http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/deletion-of-activist-facebook-profiles/signatures

It was probably just a low level db admin cleaning up the files and indexes, on what was likely to be a low impact day. Most users benefited from this action.

Facebook is a *USA* company who have a habit of flipping the bird at *anyone* who tells them how to do business. It’s hard to imagine how the Queen, or the British Government, or British Police could have successfully exerted pressure on them to do anything on any day.

Even Google has to bend and spread ‘em when presenting their search results here in Germany.

They all love their image of being open and free and “no the government”, but they also love their dollars, euros, pounds and yuans much, much more.

Besides, Cory doesn’t say that they did this at the behest of any government. They most probably did this on their own. And very likely for the reasons you mentioned.

That it happened at the same days as the wedding was just a happy coincidence, reminding people that facebook is for sharing pictures, farming smurfberries and being “fans” of products.

That’s what it was designed to be for and that’s what it will remain.

Though I don’t think that it is that big of a problem – the people who are afraid to follow a link beyond the “You are now leaving FaceBook”-FUD are the ones who would also not even “like” one of those protest groups.

Well, sure, but that doesn’t mean this isn’t why they were shut down. The police and the media evidently can’t tell the difference between different activists for different causes with different political beliefs.

This week the Metropolitan police have been releasing statements equating all protest with criminal activity. Newspapers have lapped it up, labelling anyone who wanted to protest for any cause on Friday a “potential anarchist”.

On Thursday they raided a series of legal squats and community projects, arresting anyone they could think of a charge for (like “abstraction of electricity”) and banning them from central London until next week, in an operation they admit was brought forward ahead of the wedding.

None of these people were planning to protest against the wedding – they were mainly anti-cuts activists. Didn’t stop the police deliberately restricting their movement on the wedding day. Dissent is dissent and they don’t want it.

Our current system of corporate and state power is, of course, far more complex than Mussolini and other early fascists ever imagined.
It pretends to offer choices, but ultimately boils down to the same thing, and is best termed “soft fascism”- a kinder gentler way of being screwed out of freedom and democracy.

rabatjoie: thanks for the link!

1) a US corporation possibly behaving with corporate self interest in the way any corp, US or otherwise would – no surprise there then.

2) The Met(?) possibly overreacting, certainly moving pre-emptively and behaving with heavy-handed, and quite amusingly camera-aware ‘good manners’ as they do so.

Unless we’re subscribing to the Bilderbergs and the Illuminati being behind all of this, they’re so unconnected as to be irrelevant, unless we’re arguing so generally that all bad s**t is the result of oppression by ‘the Man’, man. And arguing that generally is also known as pointlessly blowing hot air and preaching to the choir, something this site rather magnificently doesn’t do as a rule.

Does Occams razor mean nothing? Must _everything_ be a conspiracy?

It’s my impression that even royalist Britons well, most of them – wouldn’t accept actual political intervention by them.

I guess they like the fact that they have a head of state they can either revere or bitch about, but they don’t have to take the blame, because no one elected them.

It’s not a global conspiracy or any crap like that, but people who are media savvy use massive media events to quickly bury bad news. Who’s going to report on this when “OMG! Shiny Wedding!” is guaranteed to be the lead story on every news outlet? No outcry, no harm to share price, no-one but those affected drectly even know. Standard operating procedure IMO.

The most common reasons are:

Lack of cognitive skills
Total absence of the ability to think critically
Fascination with shiny objects
Unfulfilled “Attention Whore Deficit Disorder”

Instead of obliquely implying some ominous nexus between the Royals and the deletion of a raft of Facebook profiles, it would have been more accurate to simply state that Facebook made Friday “Deletion Day.”

And in this small world, I can’t say anything critical about it, lest it come back to bite me.

But I hate FB. I hate their walled-garden, their sneaky way of using information and pictures for their own gain, their continuous revision of their privacy policy, …

Furthermore Facebook is a social networking site and not the place to be furthering your political agenda – though many people do do it – and it’s pretty common for large private businesses to censor poliical groups on their sites to prevent unneccsary conflict and douchebaggery. You don’t see guilds in WoW called ‘The British National Party’ do you?

Normally I appreciate your articles but you seem to be hate mongering here which is utterly pointless.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Princess-Beatrices-ridiculous-Royal-Wedding-hat/203705509669392?sk=wall

I’d be willing to bet the hat isn’t a “real person”.

I even wrote a new user guide for them at http://differentcomputers.com

Hard work getting people to change their social network site! Especially when many of them seem entirely unconcerned about FB’s use of their data.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/apr/29/facebook-accused-removing-activists-pages

Still, I am extremely disconcerted about Facebook’s power to simply destroy people’s hard work developing networks on a whim.

Another recent controversy involves the fact that Facebook will take down pages for false DMCA complaints, without investigating the legitimacy of those complaints or giving users an opportunity to respond to those complaints before their accounts are deactivated.

http://www.defamer.com.au/2011/04/how-facebook-lets-whining-trolls-censor-everyone/

Facebook’s success as a platform depends on having a thriving user base. By demonstrating such contempt for its users rights and freedoms, Facebook is begging for the public to abandon it for a new platform that would offer greater levels of autonomy and privacy. Unfortunately, I am presently unconvinced that Diaspora will be that platform.

Sorry but when you become a defacto government you are no longer private.

Facebook is being financed by various bodies for political reasons. It doesn’t matter where on the globe those things are taking place, Facebook will follow orders from those who invest in it.
David Cameron is in direct contact with Zuckerberg, you can find videos of it if you want.
Those groups should make a class action lawsuit, both against the government and against Facebook.