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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."
The flame baiting, lame summery tries to make it looks like some evil diplomat tries to censor some facebook pages. 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.
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.
Vernor Vinge called it in his Hugo winning book "A Fire Upon The Deep" - where the galactic net was known as the "net of lies". It was probably in Facebook's interest to do something about an account that wasn't clearly a parody as having a robust way of dealing with fake accounts engenders trust that accounts that appear to be from important/influential people and organizations are actually real. The follow on from Facebook's inaction is that those people/organizations that are influential/important will be less likely to use Facebook to disperse their message/propaganda.
I wonder if the cybersquatting laws are written (or interpreted) so narrowly that he couldn't hit the imposter that way. It may not be a domain name; it's his name and identity.
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
Brendan Nelson is primarily a politician, not a diplomat. The highlights of his career include supporting the teaching of intelligent design as an alternative to evolution and gutting the academic independence of Australia's University/Science Research System.
If it is someone literally impersonating him that's a different story.
It is someone literally impersonating him.
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.
Free speech is just an absolute bitch, isn't it? We all approach it in different ways.
So you had your feelings hurt once, therefore he should be OK with having his name hijacked and diplomatically damaging posts posted under his name.
Thats some mighty impressive logic and deductive reasoning you have used there sir.
Color me like, totally impressed dude.
No difference for them. Facebook doesn't care because all they care about is serving ads. More pages=more ads.
I had a problem a couple months ago. I have a business and a business page on facebook with nearly 2500 fans. I worked years to get it to where it is now. One day, suddenly, a fake profile appears, using all of my images, texts, etc... all except the prices: he claimed everything was half of what i posted on my true page. It took "orders" (send your money and i'll send your order).
A couple of customers alerted me. So i asked all my facebook friends AND my customers to report the profile. It was still there for days, still active, friending more and more people. People even started coming into my shop asking and getting mad because "on facebook you told me half this price!" and i had to explain that it was a fake profile (mad people don't reason - they went away angry at ME!). Eventually I confronted the fake profile, told him everything i knew, and told him i had already contacted the police. Minutes later the profile was inactive.
It wasn't facebook who deactivated it. I had to do it. Facebook NEVER gave a shit. I'm a facebook CUSTOMER (because I PAY THEM REAL LIFE MONEY FOR ADVERTISING). And I didn't get a phone number, mail address or anything. Just a useless contact form directed straight to /dev/null.
Facebook has people checking "flagged" things - you will never see porn on fb because they kill that kind of content within minutes. But when it comes "edge cases" like mine, it's a big fuck from them.
Do i still work with them? Yes. I have no other choice. I spent months developing a website. One that worked and that I kept updated. For 10 visits a week vs facebook page's ~500 visitors/mo. 5x that if i pay for ads. Right now, as of 2013, facebook has become "the internet". It has already killed Windows Live Messenger (THE IM system for spanish-speaking people).
Facebook doesn't give a fuck about business pages either. They don't offer a "chat" option for pages (people actually want to chat. they don't want to "send a message", but the stupid antisocial asperger-syndrome driven facebook developer doesn't understand the power of "live chat with a real person"). They don't offer an option to "schedule" album posts. And to make things worse: they force you to pay now. Your reach will be minimal if people haven't added you to their "interest lists", and for 90% of your customers, your post won't appear unless you pay $5 to promote it for 3 days (which is an outrageous amount considering that, to keep your page "alive", you need to post at least once a day). I don't want to pay $150/mo to facebook - sorry.
They likely weren't even aware he tried to contact them until now. I doubt he ever actually spoke with anyone there. This smacks of melodrama.
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
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
Don't encourage him! We've already got APK/Jeremiah Cornelius complaining about impersonation every post.
Next thing Brendan Nelson's going to be coming here, spamming "A corrupt facebook luser has infiltrated the liking system to downlike all my posts."
No, Chii. That's Facebook.
Report it as a copyright violation and they'll take it right down.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Mad because a government official cannot wield undue influence over the global, borderless Internet?
Facebook treats all their users like shit, no reason this guy should be special. I agree it sucks for him, but it sucks just as much for the 13 year old whose classmates put up pages mocking him. I don't think you want it to be otherwise. Ideally they would always "do the right thing" but at least they are consistent in ignoring their users and don't play favourites.
Wow. With grammar like that you should submit the story to slashdot.
I'm guessing that wasn't on their radar screen...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
Sig: I stole this sig.
Me no understand. These people, along with Google et al, are pressurisng users to use their REAL names:
http://www.facebook.com/help/112146705538576/
Facebook is a community where people use their real identities. We require everyone to provide their real names, so you always know who you're connecting with. This helps keep our community safe.
So, when someone contacts them to complain that their real identiy has been hijacked, and also it could potentially have serious international diplomatic consequences, they do nothing?