see... but the more political or controversial a group or cause is, the more focused and dedicated the genuine members are and the more rabid and numerous the trolls are... What we get now are Teabagger-type campaigns to howl down groups they disagree with. they have many choices for attacking and the simplest is they can post many comments so that the comments of those they disagree with scroll off the page. But that is relatively harmless. The more usual intrusion is via multiple identities commenting and just abusing and name calling rather than discussing anything.... This is the web equivalent of teabaggers disrupting town hall meetings... and the aim is to drive people away so that membership suffers and discussion stops.
But now it has stepped up to the next level. If they cannot drive people away with unrelenting unpleasantness or suppress the discussion of those they disagree with in the usual ways, they now are increasingly subverting the hair-trigger banning function in Facebook. They essentially bear false witness and get away with it.
All they have to do is target the high profile members of the group... the ones who are the leaders or the glue who contribute the most and keep useful discussions going. They get banned and the core of the group is killed off. This is Nazi-style trashing of rivals political meetings in the 1920's. Very effective and no direct violence but it shuts down and shuts up those they disagree with. They get the system to disappear people... and not just membership in a group but their whole profile... list of friends, pictures, links... a good chunk of many people's web activity dies just because someone did not like their politics or the cause they supported. And as Facebook is the largest game in town, a monopoly in the making where can you go for a better deal with a similar population of members?
Boycott Facebook? Not much use...
And the beauty of this for the disruptors and suppressors is that they can be relatively anonymous and come back and do it again under a different alias even if they get identified as making bogus claims. Even more their activities blend in with all the disabled accounts and banning that are for legitimate reasons your pets facebook page, you multiple IDs, your spam abuse etc. There is an appeal process which people can access Facebook Help Center but it seems to be capricious and sometimes drawn out. This is not the "real world" and nobody has any real rights or recourse and have to wait for the mercy or attention of faceless employees of the "Facebook team"... and reading all the Google hits for advice will not help you
How To Get Kicked Off FaceBook - Follow Their Rules
by Jim Neusom
If you Google, Facebook complaints, you'll find millions, who are upset with FaceBook's policies and procedures. It is definitely a walled garden, harking back to the early days of Apple and AOL.
He quotes the 13 reasons you can get banned:
- You didn't use your real name
- You joined too many groups
- You posted too many messages on a wall or in a group
- You posted in too many groups, too many user's walls
- You friended too many people
- Your school/organization affiliation is doubtful
- You're poking too many people
- For advertising your app on wall posts
- Using duplicate text in multiple messages
- You are a cow, dog, or library
- You are under eighteen years old
- You wrote offensive content
- You scraped information off Facebook
You have been warned. Remember that the hand of justice is swift and merciless.
and another site added this:
Finally, you may be disabled for no clear reason at all. One Australian member reported this staggering experience:
"I was blocked for a little while because I was ‘misusing certain features of the site’ Naturally I closely examined their conditions of use etc for some insight as to what I must have done wrong. I couldn’t for the life of me find anything...
"Upon request for clarification I was told that they were not at liberty to divulge which features or of course any thresholds of use. Then they warned me not to do it again or I would be banned permanently without recourse to reinstatement.
"
Big brother in the making. Imagine a world where you could be "cut off" for having the wrong opinions... we've seen that sort of thing before in many guises, sometimes overt sometimes more subtle but it's always around and often gets worse for a while... the signs are mixed... net nirvana or Big Brother net.... or will it just be yet a newer mix of the two?