In yet another example of their opaque censorship policies, Facebook has removed Violet Blue’s Our Porn, Ourselves page, even though it had over 3000 members and was obsessively policed by Violet. It seems the anti-porn zealots may have been behind it. Read more about it over at Violet’s blog.
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Like other member’s of that group, I’m reposting Violet’s letter to Facebook, questioning the page removal. A shit storm is about to get started, folks. Will be interesting to see how FB reacts.
Hello,
I’m Violet Blue: bestselling and award-winning author, and educator who speaks from UCSF and UC Berkley (Boalt) to Google Inc. Tech Talks on my field of expertise — exactly what this Facebook group page was about.
My page did not violate any of the reasons stated for deletion. It was under constant attack by people who disagreed with our point of view, and constantly reported our posts and images, even though we were very careful not to violate your Terms. May I find out why the page was removed? It is my utmost priority to follow and uphold Facebook community rules and standards. With national media attention to the page, questions will be raised and I hope to be able to furnish answers. Especially with a higher minded page of over 3000 members seeking community and discussion around a topic that did not target any group, threaten anyone, or link/depict/suggest inappropriate content. In fact, I policed the posts hourly for spam and attacks on our members, of which there were many. We never posted obscenity in links or images, though innocent user photos seemed to be increasingly mysteriously removed.
I feel that our page was targeted, and that we did nothing to violate the community standards of Facebook, which we sought to uphold. Any help to find out why this has happened would be deeply appreciated. I do not want to be talking to press about this in the next few days and be left guessing. We sought a safe place to discuss sex culture in media, and that is all.
I sincerely hope we can resolve this. Salon and Examiner wrote about our page as a signifier of community organization around women’s empowerment, calling it a new movement for women’s rights. I could tell we were under attack by those who violently opposed our discussions and representation as a community intersection for enriched discussions about important women’s rights issues. This development is confusing and saddening.
This fostering of group community around female empowerment and the page topic stems from my work as a talkshow guest (Oprah), international conference speaker, and columnist for various national and international magazines and publications (Oprah Magazine, Forbes.com, MacLife, etc) and media pundit (Wall Street Journal, MSNBC, Esquire, Redbook, Wired, etc).
Please help me understand what I can tell media outlets asking about this, and the over 3K member we had in the page group.
Sincere thanks,
Violet Blue
Sigh. I don’t expect that Violet is going to get any joy from Facebook – not even a rational explanation (since, if she hasn’t broken the terms of service of Facebook, then it’s just an arbitrary decision to remove the page).
The sad thing is that so much of our culture (communication, expression etc) is held hostage by very large public companies who are obliged to maximise profit for shareholders. If that means pandering to people and groups who are terrified of even the discussion of pornography, then there is little hope that these sorts of conversations can take place as part of mainstream culture (like Facebook).
It is highly ironic to me saying this, given the recent discussion around your blog post about capitalism http://www.msnaughty.com/blog/2010/06/12/why-yes-i-am-a-capitalist/
But I think that it serves to highlight the difference between “people” and “corporations” and how they do business.
John.
Deborah Sundahl, 369 Montezuma Ave #112, Santa Fe, NM 87501
Facebook
1601 S. California Ave
Palo Alto, CA 94304.
August 13, 2010
Re: Certified Letter Shut out of Facebook Account (see attached Page Two)
Dear Administrator,
I am quite familiar with the places from where I choose to access my accounts (such as Facebook). Your test, which asks me to verify myself, is a set-up for failure. (See Page Two). I have been shown pictures from you that have a circle around dogs, around gates. Yet, you ask me to give these items a human name. In addition, the humans you do ask me to verify are friends of my fb Friends, and there is, of course, no possible way that I know who these people are.
In addition, I find it personally offensive you would use random individuals as a method of account ID verification. I truly hope you are not showing pictures of me and my friends to random individuals who do not know me personally.
At this point, I have been locked out of my Facebook account for three weeks. Now, I want to delete my account, which I also cannot do, due to this ridiculous and very prejudicial verification system you have implemented recently.
I demand that you either restore me access to my Facebook account, or that you delete it and all its contents today, and notify me of what you have done immediately in writing to my address listed above. My lawyer is copied this letter. I refuse to have my name and my information on a site that I cannot access; to be clear, I mean your site, Facebook. In addition, I refuse to have my image displayed to unknown people as a cheap and convenient verification process for your corporation, so you must take down my site and all its contents completely and never use any words or images from my site for your purposes now or at any time in the future.
In my opinion, you have stolen my property. Be assured, I will sue you if I do not hear form you within ten days, and my account – and everything in it – is either restored to me to access easily, or it and its contents are completely deleted by you.
Best regards,
Deborah Sundahl
369 Montezuma Ave #112
Santa Fe, NM 87501
Cc: Benjamin W. Allison, Sutin, Thayer & Browne, Santa Fe, NM 87501