When Facebook Disables Your Fan Page | Hacker News Reader

When Facebook Disables Your Fan Page

thecoolhunter.net

54 pointsAloisius20 comments

From their post, they're complaining about Facebook disabling their fan page without explanation while littering the same item with unattributed images.

I've had work in the past posted to their site without attribution and it was a headache to get them to either attribute it or remove it (they chose the latter).

It seems rather obvious why their Facebook account was disabled.

While that's likely the case, at the end of the day if FB is trying to be an advertising platform, they can't do it without competent customer service to ensure they're not cannibalizing their own intent.

Google seems to do just fine without comptent customer service. Maybe that's the key to a successful advertising platform.

Can't tell if you're being sarcastic here.

Hmm... are you sure the problem isn't unfounded accusations???

I'm going to have to back you up here. I've had my own work published to their site without attribution - although it was a long long time ago - and odds are, it's this same process that got them on hot water again. I'm empathetic, but I'm certain they're playing a little dumb as to what's going on here.

If there's infringing content, then isn't that what DMCA notices are for? And shouldn't Facebook simply remove the offending specific piece of content, than rather an entire page like that? And shouldn't it provide warning in advance, with an opportunity to contest it?

The DMCA law establishes processes between content creators and websites, but leaves websites free to determine the processes (or lack thereof) between themselves and the users who submitted the content. I.e., a single photo can result in termination of your entire fanpage without warning.

As more and more people rely on companies like Facebook, Google, etc. to host their content, consumers are going to need protections against arbitrary actions by companies, lacking due process.

Facebook is under no obligation to continue hosting your fan page. The DMCA only prescribes upper limits to the liability sites like Facebook have to copyright infringement on their website.

> lacking due process

Due process is a constitutional right that only pertains to citizens' interactions with the Unites States Government and state and local governments.

Perhaps in this era of political speech being hosted on the servers of various third parties, such rights should be extended.

Considering that there's no constitutional basis for even applying due process to the private sector, I think you're going to have a hard time convincing anyone that's a good idea.

How does whether the law supports something influence whether modifying the law is a good idea or not?

FFS, in the past political speech would be rejected by all sorts of publishers. This isn't a new issue.

Just as folk were then free to set up their own press to churn out leaflets, so too are folk now free to host their own content. In fact, the situation is probably a lot brighter now.

I think OP meant, "According to the DMCA, can't Facebook get away with just removing the content, warning you first, etc". We all understand they can do whatever they want and are not subject to the constitution in the way a government is. They could delete everyone's page, every single user's, without giving a single reason. But its probably not smart to. Hence we are discussing whether this is an intelligent move on their part, or if there are other reasons for this behavior.

> "The other reason that could have caused the closure of our FB page is that we sometimes use images even when we do not know who has taken the picture."

And that, folks, is why you at least attribute your sources. I feel no sympathy for a company who has no compunction about posting others' work uncited/unattributed much less even uncompensated.

They are just going to have to take media licensing more seriously, why do they think they deserve a hall pass, especially considering their whole brand is build upon the work of others.

I was wondering the same thing, looks like a variation on the 'user contributed content' site, for which there are a bunch. If you want to run such a site in this era of copyright litigation you need to clear access rights for every image you put up.

I had a Facebook fan page with over 100,000 fans that was deleted suddenly for no reason. After around 3-4 weeks I got the page reinstated by using some contact links and email addresses I found by searching Google.

Facebook said we had posted inappropriate content but I was the only one with admin access and I'm absolutely 100% sure that never happened. Also the page was set up so users couldn't post images.

I think what must have happened was they had some kind of temporary exploit where someone was able to post inappropriate content that looked like it came from us, or maybe users were able to post something temporarily somehow. Or I guess it could have just been a glitch and nothing bad ever happened at all and that's why they reinstated it? It was very stressful but I'm glad it's over now.

Did they let you know what the inappropriate content was? When your page was restored was the history and content intact? Aren't you concerned it'll happen again?

They never let me know what the inappropriate content was. The page was restored with all the history/content intact and all likes intact. Yes I am very concerned and paranoid it could happen again and I've really locked down my page a lot more that I probably would have otherwise. For example I don't let users post to our wall anymore, they can only comment on our own posts.

Even before we were mysteriously blocked I never let users post photos/videos to our wall and obviously we'd never allow any inappropriate content there.

Users can report content on FB (photos) as inappropriate (sexual, copyright, violence, etc). They almost certainly have some automatic system behind that automatically deletes content that receives enough "votes" (or maybe votes from trust-worthy users). I'm guessing that this is what happened to you.

I think that something similar (they banned our whole domain) also happened to us last year (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2527955), and I still don't know who fixed it or if it was just a glitch.

You will note that I've used a lot of "I think"s, there's a reason for that, nobody (except for FB obviously) actually knows the rules of the game :/

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