A girl who calls herself TradeChat online was accidentally censored by Facebook earlier this week. On Thursday morning, the day after the Internet united to protest against U.S. anti-piracy legislation Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and PROTECT IP Act (PIPA), TradeChat (pictured right) posted an anti-SOPA post on her Facebook Page. Facebook quickly removed it, and while the company has apologized, it hasn’t explained why the mistake happened in the first place.
TradeChat, who has a successful video blog on YouTube, was not amused. A few minutes after the post was deleted, at 12:00 PM, she posted the following on her Facebook Page: “WOW! >:| facebook removed my post with the state rep’s phone numbers because it violated facebook’s code of conduct…really???” 8 minutes later, she commented on her post and said Facebook probably made an accident: “I actually think it was a fluke, I think facebook discourages posting any phone numbers on public pages.”
Since she has her Facebook Page attached to her Twitter account (you can also do this for your own profile), the message also went out as a tweet. The message was thus potentially seen by her 10,300 Twitter followers and the 14,600 users who have Liked her Facebook Page.
Despite her huge number of fans, I only heard about the issue this weekend, mainly because there was so much SOPA and PIPA news this week that it was next to impossible to wade through it all. In any case, I contacted Facebook on Saturday and received a response today.
“The post was taken down in error,” a Facebook spokesperson said in a statement. “We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.”
No matter how much further I pressed on, I couldn’t get a more detailed answer as to why the post was removed. I do, however, have an idea of what could have happened.
First of all, it’s worth noting that Facebook user Tyler Suits posted the following message, just 16 minutes after TradeChat complained about the issue:
To help someone I like:
TradeChat had her post removed from facebook with her state reps phone number listed for the Anti SOPA and facebook said they are against SOPA, dear Zerk, im not paying for Facebook i know that is what you are thinking now.
So, here y’all go: (troll)
AK, Lisa Murkowski, 907-456-0233
AL, Jefferson Sessions, 334-244-7017
AL, Richard Shelby, 205-759-5047
AR, John Boozman, 479-725-0400
AR, Mark Pryor, 501-324-6336
AZ, Jon Kyl, 602-840-1891
AZ, John McCain, 602-952-2410
CA, Barbara Boxer, 510-286-8537
CA, Dianne Feinstein, 415-393-0707
CO, Michael Bennet, 303-455-7600
CT, Richard Blumenthal, 860-258-6940
CT, Joseph Lieberman, 860-549-8463
DE, Thomas Carper, 302-573-6291
DE, Chris Coons, 302-573-6345
FL, Bill Nelson, 407-872-7161
FL, Marco Rubio, 305-418-8553
GA, C. Saxby Chambliss, 770-763-9090
GA, John Isakson, 770-661-0999
HI, Daniel Akaka, 808-522-8970
HI, Daniel Inouye, 808-541-2542
IA, Charles Grassley, 515-288-1145
IA, Thomas Harkin, 515-284-4574
ID, Michael Crapo, 208-334-1776
ID, James Risch, 208-342-7985
IL, Richard Durbin, 312-353-4952
IL, Mark Kirk, 312-886-3506
IN, Daniel Coats, 317-554-0750
IN, Richard Lugar, 317-226-5555
KS, Pat Roberts, 913-451-9343
KY, Mitch McConnell, 502-582-6304
KY, Rob Portman, 361-576-1231
LA, Mary Landrieu, 225-389-0395
LA, David Vitter, 337-262-6898
MA, Scott Brown, 617-565-3170
MA, John Kerry, 617-565-8519
MD, Barbara Mikulski, 410-962-4510
ME, Susan Collins, 207-945-0417
ME, Olympia Snowe, 207-874-0883
MI, Carl Levin, 313-226-6020
MI, Debbie Stabenow, 517-203-1760
MN, Al Franken, 651-221-1016
MN, Amy Klobuchar, 612-727-5220
MO, Roy Blunt, 816-471-7141
