No Surprises In Facebook Purge

I’ll start off by saying that I don’t like Facebook, not so much the concept, the concept is actually sound, keeping in touch with people you know. I don’t like the company, their attitude, their privacy values but most of all I don’t like their function creep. Facebook comments are an example of function creep with Facebook getting their grubby little claws into the commenting business and therefore further extending their stifling of speech.

TechCrunch is a classic example of this, they adopted Facebook comments apparently in an attempt to silence the trolls, but they also silenced a great many other people too. However their sister publication, Crunchgear, tried Facebook comments and then kicked them into touch. Facebook comments really do stifle speech, we have a social networking policy at work, I don’t want to bring work into what I blog or comment on because work isn’t relevant most of the time, but were I commenting via Facebook, work is linked whether I want it to be or not, so I opt out of using the system. There are many others in the same boat and they won’t be commenting via Facebook comments either.

However, I am not going to criticise Facebook for deleting Second Life Avatar Profiles, as reported here by Kim Randall and here by Daniel Voyager. People are flouting the Facebook TOS, tough titty if you get caught, it may not be nice but it’s a fair cop Guv’nor. However Linden Lab need to stop pushing Facebook Second Life side, it’s not a happy marriage.

I’ve said this before but the whole Facebook thing from Linden Lab has been arse about face and remains arse about face. Utilising Facebook to advertise Second Life makes a degree of sense, using Second Life to advertise Facebook makes no sense whatsoever and it is this sort of silly marketing that leads to situations where people feel it’s ok to create a Facebook Second Life profile, people see other Second Life profiles on the Second Life Facebook page, they think it must be ok and then they find out it’s not, of course if they’d paid attention to the TOS they’d know it wasn’t ok, but Linden Lab have been pushing this Facebook link for way too long.

On the official Second Life wall they now encourage people to create a Facebook page for their avatar, this is what you’re supposed to do when you’re not using a real name, you’re allowed to create pages but they need an administrator, this information should have been there from the start in all reality.

However, really, what we’re seeing yet again is why Facebook and Second Life is not a happy marriage, people who like the concept of Second Life in many cases don’t want the lack of anonymity Facebook provides and Facebook users who prefer no anonymity, don’t like the concept of Second Life and people hiding behind avatars. This isn’t black and white, there are plenty of people who are happy with both sides of the coin but they don’t mix.

Linden Lab should stop pushing the Facebook borg down our throats, promote Second Life Facebook side, heck even have exclusive promotions and competitions for Facebook users, but keep it that side of the fence.

Second Life users, if you have a Facebook account in your Second Life avatar name and that’s not your real name, you’re breaching the TOS, don’t complain if your account gets deleted, just be thankful you got away with it for as long as you did.

There really is no logical reason why a Second Life avatar, especially one who has a payment and billing relationship with Linden Lab, shouldn’t be able to have a Facebook account, the avatar would be tied to a real person, but that’s not good enough for the Facebook borg who don’t seem to like people being cautious about their online selves, or even in the case of a Chinese Blogger like Michael Anti, who had his account deleted because it’s not the name on his birth certificate even though people know him by the name Michael Anti.

The absurdity of the Michael Anti is summed up by Michael Anti himself when he says “This time it is a war against stupidity“.

If you want to use Facebook, you do so at your own peril, seriously.