October 14, 2009 | lists

And now Part Two of our Top 10 Facebook Bans. CLICK HERE FOR PART ONE

5) Superhacker foiled by Facebook login: At the time of his arrest, Kevin Mitnick had the kind of fantastic hacking record that many young computer geeks aspire to but are simply too dumb to achieve. He hacked companies like Motorola, and his pursuit by law enforcement and subsequent arrest was such a big deal that he had a lousy movie made about him starring Skeet Ulrich (the film did not have enough reviews to get a rating on RottenTomatoes.com, and the only one quoted on the page says: “Some will find it laughable, others will find it insulting. I find it primarily a waste of time.”). In his prime, he had used his skills to bust into systems by successfully impersonating others, but he met his match when he failed to log in to Facebook. “It has frustrated me to no end. I used to be very influential at proving I was someone else. And now I can’t even prove I’m the real Kevin Mitnick. It’s kind of sad,” he said. Facebook demanded proof of Mitnick’s identity. When Mitnick sent him an email from his corporate account at the security firm he started that bears his name, Facebook responded that they only accept emails from the address originally used upon signing up…  This Catch-22 from Facebook no doubt tempted Mitnick to hack the hell out of the website, but the problem was fixed thanks to media coverage of the case.

4) Your Name is too Weird for Facebook: One of Facebook’s more annoying and usually randomly enforced policies is the one dictating that users must use their real names – those entered on government forms not signing into World of Warcraft.  Those choosing celebrity names — and, as we’ve seen, celebrities choosing ordinary people’s names — risk having their account disabled. Also up for deletion: those whose names are just too weird for Facebook to accept. Earlier this year, two users with names likely not found in phone-books outside of the city in which they live had their Facebook accounts deleted:  Alicia Istanbul (not Constantinople) and Robin Kills The Enemy. The former, fortunately for her, is Turkish, while the other is Native American and in no way affiliated with the defunct XFL. Both had their accounts disabled because Facebook likely did the website filtering equivalent of asking for a show of hands of anybody who knows someone with either of these days, and with no extremities in the air, hit the delete button.

A Filipino user who goes by the moniker Tonton was also forced to provide his full name or risk banishment. Users whose accounts are disabled because their parents did not know enough to name them something acceptable to Facebook are on occasion required to provide photocopies of government identification to they didn’t just inhale something strong and type the first thing that came to mind. That’s right. Facebook actually has the gall to request government identification to allow you the privilege of helping them print money. We’re hoping most users let accounts die rather than comply with that request.

3) Beijing will not lose face on Facebook: Beijing’s hosting of the 2008 Olympics gave Free Tibet activists all over the world the kind of exposure that had only previously come when the Dalai Lama did Oprah. The Olympic Torch relay became a focal point for protesters ready to risk a pummeling at the hands of paramilitary throat-stompers in blue tracksuits to bring the plight of Tibetans to a global audience. Hong Kong university student Christina Chan Hau-man was determined to stage a protest during the leg of the torch relay taking place in her city and sent out a call to action through her Facebook account. And her account was then canceled right away. She was told that her account had been disabled for having too many messages and “for permanent misuse of the site”.

A lesson for Facebook newbies: Sending an invite to 348 of your closest friends to take a poll to determine which Smurf they are closest to in personality: OK. Raising political awareness about a subject Facebook would not touch with the world’s longest internet cable: Get outta my Facebook!

2) Facebook says No Thanks for the Mammaries: Facebook’s reason for banning any images of that which brought fortune to Pamela Anderson is that it is “protecting the children”, which in this case means those 13 and older since that is the minimum age requirement for the site. Either the new crop of 13-year-olds are far less resourceful than we were at that age despite having far more resources, or they are already spending non-Facebook-related internet time looking at images that would short circuit Larry Flynt’s electric wheelchair.

In 2007, Facebook drew the ire of a lactating nation when they removed a user’s photos of herself nursing her child (an infant, not a 35-year-old, just to put the matter into context). Banning that one photo of Little Junior having nature’s lunch led to the formation of the group “Hey, Facebook, breastfeeding is not obscene!”, which soon expanded to include some 90,000 women. The mothers held a virtual nurse-in earlier this year, which saw 11,000 of them change their Facebook profile photos to pics of themselves breastfeeding (a move that no doubt led to some shameless photoshopping out of babies heads). It was all to no avail though. Facebook still considers mothers feeding their infants lewd and lascivious and if you reckon that makes them seem like arses of the first order, then wait till you get a load of:

1) Facebook picks on cancer patient (no play on words sufficed): Facebook has censors who apply the “aureole rule” to potential photos – any with visible nipple-age are banned. Much like the people who screen films and decree an R-rating for a one-thrust shag over a bedroom dresser and an NC-17 for a three-thruster, Facebook’s stance on breasts can seem arbitrary and result in bad decisions.

The site’s worst transgression in this regard occurred last year when a woman who had just undergone a mastectomy posted photographs of her scar on the website to share her experience and encourage women to get checked regularly. Facebook deemed the posting “sexual and abusive” and removed the photos. A group of 900 pissed off people formed to protest the decision.

Facebook apologized and reversed its decision, but did not, as was warranted, admit that the original action taken was insensitive at best, big company evil at worst. A spokesman for the company said: “Our user operations team reviews thousands of reported photos a day and may occasionally remove something that doesn’t violate our policies. This is what happened here. We apologize.” It would not be a giant leap to interpret this ruling — as this cnet columnist suggests –  as saying that the company apologizes for deleting the photo because there was not a nipple pictured in it — not because doing so was insensitive, not because they were killing a message as positive as “Get checked for cancer”, but because it did not corrupt minors in the way that only a really determined nipple can do.

CLICK HERE TO RETURN TO PART ONE