Posted on 05/24/2011 8:50:51 AM PDT by opentalk
Facebook’s managers are deploying a new software upgrade that will dismantle myriad groups of like-minded political activists unless they get a special software-key from the company.
But Facebook manager are providing very limited information about which groups are being favored with the new key, prompting some activists to complain about possible political favoritism among Facebook managers, and many other activists to experiment with techniques and tricks to get the needed upgrade-key.
“Who is being given the upgrade?” asked Pamela Geller, the New York organizer of a 15,000-member group opposed to Islamist political groups. Without the special key, groups lose access to their members.
...“The Coalition to Save Marriage in New York” is a group of 1,163 social-conservatives seeking to preserve traditional marriage’s role as an institution for parents and child-rearing. The group has been very active this year trying to derail a gay-marriage push in the state assembly, but the group doesn’t have the upgrade, said the group’s administrator, Jason McGuire in Rochester, N.Y. “Nobody else that I know got one,” he said. “You do have to wonder if Facebook is leaning towards liberal positions, instead of being on open format,”.
The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence got the upgrade for its 1,000-member group. “We changed over very smoothly,” said David Churchill, the network-manager at the D.C.-based gun-control group.
...The activists’ worries about Facebook’s possible political tilt are fortified by the political activities of its founders and employees. The company’s employees donated heavily to the Obama campaign in 2008, just as did the employees of Google and Microsoft. Facebook-founder Chris Hughes workers as head of the online-organizing campaign for the Obama campaign, while company chief Mark Zuckerberg has declared himself to be an Obama supporter.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailycaller.com ...
The new software-upgrade will automatically archive all groups. Once archived, each group’s past activity will be still be visible on Facebook, but the groups’ administrators will lose access to their lists of group members.
That means the administrators lose contact with everyone in their groups, and will be forced to recruit all those members again – unless Facebook provides them with the special upgrade software.
Just let it transition over and we’ll rejoin.
This will now help them divide the groups into who to targeted. The upgrades are left alone, the archives need to be infiltrated and re-educated.
I will check it now..
Facebook’s EULA is such that I will never use it.
Bottom line is that Obongo has been courting Mark. He already got You Tube in 2008, he needed Facebook. Welcome to the new USS of A.
EXACTLY! Anyone that has a facebook account is an idiot.
Facebook is like the CIA’s best invention. They get people to basically tell everything about themselves.
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Fools do that and I do mean COMPLETE FOOLS that need to get a life. A REAL life.
This administrating seems (imo)to abuse the power of office to indirectly control the media.
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Understatement of the year
That's a problem, but we are certainly not powerless to change it.
“Have you every bought anything through Facebook ads?”
Actually, I didn’t even know FB had ads until a couple of days ago. I use firefox with practically every ad-blocker known to mankind. A friend showed me the FB ads that show up with IE.
Oh, and even when I use to see google ads, I never bought anything that way. I clicked on a few of those ads early on and quickly realized why they were having to pay to have their web pages show up at all: terrible prices, terrible site contruction and/or terrible reputations.
Currently most of the ads are for non profits and political organizations. It’s been this way for a while.
Excellent question and point.
“Bottom line is, it’s their site, they can do as they wish with it.”
Exactly.
Companies that take sides on politics will pay a price.
Look for something to replace facebook if they continue.
Nailed it. Even if someone were to start a more conservative version of Facebook you still have a site dedicated to people voluntarily giving their privacy away so the lazy government bums don’t have to get off their sofas to spy on the people.
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