Facebook: The New Guantanamo
21. Jan, 2009 
9 Comments
Facebook is the new Guantanamo – they can take you away from your virtual life online, impede your ability to communicate with friends and family, throw away the key, never explain what you did, and give you no chance to appeal. With the change we witnessed yesterday, I feel sure that at some point in the future this will be addressed by the legal system, the government, or this will open up a niche for another company to create a better method for us all to stay in touch and communicate.
This is all just so bizarre. I created a second Facebook account when I heard nothing from Facebook for over a week about why my first account was shut down. Well, they finally wrote me last night after shutting down my second account. They won’t tell me what I did. If it was friending too much, couldn’t they have disabled my ability to friend? If I posted to many links to my blog posts, couldn’t they have disabled my ability to post in my Ask Miss A group or on in my Profile? Here is what I heard from Facebook this morning:
Hi Andrea,
Creating more than one Facebook account is a violation of our Terms of Use. Once your account has been disabled, you are no longer allowed to access the site. This includes registering a second account with this or any other email address. We apologize for any inconvenience, but this decision is final.
Thanks for your understanding,
Zoe
User Operations Analyst—–Original Message to Facebook—–
From: Andrea Rodgers (andrea_m_rodgers@hotmail.com)
To: disabled@facebook.com (disabled@facebook.com)
Subject: My account is disabled – why?Hi, there,
I’m not sure why my account was disabled. Can you please explain?Thanks,
Andrea
Most of you have never heard of this happening to anyone, and assume I must have done something really bad to get kicked off. If you get into the online forums about this, you’ll start to realize that this happens all the time across the country, and people don’t even know what they did “wrong”.
- Miss A
Andrea Rodgers has been in Washington for over a decade, and is well-known for giving back to the local community. She has co-founded three major fundraisers - Blondes vs. Brunettes in 2005, The Courage Cup where she serves as President in 2006, and Fashion for Paws in 2007. In September 2008, Andrea launched two businesses — AskMissA.com, and Socialite Marketing, a full-service boutique marketing firm that provides businesses and brands with social media, public relations, marketing, and event planning services. She attended boarding school at Salem Academy, and graduated from Wake Forest University with a double major in Economics and Politics. Rodgers was recently hand picked by Vogue magazine to be a founding member of The Vogue 100, an organization "of influential decision makers and opinion leaders known for their distinctive taste in fashion and culture, [and who] personify the rising influence of women over the past several decades."
This is very strange, and ultimately it will cost them. I know things get a bit chaotic there, and they may have to clamp down from time to time. But to do it without telling you? They will lose support if this continues. Not kind and not good business.
Greetings Miss A,
I fail to understand why Facebook would do such a thing, it’s crazy! Terrible communication with a potential member. Recommend that you try out VisualCV.com.
A VisualCV not only the most professional way to present oneself online, it is rich with multimedia and linking capabilites — it is also a free service that replaces not only the traditional resume — but non-professional profiles and sites like Facebook, MySpace and others.
Some related links:
Guy Kawasaki’s post “The Art of Unintended Uses” two items cover love and dating topics…
http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2008/06/the-art-of-un-1.html
And the VisualCV examples page…
http://www.visualcv.com/examples
Anyway, I follow you on Twitter and thought you might find this interesting and helpful. Please let me know if you have any questions.
Best regards,
Tim Woods
I think the last line of your first paragraph nails it: “this will open up a niche for another company to create a better method for us all to stay in touch and communicate.”
The first company that can provide import/export of our personal info to wherever we want to take it will overtake facebook in the same way that facebook is rising against myspace. Hopefully this will happen soon, but until then, people should remember to backup all their info from Facebook, including email and phone numbers of contacts. Perhaps even move a lot of content over to friendfeed.com.
What bugs me the most about your situation is the lack of transparency by facebook staff. Why were you closed down? And why can’t they make the reason public? I doubt you are the only one that this has happened to…
We experienced something similar last year. It was not my personal acct, but one I created for my company, which bore the name of its’ founder. I was simply “friending” all of my personal friends, as well as Wendy’s (we grew up together, and share a similar circle of friends and acquaintances) but somehow violated their TOS. They disabled the acct (also final) and let me know via a very similar e-mail. After dissecting the TOS, and getting some input from a friend who works in SM, I wrote facebook again, and requested that they allow the profile to be converted to a “fan page.” I had to create the page (different from a group,) and fb agreed to switch the friends to fans. Wendy started her own personal facebook page from scratch using her married name and private e-mail address. We haven’t had any problems since, although she did friend-request carefully in the beginning. The whole process did take a couple of weeks to get through, but overall- once I was able to make it clear to facebook that this was not an intentional violation of the TOS, and requested the switch, all was resolved in about 2 days.
I hope this is helpful to you- feel free to e-mail me if you have any questions. Best of Luck!
~Michelle
Absolutely preposterous! I can’t believe the cut you off a second time with no explanation! Grrrrrrrrrrr-makes me angry. Maybe Michelle C. has a way to finagle your way back if you so desire.
Since my brother now has the same dilemma as you, I did a little research. I found a GetSatisfaction page that (sort of) explains 13 Reasons why accounts get disabled. My guess is that he was posting too much. Which is kind of ironic. He joined a group called “DC Scene: The 80’s & 90’s” and then proceeded to lure all his 930, Penguin Feather, and Poseurs peeps from MySpace to Facebook to join in the fun. Then today his account got disabled, leaving all these new members and their “fun” group kinda stranded. AAGHH!
Welcome to the world of closed networks.
You’re story is not uncommon.. Facebook just starting to do this, Google has operated in the same manner of years.
Lawsuits will likely be filed eventually over these business practices.
D
I found out today, that I have had my account disabled. The only thing more ridiculous than it being disabled is the reason why. I posted on my friends wall. No innapropriate messages or content mind you, just a talk with a friend. NOTHING in their TOS says I can’t talk to my friends, NOTHING in their TOS says I can’t post on my friends walls. I have yet to receive anything close to an intelligent reason as to why I can’t post on my friends walls. All I get is, “you post too fast.” Well, what are the limits or rates at which we are allowed to post I ask, “Well, we can’t tell you that, but you exceeded it.” What kind of policy is this exactly? They can’t expect people to abide by the usage rules, when they refuse to make those rules available.
http://fascistbook.wordpress.com/