It came to our attention yesterday when we were sharing WUWT articles, that Facebook now treats WUWT articles as “abusive”. Apparently this is a new tactic of the warmists to abuse the FB abuse process in order to suppress free speech. WUWT readers have reported that this has also started happening on other skeptic blogs with their articles.
Until Anthony gets back, when we can see about a more permanent solution, we want to encourage our readers to all share WUWT articles via your Facebook accounts, and when FB gives you “this is an abusive site” pop-up, as seen in the graphic above, to click the “Let us know” appeal link to submit an appeal. Hopefully if FB staff start seeing enough appeals from enough of our readers, that they will realize that their system is being gamed by our opponents.
While on FB, we encourage you to join the WUWT FB group.
UPDATE: As of this moment, new WUWT articles are posting to FB without the abuse warning, but anything from yesterday or days prior is getting the warning and requires an appeal. Apparently whoever has been up to these games hasn’t gotten online yet today. We still encourage our readers to help ensure that WUWT articles are able to be shared on FB without interference, and to ensure that other skeptic blogs are also able to be published on Facebook. It’s clear that the warmists are engaging in guerrilla tactics now.
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If the moderators will permit (and I certainly understand if they don’t):
If you would like a social networking site that absolutely WILL NOT engage in censorship of this nature, and will not permit a website to be spuriously targeted like this (understanding the same applies to all sides of a debate), try http://miio.com/
Full disclosure: I can make that guarantee because I am one of the founders of miio, so I know what the rules are…
Well FB’s Zuckeberg is still wet behind the ears kid, who is being played by the Obama camp, for campaign donations. Hey who wouldn’t be stroked by all the attention from the President of The United States.
Hey legal disclaimer; I couldn’t be happier that ZB has found a good old American way to fleece Americans and others, who like to publicize their own sense of self importance. It’s snake oil salesmanship of the highest order.
Same thing with Bill Gates of M$, I begrudge him nary a brass razoo of his inestimable fortune; good on him. But in Gates’ case, I think the argumant can be made, that he has actually contributed immensely to the welbeing of people all over this planet. So Windows may be the biggest computer virus ever spread in the cyber world; but who wants to go back to eh age before the PC.
But Zuckerberg preys entirely on a person’s own Narcissism. Well I’m all for taking money away from such people, by any means that is legal and I suppose that FB is legal.
The greatest mystery of the species homo sapiens sapiens, is how ANY entrepeneur, can possibly be a socialist.
I and many others use social media on Facebook and Twitter for networking. Several thousand of us across the world use Facebook to crosspost dogs and cats in high kill shelters to rescues across the country who can save them. Shelters kill over 250,000 to over 400,000 pets a year, depending on the state. Facebook and Yahoo Groups, that people join for this purpose have resulted in massive numbers of these animals saved, some horribly abused and neglected but many are wonderful dogs, cats, adorable puppies and kittens whose owners bailed in our new culture of government dependence and lack of personal responsibility! Before, shelter animals, some in poor areas and many at the mercy of thugs, only escaped death if a local went in and adopted. Facebook especially has made a huge impact. There is a Brit who weekly, from the UK, manages to work the animals in a NC shelter so successfully that most weeks zero die, when prior to FB they had an 85% kill rate! The changes made to FB since the meeting w/obama have made it more difficult to to use FB as a networking tool, which I believe was the point, w/his re-election looming being able to BS the sheep and a new “obama girl” are the only chance this guy has to keep those great vacations and golf outings coming! No longer are conservatives at the mercy of a liberal lying media.
There also would be zero chance of getting the word out about the criminal Bills Congress has been trying to ram through and issues like Climategate, without the expedient sharing of blogs and links like this on Facebook and Twitter, nor would there have been a force like the Teaparty without the networking done on Twitter and to a lesser degree FB.
There are two types of social media users… those who use it for vanity and post their every inane action and thought, and those who use it for networking to get out a message and educate large numbers of people.
