Slashdot Mirror
Facebook-Deprived Man Sues For $500K
broggyr writes "According to a story from MSNBC: 'For Mustafa Fteja, Facebook is more than just a hobby. It's the main way the 30-year-old Albanian native has stayed in touch with friends and family all over the world for three years, and when he was inexplicably cut off from it, he did what every other person in this country seems to do when they're mad enough: he sued. In seeking $500,000, Fteja is suing Facebook for disabling his account, in which he had about 340 friends and family and had spent "timeless hours creating content and relationships [Facebook] benefited from," the suit contends. He wants it back on, and he wants the company to pay for the damage of alienating him from his family and friends (about $1500 per friend/family).' Must be nice when you can use a free site and expect to get paid when they cut you off."
Considering you are required to give up your rights to any information posted on Facebook, does that not indicate you are in fact paying a fee for using it? It might not be a monetary fee, but a fee none the less.
Hasn’t this been tried with google?
No matter how engrained a free service becomes in your life, unless you have a contract with the provider I can’t see how you are in any way entitled to damages when it’s taken away from you.
And at least in the google case I can sympathize. I still think google has the right to do so, but I can feel for the small business that suddenly loses it’s income stream because google lowers their rank. This is a social networking site... get a grip and/or a life.
"Free as in Beer" is becoming expensive these days! If we're going to agree we're now discussing Facebook as the metagame to adapt around, then we can't just give them a free pass to boot the user but keep all his nice crispy data they gathered for their ads.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
There are plenty of sites that sell facebook friends and followers, as low as 5 for a penny. So his 350 "friends" are worth less than a buck. He'd be better off looking for spare change in the couch.
You still have Telephone, you still have Internet, you still have any number of ways that people can use to keep in touch. No more than 20 years ago, we didn't even have Internet as commonly as we do now. This is not a requirement for you to live. They didn't cut off your power unjustly, or even your phone line. When I read "More than just a hobby" I thought it was going to explain that he makes a living through facebook... maybe then I'd see where he's coming from. As it is, all I see is another facebook addict who feels that it's his god given right to keep up to date with his friends.
This looks like a pretty clear cut cash grab. He says it's for "Justice" but I call bullshit on that. Justice in the amount of five hundred thousand dollars maybe. Too bad for him, I'm pretty sure there is something in the EULA that would state Facebook reserves the right to cancel your account for whatever reason they want. I don't know what this guy is expecting to have happen. In the end, frankly, I hope they counter sue for legal costs. Suing for a ridiculous reason like this shouldn't go unpunished. It's an affront to the legal system to be wasting it's time like this.
How much of this will Facebook be able to counter in the first five minutes when they present their ToS as evidence and ask the guy in front of the court if he agreed to those terms?
Please allow me to summarize what I understood of your paragraph: "Service level agreements are unenforceable even from monopoly public utilities." Can you recommend any Google keywords with which to dig up citations? Or what did I misunderstand?
Free is a relative term.
The letters F and T appear together because it is phonetic in order to write the name the way it sounds. There are no rules in English about how foreign names should be spelled.
America, Home of the Brave.
but you know what, it's becoming increasingly hard to function effectively without a Facebook account. Just like a cellphone and a car, they're "luxuries" that you're expected to have, and you stand out and look weird when you don't. Your boss expects you to get to work (car), expects instant contact (cell phone) and now expects you to be a team player on your Facebook site.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Obviously you're not a speaker of Russian. 'ft' is a tame consonant cluster for it. Try 'fstr' on for size.
Apparently clicking reduces IQ by 50% - or he hasn't read Facebook's Usage Policy before agreeing to it.
"14. Termination
If you violate the letter or spirit of this Statement, or otherwise create risk or possible legal exposure for us, we can stop providing all or part of Facebook to you."
In other words, "we can terminate your account any time we feel like it, nyah nyah". Nothing to see here, move along.
Now, having not actually RTFA yet, I can't comment on the merits of the case.
However, the sum he's suing for is relatively small, compared to most of the crazy lawsuits I've seen - usually, they seek at least $10M, sometimes much, much more, all the way into the trillions. That itself says something about the case - it may be more about actual justice than profiteering.
PS: The guy is claiming a friendship is worth $1,500. Minimum statutory damages for "pirating" a single album is $7,500, or five friends. That alone says much about the US judicial system and this case.
