After More Accusations of Censorship, Facebook Evaluating Changes to Cause-Oriented Pages

Facebook introduced Community Pages in early April as an alternative to its regular Pages, with the main differences being that Community Pages don't have owners, and are not able to publish to users' news feeds, post videos and provide links to other sites, and do not include the discussion tab. While this product change is months old, the result is understandable but off-base cries of censorship today. Facebook originally created Pages to be for public figures such as politicians, businesses, nonprofits and other official organizations, but people started using them for everything else, from their favorite TV show lines to funny one-liners, favorite cuisines, and everything else. So it added Community Pages, intending them to be for concepts that nobody owns. And it restricts Community Page functionality in order to prevent random owners of these concept Pages from spamming or otherwise taking advantage of their unwitting fans -- people who Liked a Page because they thought the idea was funny, or whatever, but weren't looking to see massive amounts of updates in their news feeds from the Page owner. The problem is that legitimate organizations that want to use Pages for promotional purposes, as Facebook intends, sometimes end up getting forcibly converted to Community Pages. Examples of this have been occurring since April -- and Facebook fairly quickly introduced a way to appeal this miscategorization, to help rectify incorrect conversions Yet issues keep coming up, partly because of how Facebook defines "causes." Grassroots activist Pages "Boycott Target Until They Cease Funding Anti-Gay Politics" and "Boycott BP" both had key functionality turned off recently, according to a post by political site Politico on Saturday. From the article: As the number of Facebook members signed up for the “Boycott Target Until They Cease Funding Anti-Gay Politics” page neared 78,000 in recent days, Facebook personnel locked down portions of the page — banning new discussion threads, preventing members from posting videos and standard Web links to other sites and barring the page’s administrator from sending updates to those who signed up for the boycott. The article doesn't say so, but this is the exact description of a conversion from a Page to a Community Page -- something that Facebook does many times on any given day, in an effort to keep the Pages product from turned into a spammer playground. Facebook has since reconverted Boycott BP back to being a fully official Page, as its administrator noted via an update to its fans; the company explains to Politico that the Page had had its news feed access blocked due to the overly aggressive policing of an automated anti-spam system. However, the Target Page has not been officially re-enabled (although it appears functional now), and fans have created a separate Page to continue their campaign. The thing is, according to Facebook's own policies, both of these Pages -- and all other cause-based Pages of any political or nonpolitical bent -- should be Community Pages. For example, Boycott BP appears to be run by a person in Louisiana, not any celebrity or organization that Pages are intended for, so it's not clear why the Page has been turned on (at least from a Page policy perspective). The exact wording on Facebook's Create a Page page says as much: "Generate support for your favorite cause or topic by creating a Community Page. If it becomes very popular (attracting thousands of fans), it will be adopted and maintained by the Facebook community." When Facebook says "adopted and maintained by the Facebook community," the company means that the creator will not be able to control their Page. The text goes on to cite an example of a "cause" appropriate for a Community Page topic -- "recycling." Meanwhile, if you want to create an official Page, you'll need to go through a verification process with Facebook. Here's what Facebook told us about how it handles Page definitions. This policy is designed to reduce spam by restricting Pages that represent generic concepts and aren't affiliated with any official entity (blog, organization, etc.) from publishing stories to people's News Feeds. An example of the type of Page this policy was designed for is "Pizza." We've found that most people who like these generic Pages do so to express an affinity, not to receive ongoing updates, and we've seen these Pages misuse News Feed publishing rights in the past. We've listened to feedback and are evaluating the policy more closely to determine what changes we can make to allow legitimate grassroots movements to communicate effectively with their supporters, while at the same time preventing spam and other unwanted behavior. That's the thing. Many causes are well-organized despite not being supported by some sort of official entity. And people who Like a Page about a cause often want to be quite engaged with it: they want the ability to see status updates from the Page, and have the full range of interactions available to them. Facebook has so far gone with the blanket policy approach of trying to designate all unofficial causes as Community Pages. Sticking with this course will lead to more instances of cause-driven Pages losing access and crying foul. The company could allow any cause-based Page to become an official Page, but there's no simple way to do this. What is a legitimate cause? Facebook would have to decide that on a case-by-case basis, no doubt leading to more controversy. The other option is for Facebook to create a new type of official Page, specifically for causes, maybe with an effort at verification (a form to explain your cause, or something), and then a filtering process to try to sort out which causes should be Community Pages. That option has many of the same issues, but it would also ensure the most legitimate participation, and minimize the negative stories.

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After More Accusations of Censorship, Facebook Evaluating Changes to Cause-Oriented Pages

Eric Eldon

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Eric Eldon