Facebook Purges Anti-LibCon Pages!
This is an interesting story. Unteresting because the power behind the social networking site Facebook, does not usually censure any of its content, short of a legal battle in court. Indeed, pages abound declaring racist, cruel and hateful content - defended by Facebook as being a manifestation of 'freedom of speech'. The question that is then required to be asked is just whose freedom of speech is Facebook apparengly securing? Certainly not the 'freedom' of those on the receiving end of the rightwing rhetoric. It seems that Facebook, apart from being entirely intrusive into people's private details, and employing soft-ware that scouts through a private computer without prior permission from the owner, nevetheless operates a very definite political agenda that is anything but 'free'. Within the last few days, Facebook UK has decided that it will delerte or suspend anti-ConDem pages, protesting about government policy, and of course, the severe and unnecessary cuts to the NHS, Welfare and Education.
Why has a social networking site taken this decision? The answer probably lies in part, in the sheer bulk of pages dedicated to this noble cause. Facebook is offering the intellectually lazy excuse that they think that many of these pages have been created through false online identification, that is, anonymous user names and emails, etc. This is so absurd, that it appears that Facebook have missed the last 20 years or so of internet usage, and completely failed to understand that the net, by and large, is 'anonymous' - outside of official bugging, or Facebook soft-ware, that is. It very much seems that pro-hunting is OK, webpages eulogising cop-killers and rightwing nutcases, but not pages that present the political ideology of the Left. This Facebook policy must be viewed for what it is, namely an attempt to prevent freedom of leftwing speech.
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Just because facebook are an online company doesn't automatically mean they should be treated any differently to traditional corportations.
Facebook will try to maintain good relations with the state in order to protect and enhance their profit margin. By helping out the Uk government facebook are able to strengthen that relationship, in the same way that by complying with requests from China, they keep the Chinese market open.
Facebook also has a near monopoly in online networking, it's that or twitter (or more likely both). There's no point in having a rival to facebook as networking on this scale only works with a huge amount of people on it, a monopoly is necessary for the business to work. Furthermore as Facebook has over half a billion users it doesn't matter if people get pissed off at it, what matters is corporate advertising and the ability to keep the site open all over the world. States and other corporations are the customers, not the users.