http://jilliancyork.com/2010/04/08/on-facebook-deactivations/

On Facebook Deactivations

Update/note: Since writing this a few hours ago, I’ve been flooded by e-mails from Facebook users who have also experienced this. Those users include gay rights activists, Jewish activists, activists for a free Palestine, and activists against the Venezuelan regime (among others). Clearly this is happening to many users across the board. I will follow up with more “case studies” soon.

Over the course of the past week, I’ve gotten reports from a number of people whose personal Facebook pages have been removed or deleted from the Facebook platform. At first, it was a male friend in Morocco. Then a female, Moroccan friend in Boston. Then an Indian woman in the UK. And then even more.

Once I investigated a bit further and spoke to each of them, I discovered what each of them have in common: All of them are critical of Islam (some are atheists, others ex-Muslims, still others reformers) and post frequently articles and status updates about the religion.

And then someone told me that a group was created on Facebook (in Arabic) for the sole purpose of reporting, and thus having removed, Facebook profiles of atheist Arabs. The group, which appears to have also been removed, was entitled “Facebook pesticide” and its sole purpose was to “identity Atheists / Agnostic / anti-religion in the Arab world and specifically in Tunisia …” Once identified, the group members would then attempt to report such users.

Of course it’s problematic that there’s a group of people seeking to destroy the online identities of users of a certain group, but that’s not the issue I’m going to address in this blog post. Instead, I will address why Facebook’s strategy toward dealing with situations like this is so problematic:

1. The Facebook platform makes it all too easy for users to get other users’ accounts removed. Any user can report another user by the simple click of a button. Facebook has not spoken publicly about how this process works, but my suspicion is that when a number of users report the same user, their profile is automatically disabled. What happens next I can only speculate about, but from accounts I’ve received, Facebook does not contact users, rather, users may write to “disabled@facebook.com” to request their account be reinstated. Sometimes it happens, other times it doesn’t.