You know, it's actually interesting that Facebook opted to allow themselves to be sued in court rather than forcing their users into binding arbitration like pretty much every other company that provides some service (mobile phones, utilities, cable, internet, etc.). Of course, since the terms of facebook limits liability to $100 dollars or whatever you pay facebook within 12 months, the recovery from such a suit would probably wind up being less than the court fees, or arbitration costs.
My postings are informational and does not constitute legal advice. Act on it at your risk.
Ah, the name is likely Albanian. For more exciting consonant clusters, you can always try Georgian (no, that isn't the most spoken language in Atlanta). English "screeve" is a borrowing from Georgian mts'k'rivi for a linguistic concept, for example.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screeve
Apparently, mtvrali means 'drunk'.
Same situation here. I've been cursed with a native Estonian forename "Anti" ( http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Anti ; it is not a rare name here, i know multiple Antis and even some celebrities are named Anti). Facebook is very strict about using real names and they are having automatic to ensure that... And my forename fails the check. A year ago, it took me about a month of e-mailing to register an account. I even had to scan and send my passport copy to prove I'm real.
Fast forward one year... Today morning, I'm unable to log in. Facebook tells my account has been suspended and I have to enter my real name to proceed. I enter my real name again and get an e-mail that my account is deleted now and they do not accept any further correspondence regarding that matter. Let's see if they answer to my e-mails or I'm banned from facebook forever just because my forename.
I like that in the english language, all the rules are "you should always/never X, unless Y or maybe Z". In other words, I have just one thing to say to you: you're a ghoughphtheightteeau head.
new sig
Mustafa Fteja??? The letters 'F' and 'T' should never appear next to each other without a vowel separating them, unless it is at the end of a word such as 'draft' or 'theft'.
After reading your comment I must say that's a rather lofty claim. I could probably debunk it further if I spent more than fifteen seconds on it.
They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance. - Terry Pratchett
He's Albanian, as noted in the summary. Thanks for playing.
(Just because it's not usual in English doesn't mean it's unusual in other languages. For example, the Russian word for "second" [that is, "2nd", and not 1/60 of a minute] is pronounced ftorói.)
i see people getting deleted all the time. i am sure he was removed for a reason. maybe he should invest in a free thing called e-mail or instant messaging .or another novelty called VOIP phone.
Is obviously an Albanian terrorist? What else could he be? Perhaps an non-native English speaker?
Maybe, but he is a whiner none the less.
He needs removed from the internet totally. I just un-friended him!!!
There's tons of confusion about who Facebook's customers are. This kind of confusion goes back to television and radio stations, and popular magazines.
The participants, the readers, the viewers... these people are not the customers of these companies. They are a resource being mined and sold. Media companies, and entities like Facebook do have customers: Advertisers.
With broadcast, one-way media of yesteryear, these companies had no quality-control on the product they offered. They couldn't deactivate someone's access to a TV station because he or she routinely walked away during commercial breaks. The newspaper company couldn't identify and stop delivering papers to the person who read only the comics and used the rest as bird cage liner. Likewise, these companies could only promise "eyeballs" to their customers. Facebook, on the other hand, is offering "personae" to their customers. Each resource is not merely a potential viewer/listener, but now consists of that and a photograph, a name, a location, an age, interests, lists of friends, education level, and various other biographical data. They're offering a lot more "product" to their real customers now, and so they have a lot more interest in quality control of that product. No advertiser wants to pay for such a premium service as having a viewer's friend's photo appear next to their ad with the declaration that the friend "Liked" that product, when the friend's photo is goatse or Hitler.
Facebook is just being responsive to its customer base. The real question: How should the human users of Facebook understand, quantify, and describe their relationship with Facebook? They're certainly not just "getting to use a free site." Are they employees being paid in a product-use benefit instead of cash? What are their employee rights then? This guy's issue is less of an aggrieved customer situation than it is a wrongful termination suit. There might be analogies that make even more sense. Perhaps it's even possible that these cases be discussed clearly in the realm of what they really are, and the terms will evolve from that, rather than ill-fitting, borrowed terms... Might take a few decades.
That is never going to happen ofcourse !
Sure, so help me out - what's the nifty new term for non-cash value trades?
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
After i lifted a a fifth...
I hope he gets what he is suing for; i have absolutely no sympathy for facebook and i'd really would like to see this privacy rapping buggy mess of a site get what it deserve, that is, bankrupcy and investigation into its data retention policies.
Honestly, I'd quite enjoy to see Zuckerberg and friends behind bars.
