Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Calling for a Congressional investigation into Facebook Censorship

Dear Congressman Hinchey,

Today, I tried to make a post to the Facebook wall of GASLAND
(the movie), and received the following notice:

"We've noticed that your account has been posting spam and irrelevant content on Facebook Pages.
Because of this, your ability to post on Page walls has been suspended for 15 days."

Here is an image of the actual notice:
https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-snc7/300642_2226329894448_1133803981_2608616_3867030_n.jpg

It just so happens that the post I was making was a link to an announcement about
76 local groups simultaneously filing a request with the NY State Governer to
extend the comment period on a document regulating the issuing of permits
of hydrofracking in NY.

This is the link that got me banned: http://tinyurl.com/76GroupsAskFor180Days

If you do a simple google search for
"We've noticed that your account has been posting spam and irrelevant content"
you will discover that this is affecting thousands of people, and many of the people
affected are posting about progressive causes. This all seems to have begun about
Aug. 15.

Before it happened to me, I discovered a similar ban happened to several
of my Facebook friends who had been posting to the GASLAND wall:

Mary Ellen Persuit, Gloria Forouzan, and Mike Solinas.

They've started a Facebook group in a attempt to find how many people are affected.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/195391653857122/

I have documented there are at least four obvious ways that Facebook is censoring content.
  • Page Posting Bans -- against people posting on progressive pages
  • GROUPS disabled -- this broke communication with tens of thousands of people
  • WALLS are filtered such that no one sees every post
  • NEWSFEEDS are filtered so you don't see everything

Please see my blog with more information about this:
http://williamahuston.blogspot.com/2011/08/beware-of-facebook-censorship.html

Congressman, with 300 Million members worldwide,
Facebook is becoming increasingly an important part
of daily communication for many Americans.

With this kind of censorship which Facebook has been engaged in
can have great impact on America, where we have a fundamental
principle of Free Speech.

Will you please investigate these claims and, if substantiated,
hold Congressional hearings on the matter?

Thank you, Congressman Hinchey, for all of the excellent work
you are doing and have done, to protect your constituents
and America at-large over your long and distinguished career
in the House.

Kindest Regards,
Bill Huston

PO Box 2873
Binghamton, NY 13902
--

PS: Here are some links to news articles about the ban:



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