POSTED BY

Rob Beschizza

AT 7:42 AM
Thursday May 7, 2009

Law and Rights

feacebook

EFF: Facebook private message censorship may break law

Wired: Threat Level points out that while Facebook blocks references to The Pirate Bay links in private messages, it doesn't likewise censor talk of illegal drugs, underage drinking and shoplifting.

Wired.com confirmed Facebook is blocking private messages by sending a link to a Pirate Bay torrent feed of a book in the public domain. Such content is freely available to everyone, as all copyrights have expired. Nevertheless, the message bounced twice, returning the following failure notice: "This Message Contains Blocked Content. Some content in this message has been reported as abusive by Facebook users." (Facebook's link-censoring system is may be just tilting at windmills, however, because removing a single vowel from the domain name lets the URL go through.)

Facebook's user-censorship policy is arbitrary and unprincipled? Shocker! But it might also be illegal. [Threat Level]

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6 Comments

Dillenger69

#1 – 9:20 AM May 7, 2009

I don't see how it's breaking any law. Facebook isn't a publicly funded entity. They could block all messages using the word "brown" if they really wanted to. It's their network. It's up to them to determine what they want to let happen. They need to balance between what they want and what will reduce their market share.

Rob Beschizza

#2 – 9:24 AM May 7, 2009

It (purportedly) breaks electronic privacy laws. Even in private systems, there are limits on what service providers can do with communications.

Employers, for example, are often sued for snooping on workers' email.

dculberson

#3 – 10:57 AM May 7, 2009

Dillenger, keep in mind that the telephone network is also owned by a private business. But they're subject to many federal laws about what they can and can't do with the traffic that flows over their wires. Same with ISPs; they can't snoop into their subscriber's email.

Rob, employers are actually pretty much allowed to go through their employee's email, as long as they are told it will happen. At least, that's my understanding. A more appropriate comparison would be an ISP and their customer.

sworm

#4 – 4:18 AM May 8, 2009

Wouldn't it be nice if everyone stopped using social network sites and did something worthwhile with their lives.

dculberson

#5 – 6:32 AM May 8, 2009

Like commenting on BoingBoing!

Anonymous Anonymous

#6 – 3:01 AM August 12, 2009

Trying to figure out if my face book account has been effectively deleted, but I can't, since in order to look my old account up, I need to log in, and in order to log in, I have to have an account, and if I try logging into my old account, it cancels the deletion process... Irony?

Basically got concerned about data mining on face book, as well as the end user license agreement stuff they put in for awhile that gives them ownership of any and all data you put on the site, now and forever...

Face book is a wannabe patent troll...

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