There is nothing that says that the laws of the USA automatically apply to people in other countries. Seriously, we are talking about the Internet here, and in the same way that international spammers are difficult to prosecute due to the laws of one country not necessarily applying to people from other countries, there is nothing that says that someone from another country should be able to use the US court system for a BS lawsuit like this. If anything, the US government should charge the guy for the right to use the US legal system for this stupid claim.
Lots of comments about how suing is evil and hope this guy loses blah blah blah. Anyone ask why this guy got booted? The guy basically has not been told why he was booted. Despite repeated emails all he was told was "you violated our terms of service" which is a nice generic cop out for "out automated processes found something and we don't feel like treating you like a human being to give you any more specifics." It seems like suing to find out why is his only option since Facebook isn't cooperating.
Sure it's a free service, sure it's quite possible that it's not a big deal since it's only a social networking site and little of value will truly be lost. However, Facebook offered it's service for free, the guy used it, and then got booted without discussion. The guy deserves at least some answers, any human being would. And it looks like the only way to get answers is to make it relevant to Facebook that they should be providing them or risk this and other lawsuits. It sounds less frivolous and more like the guy just wants some respect and I think he deserves it. Otherwise we risk other people being treated like this. I urge this man to go go go.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
While $500,000 is ridiculous for compensation from a free service, I do feel he has one valid point: if Facebook has disabled his account for any reason, they should provide it to him and give him some avenue to correct the situation. Even though it's a free service, with over 500 million active users, it's a pretty ubiquitous and universal service. It might not be wise to come to depend on it, but it's certainly understandable how someone would. If Google seemingly arbitrarily disabled your Gmail account (insert free but depended on email service here) would you be as dismissive?
The word "fifth" doesn't really count here, as <th> is a digraph representing a different sound than <t> alone.
Once again I'm so happy I no longer have a Facebook account.
I really hope Facebook ends up being a passing fad. The best thing about the Internet is that it is decentralized. *Everyone* using a service like Facebook ruins that and gives one company too much power.
WOW! This guy is obviously retarded!...not to mention obsessed. I heard a similar story of someone trying to sue the maker of an MMORPG for banning his account. People get so obsessed with a game or site that they do crazy things when they're cut off. Of course he's going to lose this case!
If it was Diaspora, I'd say, "Get a life." But I'm so sick of Zuckerberg's multi-billion smug mug, Facebook's lucky I'm not on that jury.
From TFA:
He claims he has a higher purpose than the money in going after the social network.
"I'm not doing this for money. I'm doing this for justice. I believe there should be some, somewhere," he told The New York Post.
If he actually won this, I wonder what he'd do with the $500k. Unless he donates its entirety to a good cause (charity, good of the community), he's doing this for the money.
But the bigger question is, what exactly did he do that Facebook saw as a violation? For all we know he could have been posting inappropriate photos or harassing people...
/* No Comment */
sounds like libc to me
Sounds to me like this dude needs to take a walk in the park, and maybe figure out how to use the good ol' envelope and stamp to keep up with folks. Regardless though, to get all upset simply because face book admins decided that for whatever reason they would not like him to utilize the servers that they ultimately pay for and maintain, is ridiculous. It would be understandable if it were something he had paid for; but he is using the service for free just like everybody else.... i assume. Besides, bro! Looking at monitors too much every day ruins your eyesight! You should go out and climb some mountains or something, i mean, face book isn't the greatest thing ever! So come on, make this random internet commentator proud and end your retarded lawsuit, and then go out there and splurge on the plentiful bounty of adventure that this great planet has to offer. Ha, ha ha, like the guy is going to read this comment. Not Happening, I know! Well, if he does, I have won the day my good ladies and gentlemen.
If you invite someone to your house, and they slip on your walkway and break a leg, you are going to be sued, even if it was their own clumsiness that caused the accident. Guess what, your insurance company will probably pay up because it is cheaper than going to court. If this person did not violate normal Facebook rules (spamming others, etc), then I think he deserves whatever he can pry from Facebook's bank account...
Fifty shiftless caftan-clad crofters eftsoon hefted bifteck loftily after their thrifty Lufthansa chieftain.
I suppose that next, he'll say that compound words and suffixes don't count. I don't care. That was fun! And he's an AC.
Advertising and micro-payments are not mutually exclusive.
Examples:
You buy a game (macro-payment) and the greedy developer still shoehorns in obnoxious adverts, even patching them in after release.
You pay for subscription TV which also comes loaded with ads.
If you wish micropayments will replace ads, you'll get both.
