The Freedoms of Facebook

What do I know? Most folks like to be in a club, even if is a club dedicated to people who don't like clubs. We enjoy the camaraderie and companionship from our dealings with other like-minded or otherwise interesting folks that we meet there. Many clubs have rules, but most of the rules are at least accessible, to some extent, for the purposes of consultation and verification.

In the day of the internet-based social networks, things are a bit harder to get a firm handle on. Sure, there is great freedom to display your own colors and befriend people you may never actually meet in person, bet there are also ways for people to secretly blow the whistle on one another, without needing to consult the rulebook or offering a chance for either party to learn what exactly is or isn't allowed.

What happened now? Like many of us, my wife enjoys strongly defending her opinions, but doesn't go out of her way to shove it down anybody's throat. Occasionally she will post her own commentary, or repeat that from someone else so that she can share it with her friends. Many of these are of a political slant, and some of her friends take issue with the topics, while others support them.

For some reason not known to us, some of my wife's posts are made inaccessible, as if somebody thought either the content of the post or its discussion afterward were unseemly or improper. I'd like to add that not a single one of the posts that I had the pleasure of reading was something that should be found as objectionable. Sure there has been satire, chastising, even some level of contempt, but never anything that should be construed as downright inappropriate to the point of deserving its removal.

This morning, it happened again. Here is how it started:



I happened to be watching the page when Allison posted a new status message saying she had been censored again, so I grabbed a screen capture of before (above) and after (below):



Now, there is no trace of its existence.

Is there anything that can be learned from this? I really don't know if we can find that out. It would be helpful to at least have gotten a message giving some reason for removing the offending information, but there has never been any of that either. There is no clue as to why these events have happened other than that they could be called "Controversial."

This sort of censorship is the worst, because it does not allow for the correction of one's actions to enable the information to to become "less offensive," AND it does not give the owner of the information any feedback to know what to avoid in the future.

Total Crap, Facebook.

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