The Day Facebook Stole My Page(umcabango.wordpress.com)
umcabango.wordpress.com
The Day Facebook Stole My Page
http://umcabango.wordpress.com/2010/05/08/the-day-facebook-stole-my-page/
8 comments
More curiously, he also admits several times that he had absolutely no interest in the page and probably would have never visited it again. Besides the lack of mystery, I also see a lack of anybody being hurt.
The people that are hurt are future organizations that could benefit from an unofficial fanpage. If users fear for losing their accounts (and therefore friends), they are not going to bother advertising that organization by setting up a fanpage. It's bad when people are afraid to create.
(But like I say in another comment below -- Facebook wants to make Facebook like television. Consume, purchase, act. Creating and thinking is not good for their advertisers.)
(But like I say in another comment below -- Facebook wants to make Facebook like television. Consume, purchase, act. Creating and thinking is not good for their advertisers.)
The whole idea of someone's fan page being "unauthorized" seems creepy to me. People should not require authorization in order to be fans, or club together as a group of fans.
In summary, he violated Facebook's terms of service by creating this page, and is accusing Facebook of "stealing" the page from him now that they've finally decided to enforce those terms.
Facebook requires affirmation that the page creator is "the official representative of this person, business, band or product and have permission to create this Page." He said himself he's just a fan.
I've been as annoyed as anyone with all of the recent privacy issues at Facebook, but it doesn't seem they did anything wrong here. Except maybe write up some Terms of Service that aren't fan-friendly.
Facebook requires affirmation that the page creator is "the official representative of this person, business, band or product and have permission to create this Page." He said himself he's just a fan.
I've been as annoyed as anyone with all of the recent privacy issues at Facebook, but it doesn't seem they did anything wrong here. Except maybe write up some Terms of Service that aren't fan-friendly.
Hold up, there is something wrong here. Yes, he did set up the page as "just a fan". However, this page has been in existence for a few years and it's a page that got really popular. So, Facebook only "enforces" their ToS when there's enough popularity there to "monetize". It's bullshit and it needs to be publicized as much as possible.
That's not bullshit at all. Upload a music video of a little-known band to Youtube and nothing happens; band goes big, video gets 5 million views, is removed for copyright violation.
Facebook can't possibly police every page, so they stick to policing those that are largest or fastest growing. Get popular enough and you'll enter the radar.
It's unfair in a way; but it does make sense.
Facebook can't possibly police every page, so they stick to policing those that are largest or fastest growing. Get popular enough and you'll enter the radar.
It's unfair in a way; but it does make sense.
Facebook checks pages once they hit a certain threshold of subscribers. Otherwise they would have to check every little page.
It's too bad -- Facebook is obviously a good idea that people like, but monetizing it is going to scare away all the users. By the time it becomes the advertising haven that Facebook's investors need it to be, there will be nobody left to click the ads.
Something I liked about the "old days" of the Internet is that the cost to create a community was low enough for one person to support. Hence, it didn't need to sell itself out to corporate interests or even have ads at all.
The problem with Facebook, though, is that people use Facebook because everyone else uses Facebook.
Something I liked about the "old days" of the Internet is that the cost to create a community was low enough for one person to support. Hence, it didn't need to sell itself out to corporate interests or even have ads at all.
The problem with Facebook, though, is that people use Facebook because everyone else uses Facebook.
I think it's still pretty cheap to create a community, if you're not trying to get every person on earth to join.
But the culture of doing so has gone away. No company or school would make their own social networking forum; everyone just uses Facebook or Twitter. Things were not always like that, though.
Remember Geocities? And Usenet before that? And Prodigy or Compuserve before that?
These things tend to move in waves. Somebody comes up with a great new communications platform, and everyone abandons their custom solutions for it. Then the technology behind that platform becomes commoditized, the knowledge becomes widespread, and people start coming up with small scale custom solutions again. Then one of those custom solutions decides it wants to be big, generalizes it's platform, people flock to it, and the cycle starts over again.
Give it a couple years. I bet we'll see people creating their own social networks again, in some nearly unrecognizable form.
These things tend to move in waves. Somebody comes up with a great new communications platform, and everyone abandons their custom solutions for it. Then the technology behind that platform becomes commoditized, the knowledge becomes widespread, and people start coming up with small scale custom solutions again. Then one of those custom solutions decides it wants to be big, generalizes it's platform, people flock to it, and the cycle starts over again.
Give it a couple years. I bet we'll see people creating their own social networks again, in some nearly unrecognizable form.
I hope!
I didn't know that to create a Facebook page you had to be promoting it or advertising something... so do you create a group to show you're a fan of something? The Facebook landscape has become so convoluted.
You're supposed to make a group instead, but not everyone knows that.
There are enough reasons to beat facebook over the head. This isn't one of them.
So fan sites - labors of love - have no place in Facebook as a fan page.
Sure, sounds fine! Why not make a normal website that isn't under the control of some greedy corporation? That's what the internet is for, to me.
The internet is for a lot of things. A social network is for socializing. Fan sites or pages are a form of socializing.
Certainly Facebook is within their rights to prohibit this kind of thing. You can even see why they'd want to do it: to make Facebook more friendly to the paying customers (advertisers).
But it's an interesting question, how far down this road Facebook or any other site can travel before the utility of the site is reduced to the point that there aren't enough active users to attract paying customers.
Certainly Facebook is within their rights to prohibit this kind of thing. You can even see why they'd want to do it: to make Facebook more friendly to the paying customers (advertisers).
But it's an interesting question, how far down this road Facebook or any other site can travel before the utility of the site is reduced to the point that there aren't enough active users to attract paying customers.
That kind of thing is pretty much standard practice. Presumably the real Banfa Banfa stepped up and claimed the page.
We also take down Pages that attack an individual or group or that are set up by an unauthorised individual.
He admits several times that he is unauthorized to set up the page. The page was also handed over to the official fan organization. I see no mystery.