Facebook Deletes Social Fixer Community Page Without Explanation

New submitter ComradeF writes "Matt Kruse, author of the Social Fixer for Facebook browser extension, warns users of the dangers of building a community on a platform that can and will shut you down on a whim: 'It's gone. Years of work and almost 340,000 fans, wiped out. Erased. I have never been given any details about what "community standards" I was apparently violating (because I wasn't). This is a case of Facebook choosing to shut down someone's business just because they want to, not because they were doing anything wrong. This is extremely frustrating and disappointing to me, and should be to others as well.' The administrators and moderators of his Page found that their personal Facebook accounts have been silenced for 12 hours, as well." I've recently installed Social Fixer, and find it tremendously useful; this news just inspired me to donate a few bucks to Kruse — cheaper than what Mark Zuckerberg would like to hear my complaint.

Comments

It's pretty simple actually - Do Some Evil.

[teknopurge]

As a company providing APIs and encouraging development on your platform is great as long as you maintain control. The problem with APIs is apps can, provided the APIs provide enough of the right data, totally remove your influence in favor of the developer using your APIs. I first saw this Social Fixer app a few weeks back and I immediately thought "finally, someone that will remind us who owns facebook: the users." Facebook will have no revenue if they cannot monetize the marketing of their site, and with free APIs they can't do that. Paid APIs? Devs want free access, so you'll kill your dev community if you start charging.

Re:It's pretty simple actually - Do Some Evil.

[Anonymous Coward]

The users don't own Facebook. The users are the product that Facebook sells to advertisers.

Re:It's pretty simple actually - Do Some Evil.

[Entropius]

This really tells it in a nutshell.

This extension doesn't "interfere with or impair" the USER at all -- in fact, it does what the user wants.

Now we know for whose benefit that nonsense is written (like we didn't before, but meh...)

Owned!

[Anonymous Coward]

That's EXACTLY what you get when you don't own the server on which your "site" is based. Regardless of the user agreement, TOS, or whatever, this will happen on any such site. You were immensely naive to have not realised this to begin.
 
captcha: unkindly
 
Sorry, but some times, the truth hurts. :(

Re:Of course Facebook killed it!

[i kan reed]

To be completely fair, it was highly irresponsible to not do everything you're told to by a corporation. They want what's best for everyone.

Simple Solution

[Anonymous Coward]

He writes an application that runs on top of your browser when it's looking at facebook. why not throw in some code to re-imagine his fan page the way it was before? This could serve as the start of a way to wean users from facebook altogether, give them a little real content mixed with more open data (like a social media aggregator) and eventually replace the entire facebook experience with an aggregated one that can share/source on any platform. that way, when one provider does something silly (or vengeful, whatever) the app just routes around it.

Re:Warning: Cynicism Inside:

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, the class and critical thinking of slashdot on display, yet again.

I detest these, "I'm not sayin', just sayin'" kinds of comments online.

Let's try something new:

If you're accusing the people involved of pulling a scam like the one you describe, then come right out and say it, and provide your evidence.

If you can't/won't do that, then STFU.

Hmmmm ....

[gstoddart]

his is a case of Facebook choosing to shut down someone's business just because they want to, not because they were doing anything wrong.

Isn't one of the things Social Fixer is doing is trying to prevent Facebook et al from tracking you?

So, if you have a community page on Facebook detailing how to block some of Facebook's functionality ... then maybe you chose the wrong platform to do this one?

Facebook doesn't owe you your business, but superficially (and possibly incorrectly) it seems like Facebook might be annoyed you're using their system to bypass/alter some of the elements of Facebook.

Facebook can't say a damned thing if you host this elsewhere -- but isn't this is kind of like expecting Microsoft to host articles detailing how to pirate Microsoft products?

Welcome to the world of Terms of Service and EULAs, where the people who own the service can and will make any changes they want and you don't get a vote.

Re:Warning: Cynicism Inside:

[Dogtanian]

In this specific case, if you are telling people to distrust Facebook, with a Facebook group, you'll get a lot of blog posts and Twitting if you shut down the Facebook group with no warning.

To be blunt, you have to wonder if people like this are more a part of the problem than the solution they purport to be.

The real- and obvious- fundamental problem is how Facebook operates their site. This company's product merely papers over the symptoms with a "solution" that doesn't address the real issue, and will only *ever* be short term, breakable at a whim by Facebook themselves. But by making Facebook more palatable over the short term, they hide this problem and encourage people to stay with the site.

It's a waste of effort that might annoy Facebook but ultimately plays into their hands. Fundamentally, if it doesn't encourage Facebook to change their behaviour and/or policies *or* work on moving people away to another service- or whatever- then it's still a part of the Facebook ecosystem and encouraging its use (and hence supporting its cynical behaviour and discouraging other, more responsible approaches to social networking).

Of course, it might suit *them* from a business point-of-view to be doing this anyway, but for everyone else it's not so great.