The problem I have with Facebook is they disable accounts when trying to make new friends -- ie: friend requests -- so what's the point of a SOCIAL NETWORKING site when Facebook itself is antisocial!
There's an issue of account ownership with all of these services. One of the reasons I've given up on Amazon Web Services (and my Google account on my Android phone) is information ownership. This guy probably has a lot of contact information locked up in Facebook that he can't get out anymore. I don't use Facebook, so I don't know how it works.
But, if you look at Wikileaks and complaints of those Gmail has kicked out, depending on a 3rd party to maintain your cloud is a dangerous thing. When they pull the plug, they just do it. They don't give you any kind of exit strategy. Nevermind the privacy issues...
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
I enter my real name again and get an e-mail that my account is deleted now and they do not accept any further correspondence regarding that matter.
You've finally found the hidden, super-secret way to actually get Facebook to delete your profile?!
... but I have formal training in law science, and just because everyone here seems to think contract law applies, I would like to know if there are no other grounds to file such a suit upon. Namely, I personally wouldn't go the contract way, I'd rather fight on an undue and abrupt discriminatory situation. Going out of contract law in favor of a more general civil tort (is that the name ?).
I think it would be possible to prove that while a majority of person have equal access to the service, having one's account terminated for no apparent reason is a breach of equality of rights. That would leave the burden of the proof on FB shoulders to actually prove this breach of equality wasn't unlawful and based upon objective reasons.
Admittedly, this is just an hypothesis.
While a lot of people dismiss this as a money grab, and it may very well be, but there are important societal issues here. OK, Facebook is a private business, we all get that, but at what point is a "private business" so pervasive or necessary that it is no longer "private?" If a private institution becomes vital, like AT&T in the last century, the government used the sherman act.
I'm not saying Facebook is vital, but for a lot of people it is their primary contact medium. It may not be universally vital, but it may be to them. I am able to keep in touch and up to date with my extended family better than I ever had before now with Facebook. This is the *only* reason I have an account. If I were to have my facebook account shut off without any recourse, it would cost me some emotional loss. I hate admitting that, but if you use facebook at all, you may never admit it either, but you would secretly agree.
Just as you can't deny general commerce in the U.S. (i.e. you can't deny serving someone because of the color of their skin) I don't think you have to right to arbitrarily deny service to someone without any sort of recourse. Let the suit go through and may service companies that we come to depend on, take their service seriously.
This suit makes a lot more sense if you view Facebook users the way Facebook views them; not as customers, but as vendors. Facebook's customers are the people that they sell data to. The users are simply vendors, selling their personal data in exchange for the social networking provided by Facebook. The suit simply claims that the user in question was not paid.
Over air TV broadcast is free too. Could NBC jam a neighborhood's reception for an undisclosed reason?
"Free as in 'Facebook'"
While I dislike Facebook, and I believe that money shouldn't change hands, I'd like to know if they let him get the data he had in there out (like pictures, or whatever else you can host on Facebook).
If Google disabled a person's account for any reason (well, maybe unless it was a court order), they should give the person enough time and support to help him/her withdraw the information.
Otherwise, it becomes more like - "We own your data. You are leasing access to it from us. And we can cut you off whenever. Oh, but if you do something using our services that becomes a PR nightmare or legal issue, we claim that we hold no responsibility over the data."
Your situation is a perfect example of what our future might look like:
1) NO DUE PROCESS.
2) MONOPOLY
This is a bad combination:
Imagine if this was a retail store, not a web site. Perhaps they refuse to let you in until you told them your real name. And they don't believe you when you tell them it is Anti. You could make a scene, have people boycott the store, talk to the manager, and probably sue them for discrimination. But Facebook is a virtual entity - what is their tech support phone number? Where is there a store where you can talk to a manager? Where can you go to make a scene? And how can you sue them for denying you a free service? This is where there is NO DUE PROCESS.
In a real store, you would just give them the finger and head to another store. But that doesn't work in the online because if your friends use Facebook, you can't see their updates with MySpace or LinkedIn. It doesn't work that way. This is the MONOPOLY part. We have an open system of commerce - I can buy something from retail store A, or retail store B, and I get the same item. But information services are a closed system. I can't connect to my friends unless I use the same proprietary system that they do.
This is a really bad situation - and it might be the future unless we stop it. Sorry to get all Richard Stallman on everyone, but this is why we should not use closed systems like Facebook or Myspace for anything important. Don't store data in "the cloud" - it's DRM for your life.