I just tried to do a test post giving URL to Steig-Antarctica page WUWT, problem was Facebook was capturing all graphics on WUWT page – that’s not viable.
I cancelled by going Back in browser.
BTW, if you want to delete an FB post, run your cursor over the top right corner of the post, you should see a red X, right-click for options.
Mike, indeed we do. However, as a private non-government entity, they can restrict freedom on their site any way they see fit. Like the du.org, Mikeymoron.org and Moron.org, these sites can determine that only hate speech against certain people is allowed, and all other speech is forbidden.
Our right to free speech is from government control, not from private citizens restricting it on their own property.
Squidly says:
April 9, 2011 at 10:24 pm
Note to Facebook and Google: You are treading on thin ice (worse than we thought) .. and remember this, Easy Come, Easy Go!!!
Squidly – Google has already stated ‘case closed’ on AGW, and if you do a search you will find some articles already buried. While I am no fan of Microsoft, I have found their Bing to be as good as Google – use it or lose it.
Second, stay away from Facebook. Zuckerberg has already stated that there is no expectation of privacy for anyone with an account there. So the only defense is not to be there.
Given that both Google and Facebook are hostile to real science, I see no reason in supporting them so they can spend your money campaigning for lies.
PhilJourdan says:
Squidly – Google has already stated ‘case closed’ on AGW, and if you do a search you will find some articles already buried. While I am no fan of Microsoft, I have found their Bing to be as good as Google – use it or lose it.
Second, stay away from Facebook. Zuckerberg has already stated that there is no expectation of privacy for anyone with an account there. So the only defense is not to be there.
None of this posturing matters until/unless there are viable alternatives that are actually used. There used to be MySpace, but it has fallen by the wayside. Twitter is out there, but it isn’t exactly a great place for a conversation. (plus, all of these places are run by people with similar mindsets). Others have tried, but all have suffered from the simple fact that everyone is using facebook/twitter/google.
Simply having an alternative doesn’t work – people need to use it. But people don’t use the alternatives because nobody else is. Catch-22. Until you break that cycle, these companies are a defacto monopoly. Not much different than the MSM, really…
I just successfully posted the link http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/04/09/snow-in-fairfield-california-gore-effect/#more-37619 to Facebook, not fuss.
(It was the last line in a post, the troubled case I describe above was the first line.)
Wouldn’t surprise me if the problem is software – we know Facebook is not quality.
Thankyou SBVOR for saying “Private property rights should trump free speech rights every time.” on April 9, 2011 at 5:29 pm.
The confusion is between freedom of speech and free-ride.
Those who believe that humans are intrinsically uncreative, unproductive, and untrustworthy make two errors.
– Persons of Marxist persuasion think there is an economic fixed-pie and that exploitation is possible despite the justice system in the US and like countries, so anyone who has money to fund speaking stole it from someone else.
– Persons who think that that all humans can be conned by bad people all the time want to limit what can be said – Barack Obama and John McCain both fit that. (There’s also the neo-Marxists who explicitly think that garbage as art should be funded by force, they have a psychological problem beyond their inability to see the immorality of Marxism in principle and its utter failure in application.)
As with most attempts to manipulate, things don’t work out they way the perpetrater’s expected. While people like to claim that campaign finance reform is necessary to prevent big business money from winning, there are many cases to the contrary, including rich people who could not come close to getting elected and the festering dispute in Canada over political parties getting funds from the government. It turns out that the Conservative party, which would be assumed to get money from big businesses, does very well with modest contributions from individuals. The opposition parties do very poorly despite their claim to represent people (and I presume are limited in what they can get from unions who would support the NDP and the many business people who support the “Liberal” party). So they expect to continue to get money from taxpayers by force, that individuals will not give them voluntarily.
biff33 (April 10, 2011 at 2:57 pm)
Well stated — I agree.