MO, Claire McCaskill, 816-421-1639
MS, Thad Cochran, 601-965-4459
MS, Roger Wicker, 601-965-4644
MT, Max Baucus, 406-657-6790
MT, Jon Tester, 406-449-5401
NC, Richard Burr, 910-251-1058
NC, Kay Hagan, 336-333-5311
ND, Kent Conrad, 701-258-4648
ND, John Hoeven, 701-250-4618
NE, Mike Johanns, 308-632-6032
NE, E. Benjamin Nelson, 402-441-4600
NH, Kelly Ayotte, 603-622-7979
NH, Jeanne Shaheen, 603-647-7500
NJ, Frank Lautenberg, 973-639-8700
NJ, Robert Menendez, 973-645-3030
NM, Jeff Bingaman, 505-346-6601
NM, Tom Udall, 505-346-6791
NV, Dean Heller, 775-686-5770
NV, Harry Reid, 702-388-5020
NY, Kirsten Gillibrand, 212-688-6262
NY, Charles Schumer, 212-486-4430
OH, Sherrod Brown, 216-522-7272
OK, James Inhofe, 918-748-5111
OK, Tom Coburn, 918-581-7651
OR, Jeffery Merkley, 503-326-3386
PA, Robert Casey, 570-941-0930
PA, Pat Toomey, 610-434-1444
RI, John Reed, 401-943-3100
RI, Sheldon Whitehouse, 401-453-5294
SC, Jim DeMint, 864-233-5366
SC, Lindsey Graham, 864-250-1417
SD, Tim Johnson, 414-276-7282
SD, John Thune, 605-334-9596
TN, Lamar Alexander, 615-736-5129
TN, Bob Corker, 423-756-2757
TX, John Cornyn, 512-469-6034
TX, Kay Hutchison, 214-361-3500
UT, Orrin Hatch, 801-524-4380
UT, Mike Lee, 801-524-5933
VA, Mark Warner, 804-775-2314
VA, James Webb, 804-771-2221
VT, Patrick Leahy, 802-863-2525
VT, Bernard Sanders, 802-862-0697
WA, Patty Murray, 206-553-5545
WI, Ron Johnson, 605-332-8896
WI, Herbert Kohl, 414-297-4451
WV, Joe Manchin, 304-342-5855
WV, John Rockefeller, 304-347-5372
WY, John Barrasso, 307-261-6413
WY, Michael Enzi, 307-682-6268
In the Facebook post, he tagged TradeChat, so it appeared on her Page’s Wall. Secondly, TradeChat made another post about SOPA and PIPA the same day at 6:59 PM: “The US government clearly cares more about the rights of HOLLYWOOD than the rights of the people!!! I will be boycotting purchasing any movies, movie tickets or music in response to the shutdown of megaupload, SOPA and PIPA. Who is with me?” It received over 600 Likes and almost 200 comments.
Facebook left both posts intact. What can we learn from this? It seems that Menlo Park doesn’t have a problem with phone numbers nor has it been censoring anti-SOPA and/or anti-PIPA posts.
This aligns with the company’s overall stance on SOPA and PIPA, as I’ve covered this month. While Facebook was never going to go dark for SOPA, nor PIPA, users were allowed to use the social network as a medium for voicing their concerns, and Facebook executives also expressed their stance against both bills.
So again, why was TradeChat’s original post removed? Here’s what most likely happened. Either Facebook users or Facebook’s automated systems flagged the post. From there, an employee, exhausted from looking at questionable content, deleted it by mistake. For whatever reason, it could not be retrieved, and in any case, the damage was already done.
I don’t think Facebook actually had a problem with the post, and the company has implied as much in the statement it provided to me. I think this falls into the broader category of accidental content removal that unfortunately occurs when you have billions of “things” being shared every day. It happens every once in a while (last month Facebook blocked Snopes.com), although it’s impossible to say how frequently.
I would never have found this story if it wasn’t related to SOPA and PIPA. It also definitely helped that TradeChat has so many fans. While I can’t write about every mistake Facebook makes, I hope that writing about a fraction of them will motivate the company to improve.
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