Thursday, April 22, 2010

Facebook does not allow to create protest pages against the New Facebook Open Graph and Like's identity usage online



Facebook acts like a totalitarian state ;) It does not allow to create a page entitled "DON'T LET FACEBOOK OWN YOUR IDENTITY ONLINE"! Yes, it's not a joke!
I really don't know what to think. I posted a couple of thoughts about what was going on since yesterday and was thinking about writing a blog post later to clarify my thoughts, but I had to post this first: Try to create a COMMUNITY which is by essence a NON-OFFICIAL page as stated by Facebook:

Community Page: Generate support for your favorite cause or topic by creating a Community Page. 
What does this mean? If my favorite topic is "I love Obama" or "I hate Obama" it's ok, right? Indeed it's ok for Obama lovers/haters.


But it does not go this way for Facebook!!!!
Try to create a Community with the topic: "DON'T LET FACEBOOK OWN YOUR IDENTITY ONLINE".
You'll get the following message:
"Our automated system will not approve the name "DON'T LET FACEBOOK OWN YOUR IDENTITY ONLINE" because it contains a word or phrase that is blocked to prevent the creation of unofficial or otherwise prohibited Pages. If you believe this is an error, please contact our Customer Support team."


Sorry Facebook, but that's a cause and a topic, so for me it deserves to be seen as a community page.
I see what you could say: it's Facebook's brand so it might be a breach of trademark or whatever, and even if for ages we were able to see pages like "I love X brand" or "I have Y brand", today is the day where it's not permitted anymore. 


Well, you are right, and even if it feels weird as the community page is clearly to support a cause/subject/topic or whatever as a community, I would understand that. So I ran a little experiment. What other brands are as mainstream as Facebook today? Nike, Microsoft, Cisco, ExxonMobile, Maroc Telecom (lol), Apple, Amazon, Marrakech (that would almost be a brand;) etc... But what main brand is also sometimes associated with "evil" and online identity super-ownership? Google of course! I'd let you run the test aswell by creating the same page for Google and see what goes on...


Ok, you might be lazy! So I did it for you for a couple of brands, and you guessed it right (otherwise I wouldn't be writing that), it passed the "automated system". Proof in picture bellow:
 
(yes even Doritos! ;)


As I side note, I was able to create the following page: DON'T LET FACEB00K OWN YOU & YOUR IDENTITY ONLINE http://www.facebook.com/privacynow.


Finally, a little piece of advice, If you want to CHOSE if whether you want to opt-out or opt-in into the new Facebook social-web's scheme check your privacy settings at www.bit.ly/facebookoptout and uncheck or check the last box.

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