Don't get me wrong; I generally find Facebook very useful in the campaign to Flush Rush Limbaugh (Facebook link).
Mindful of the extraordinary role that Facebook (and Twitter) played in the "Arab Spring" uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, and in the international spread of the Occupy Wall Street movement, it is difficult to underestimate the impact of the social media forum in any effort to organize. Unfortunately, Facebook creates significant pitfalls for any organizer. Indeed, Facebook regularly makes a practice of punishing, even knee-capping, any attempt to use Facebook to organize on a non-hierarchical basis.
Now, Talking Points Memo has discovered that Facebook has, for months, been attempting to turn Facebook users into snitches in an effort to root out accounts that do not conform to the company's rather stringent terms of service.
Facebook has confirmed to TPM that for the past several months, it has been surveying users about their Friends’ usernames, asking if the usernames are “your friend’s real name” or not.
“This system has been in a few different incarnations over the past couple months,” a Facebook spokesperon confirmed to TPM in a statement. “It changes depending on what’s being asked.
TPM first encountered the new Facebook “real names” survey prompt after a screenshot was posted on Twitter on Thursday.
— Talking Points Memo
Facebook increasingly seems to be that notorious corporation with a friendly face and an entire collection of nefarious practices. Read the rest of the story
here.