Facebook uses South American Dictator tactics on South American Dissidents

I recall someone blogging last week that the bad news buzz about Buzz would be short lived, all Google had to do was wait for the next Facebook violation - well, they were right. Last year a satire called Faceboom was published in Argentina, but then it went European and the Facebook mafia stepped in - VentureBeat:

But in January, Faerman [the author] launched the book in Europe and drew a lot of attention after appearing on Buena Fuente, a popular night-time talk show.

Within days, his profile vanished. The same happened to Guillermo Otero and Fernanda Gaitan Broun, both involved with the book and its’ marketing. In addition, a Facebook group of fans of Faceboom was deleted. The trio claims it had 30,000 members at the time.

I spoke to Faerman and he showed me emails he sent to Facebook going back to January 27, requesting an explanation. Here’s a YouTube video showing him trying to sign in with his old login and receiving the message “cuenta deshabilitada,” which means “account inactivated.”

It has now been restored suddenly, the explanation being it was "an error" after a media uproar in the Hispanic speaking world then started to cross over to the English speaking one. However the Faceboom fan page with its 30,000 members will not be restored, and in fact Facebook have threatened legal action against the author if another is created, as they say the Faceboom logo is too close to their own and breaches the Facebook T&C. Leaving aside that this is probably spurious, since Facebook's T&C's allow them to help themselves to anything on the site into perpetuity, is this little social wrangle:

There’s only one problem – Faerman did not create his fan group. In fact, he says he has never met the creator. So it is unclear how Facebook can take future action against him, or how it would be justified in doing so given he does not control his fans.

This, as they say, can only get better. And Facebook using a "disappearing" strategy for Argentine dissidents - it seems they've learned the lessons from the various South American dictators well then

Post Script - I meant to say that this is not new behaviour for Facebook (our blog's page was "dissapeared" from Facebook years ago, ostensibly because we breached T&C at the time but maybe it was because we too were sometimes critical).

Thing is, what happens to a Facebook if a significant minority of users start to think it is no longer benign? Facebook hasn't IPO'd yet so the VC's, Founders etc have yet to fill their boots and are still on paper valuations. Trade buyers are much more aware now (after Bebo and MySpace) of buying the social boom town just as the tumbleweeds start to roll through it. Remember Friendster!