I'm sure he'll be very distressed to learn that some ignorant AC on slashdot has decided he's spelling his own fucking name incorrectly.
Does this mean you won't accept his friend request?
Even if you are unjustly banned from Facebook, you can come back and re-add all those people, at least the "main" ones, and work your way again to having 350 friends, I'm sure he didn't find them all in 2 days the first time around, and I genuinely doubt he kept in touch each and every single one of them. He can't learn their names and make a second account and look them up?
He wasn't smart enough to ask for phone numbers and/or e-mails after contacting far away relatives?
He can't use services like instant messengers?
How did he survive before Facebook existed, suing telecommunication providers because their service fees were too high, thus prohibiting and/or limiting his access to contact loved ones from afar?
Is all this still Facebook's fault?
All glory to Arstotzka!
Pretty much for life.
Disclaimer: IANAL
I am serious about the question. Facebook is embedding itself into commerce and government. Congress critters, political groups, the military, NGOs, and businesses are using it for information exchange. At what point do nations decide that access to FB becomes so critical that arbitrary disconnection from the service cannot be done. Some places I have lived, where winter weather can be sub zero Fahrenheit, have ruled that natural gas and electric service is so critical that service cannot be disconnected during the winter since it would make the home unlivable, a de facto death sentence.
Also, is FB becoming so important that an outage would begin damaging the economy? Would that also change the rules? Electric companies have to work fast to restore service in a natural disaster in many places since once again would be a death sentence for people. Would a FB outage become so devastating at some point that the same level of service is expected?
Aside: FB is becoming so central to government, commerce, media, and personal lives that the Goldman-Sachs investment makes me uneasy. Not only do they have the ability to mine it for information, but also to control the information. I left FB due to the frequent security breaches. Now that G-S is involved I feel even more vindicated for leaving. At least until banks begin requiring a FB page as part of your credit check, no FB page no loan. I realize that last bit is edging into tinfoil hat territory but I can see it happening.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Why can't he just register a new account? Would it be that hard to find all his important friends? You gotta figure enough of them have friends-who-were-also-his-friends so it shouldn't be too hard...
Maybe I'm confused about how this site is supposed to work, but it seems like in the past the articles were more from the author's point of view instead of just regurgitation and links back to other journalists who actually did the research. What am I missing?
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There is value, just not cash. The word you seek is 'barter'. In the facebook case personal info in exchange for access to the 'service'.
If what he did is was to totally get rid of paper and pencil, he might actually have lost everything for good. His case is a great lesson for the layman: the ultimate backup still is paper and pencil - you use them with your own 'TOS' with the additional benefit that information on paper disappears only if lost, burnt or washed in a wash-machine. In the same sense, I don't trust my hard disks or memory sticks to preserve what I consider vital info and I am very reluctant to use any cloud-based or remote storage service.
The irony of it is that while FB implicitly or explicitly does not provide any guarantees that my information will be safe and accessible to me as long as my account is active (and this is what they'll claim at the trial), at the same time they surely regularly back it up ad nauseam to make sure it is accessible and remains accessible to their 'partners', even after they have received my certificate of death or even beyond that.
Makes me wonder if I can sue the RIAA because Led Zepplin or (insert band here) never released more albums.
isn't there supposed to be a link here?
+1 fashionably cynical
1. Why did Facebook disable his account? Was he violating the agreement by posting nude pictures or something.
2. Has this guy ever heard of EMAIL or INSTANT MESSENGER. Both services are free, allow near real time communication, contain address book functionality and in the case of IM even video chat.
3. $1500 per friend...seriously? How many of those 340 does he actually communicate with on a regular basis? If he communicates with that many over online perhaps he should consider this a blessing so he can go out and rejoin the world by making local friends he can actually hang out with. It is called socializing and it is becoming a lost skill.
Todays world is full of frivolous law suits it is shame that with the actual economic problems this is what people are spending money on.
They cancelled my account long time a go too because I was converting all of my friends from MySpace to Facebook and they said I was adding too many friends too fast. I WANT MY ACCOUNT BACK, FACEBOOK.
While I am not familiar with their system for terminating accounts, I highly doubt they banned him by IP. While he likely has no chance of recovering the content, if his contacts with his friends were important, can he not just make a new facebook? I am sure they have a clause saying that once your account has been terminated, you can't make another one, but I doubt they actually track it.
Took about 3 weeks for him to get an account. His Surname is "Hacker."
how can facebook be free if it's worth a trillion dollars?
