Former Diplomat Slams Facebook For Inaction On Fake Pages

An anonymous reader writes "Former diplomat to Belgium and the European Union Brendan Nelson describes his astonishment at his inability to get any response from Facebook when trying to get a diplomatically damaging fake page taken down. The social network ignored official protestations from the department of foreign affairs and security agencies."

Comments

No one cares that you can't spin your own...

[Anonymous Coward]

Self entitled shitpickles think their byzantine piles of dirt can dictate how history records their failings.

I agree with the man

[Camembert]

I read through the article. I must say that I sympathise with him - he sees technology as something that should support life, not something that is pervasive, like people non-stop updating FB or twitter accounts. I also think that there could be a better authentication system at FB.

Re:I agree with the man

[Anonymous Coward]

As a former diplomat he neither has power or influence and theres no profit in Facebook helping so like an ordinary person he is screwed.

Re:I agree with the man

[CodeBuster]

Correction. He was appointed as ambassador to Belgium, Luxembourg, the European Union, and NATO by Austria and Austria does indeed have a consulate office in Los Angeles. From TFA he sounds like an intelligent and well educated man who's made a reasonable request. Saying things about someone online is one thing, but impersonating them is quite another. Perhaps after all of this Facebook can spare this gentlemen a few moments of their time. I especially liked his advice about dashing off messages while you're angry. I know that I've done it before, without much good coming of it, and so have many of us here on Slashdot. I suppose you learn a thing or two about polite conduct being a diplomat.

Re:I agree with the man

[rmstar]

Facebook doesn't have the staff to take complaints from a billion users. It has less than 5000 employees. So it would be abuse of lack of power? They make a few dollars per account per year. 1 15 min phone call wipes out any chance of making a profit from an account.

So they get to make that profit but without any responsibility? That can't work.

If they can't do it properly they should not be doing it at all.

Re:Lame summery

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't get that impression from this summary.

Re:I'm not sure what his complaint is

[Anonymous Coward]

Why?

Really, I can get the point of having one fake account to keep in touch with friends, although facebook will likely figure out your real name and everything soon enough based on the friends.

Having several fake accounts to express your opinion just seems to be trying to make your opinion seem important. To start, its against their terms of agreement, however shitty those are, but it also doesn't seem to serve any "good" purpose. I really can't think of a good reason to do this, and I mean good as in the ethical sense. It would probably be nice to try and spread false information or whatever, but it seems a shitty way to do good things.

Re:Define "Fake Post"

[Anonymous Coward]

There are two public accounts under his name with his face in the profile. Looks like a ligit complaint. Not sure why he thinks being a diplomat would give him special sway with Facebook though. Facebook is a low margin business that survives by not having much staff. Complaining to Facebook is complaining to a software program.

Re:mod parent up

[DaveAtFraud]

This (cybersquatting law application) is exactly right. Also, couldn't he call Mark Zuckerberg directly? He is a diplomat.

He could try calling Zuckerburg directly but, as a guess, FB doesn't want to set a precedent for anyone of policing their content. OTOH, making Nelson get a court order means that FB doesn't have to judge (and be put in the position of having to judge) the veracity of anyone's page. It's a slippery slope and, if they're not careful, they could be held responsible for ensuring that no one is cyber-bullying, harassing someone, spreading hate or engaging in who knows what kind of politically incorrect behavior.

Cheers,
Dave

Re:Lame summery

[MaskedSlacker]

But as the TFA says, this is about an imposter who has assumed a diplomats name on a fake facebook account and now post fake posts.

So? Facebook allows multiple accounts with the same name. There is no reason to close the imposter account (other than it being against Facebook's TOS, but that's not the diplomats issue). The diplomat has no basis or standing to make the request.

In what world is a facebook page going to be "diplomatically damaging"? He should go pound some sand.

Re:Lame summery

[Joce640k]

I demand special privileges, dammit! I'm a special human being.

Re:Define "Fake Post"

[ModernGeek]

The solution to this is that all the legitimate businesses need to erase their presence on Facebook, and leave only the scammers on the site. Facebook has the attitude that we need them more than they need us. Legitimate business needs to move back to the World Wide Web. The problem of social media should be solved through some sort of de-centralized protocol such as e-mail, and certificate authorities should solve the problem of identification.