I would scoff at this guy if not for Facebook insisting on becoming integrated into every Web site and application possible. Positioning themselves as a trusted authentication broker, and banning alternate accounts, puts them in a position of a bottleneck for access to information and services. Honestly, I'd try to find - in addition to friends and family - a business that he had authenticated with using Facebook, and then sue them for tortious interference of contracts, or whatever the legal jargon is.
TO BUY A NEW CAR WOULD MAKE YOU SEXUALLY ATTRACTIVE.
FTP
Why did he get cut off, maybe he lives in egypt? Not facebook's fault!
Free is just the $0.00 price tag. It isn't a charity. fb farms your contacts, sells your privacy, pwns your identity. Surely that is payment enough. fbookers give it away far too cheaply if you ask me. Then there are the terms and conditions - a contract - if you will. "We the undersigned, one soul all eternity etc. etc." fb set the terms - did they breach their own terms? If so - stupid fb, clever Albanian.
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl ftagn.
In addition to the anti-law enforcement sentiment expressed here, this could also pertain to an old protocol once used for the transfer of pornography and pirated computer games. Deftones playing at halftime?
Hi,
Thanks for providing this information. At this time, we cannot verify the ownership of the account. [Despite that it uses a Uni email and a credit card for validation, despite my whole family tree being linked, despite that I changed nothing since it was set up?] Please reply to this email with a digital image of a government-issued ID (e.g., driver's license, passport). If possible, save the file in JPEG format. Make sure the following information is clear:
- Full name
- Date of birth
- Photo
You may black out any personal information that is not needed to verify your identity (e.g., social security number). Rest assured that we will permanently delete your ID from our servers once we have used it to verify the authenticity of your account. Note that we will not be able to process your request unless you send in proper identification. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.
Thanks,
Liam
User Operations
Facebook
Would you provide Facebook with 'Government issued photo ID?
I'd post more information but I hit the junk mail filter. I responded to this by providing Facebook with 50 names of clearly fake accounts. All of those were deleted. I believe the reason why I was banned was for making positive comments in support of Wikileaks on the Amazon Facebook page but I can't really say as despite 30 emails requests this is the only response I ever received. Leading up to the my name you 'copied' and a fake profile created the owner of which was an Israeli who travelled around Facebook pages supported by Arabs abusing them in my name. Despite at least 20 people reporting the fake it too Facebook 3 months to close this person's account. Indeed my account was close and the fake remained active for a further 2 weeks.
The was the 2nd account that was destroyed! Both account had in excess of 200 friends. The reason was purely political. You can't be an educated and informed person and be active is supporting young people in Palestine period! Everyone who attempts to do this looses their account. And you most certainly cannot do what I did and track user names of Israeli supporters who are setting up Facebook pages such as "Australians AGAINST having an Islamic state in Australia.." or using the Australian Prime Minister's page as a place to throw mud on the Muslim community while pretending to be Australians. And it is very easy to pick who people are even when they change user names by reviewing the linguists of how they write. They are given away by their mistakes.
If there is a class action please tell me as I know at least 20 others who have been affected and are ready to sign up!
Sure, so help me out - what's the nifty new term for non-cash value trades?
Bartering? Well, I wouldn't call it new...
Facebook is NOT FREE and nor is any other social network. It's the equivalent of giving somebody a plot of land and then tell them that they can build on it, furnish it, and turn it into a thriving ranch or spectacular village, city or metropolis. And after they've done so, then you pick out one individual and kick him out without paying him 1 PENNY for all the sweat and tears he's put into building his house, ranch, store, or factory because you have some issues with that person.
The question is, what benefit did you stand to gain from giving away the plot of land in the first place? The answer is simple: You wanted "others" to build this community FREE OF CHARGE to you so you could in turn earn TAX REVENUES from the public. In the case of a social network, the equivalent of tax revenues is ADVERTISING REVENUES from THE ADVERTISERS "DIRECTLY" and from the SOCIAL NETWORK MEMBERS "INDIRECTLY." After all, it's ultimately the SOCIAL NETWORK MEMBERS who are targeted by the ADVERTISERS; and who eventually wind up COUGHING UP THE CASH to the advertisers that is used to pay the social network.
Therefore, the idea that these social networks are FREE is an INSULT TO OUR INTELLIGENCE. It's at best a QUID PRO QUO service. So if you want to kick someone off the land, then you need to properly compensate them for the "fair value" of their sweat and tears. And the only place to determine that is in the courts.