Category: Internet

Birt þann

The draconian Facebook control of users accounts

There is one thing to be sad about Facebook. They are draconian in control. It appears that they have limits that nobody knows how are. There are many examples of people being banned from Facebook for adding too many users, or not. As nobody knows how many users you can add on a day before you get a warning. I got my first warning on this. But I do not add fifty or more people on a day. I am lucky if I get five more people to my friend list during the whole week. Some days I add more people then others. But most of the time, I add few or get added few times.

This authoritarian and draconian behavior of Facebook is quite interesting, as is does not but alienate people from using people and moving back or MySpace that does not have this limits in place far as I know. It is clear that Facebook is currently on it’s peak, with over 500 million users. But the question remains how long that popularity is going to last. As people don’t like to be ordered around by a social networking site, that tries to control who and how the make new friends over the internet. But the internet connects the world together, forms new friends ships and all that. Current behavior of Facebook has only one result in the end. Bankruptcy of Facebook in three to five years, depending on when and how the peak of Facebook popularity stops and dies out.

I am going to retain my Facebook account. Unless Facebook deletes it or suspends from me, for making new friends too fast in there own opinion.

Other blogs on this matter.

Facebook Slapped Me On The Wrist
How to respond when Facebook censors your political speech: Part 1

Birt þann

Facebook loose set of rules

For an online community, Facebook has the most least understand and least organized set of rules to guide people around on Facebook on what is allowed, and what is not. Because of that, it seems to be impossible for users of Facebook to know when they are breaking the rules and when they are not.

Here is a set of Facebook rules that are loose, and could in theory last forever for no reason at all.

http://www.facebook.com/help/?page=1048

From rule: I have been blocked from using a feature.

Unfortunately, Facebook cannot provide any specifics on the rate limits that are enforced. The threshold at which you are warned is not a specific number, but rather determined by different factors, such as speed, time, and quantity.

From rule: I have been blocked from sending messages.

When you are allowed to resume sending messages, keep in mind that it’s possible to run into a block based on how many messages you send and how fast you send them. It’s also possible to be blocked when either starting a new message thread or replying to a message. Lastly, deleting old messages will not allow you to send more messages. In the future, please proceed with caution to avoid hitting the limit again. Please be aware that further abuse of such features can result in your account being permanently disabled.

From rule: Why didn’t my friend request go through?

If you have been prevented you from adding friends on Facebook, it is likely because many recent friend requests sent from your account have gone unanswered. This may be because you’ve asked strangers to be friends or because you’ve engaged in other behavior that Facebook users have reported as unwelcome. When you are allowed to use this feature again, only send friend requests to people that you already know to avoid having additional limits placed on your account.

From rule: Why is Facebook asking me to confirm my identity by providing my phone number?

This is a security measure to help ensure that Facebook remains a community of people using their real identities to connect and share. If you ever lose your password, you’ll also be able to use your mobile number to access your account.

From rule: What if I didn’t receive a warning before becoming disabled?

Depending on the severity of the violation, it is not guaranteed that you will receive a warning prior to becoming disabled. Unfortunately, accounts that are disabled for severe violations of Facebook’s Statement of Rights and Responsibilities cannot be restored.

Note that in this rules that in many cases there are no limit sets, not high and low and none is given in the Help pages. So the limit in question is a guess like the next week lottery number. You might hit the limit on a bad day, on a good day you might not hit it at all.

This behavior of Facebook, keeping everything loose and rater ill regulated is there own guide for a failure. It might take three or five more years until the cracks start to appear on Facebook, but in the end they are going to appear and in the end going to be the demise of Facebook.

I don’t trust Facebook, and I don’t recommend that anyone does.

Birt þann

The lost emails

Today I found out to my horrors that I had lost some emails that I regarded as important. This lost emails was not because of my fault, it was the software fault why this did happen. Why this did happen I do not yet know, besides that this is a software bug that created this mess. I don’t expect too get this email back, as the email program that I use doesn’t keep any backup on it’s own. It also doesn’t correct file errors, or doesn’t appear to do any type of maintenance on the files where the emails are stored. This type of practice is quite common among email clients, both open-source and closed-source. If the email clients messes up due to a software bug, you are on your own.

The fact that email clients actually loose emails that they are supposed to keep is quite bad in my opinion. Because a software that stores data should not loose any of the data it is keeping, and should provide a simple solution on how to backup your data, both automatic and manual. My current email client does offer a simple way to backup the email manually. But no background automatic backup happens far as I can tell, in the case of sudden system failure (power outage and so on..). But those often create data loss far worse then the accidental ones, that user might have prepared him self for by making a backup of his data.

I am currently using a email client called Evolution, and for some reason it lost my email with no way of recovering it. Because it did overwrite the file that was storing the emails in question, instead of letting me know of a problem with that storage file like would have been a useful feature too me, and other users how face the same problem as I do.

Birt þann

Íslendingar sem styðja aðildarviðræður Íslands og ESB / Group for people to show its support for Iceland EU membership bid

Fyrir nokkru síðan stofnaði ég Facebook hóp fyrir íslendinga sem styðja aðildarviðræður Íslands og ESB. Þessum hópi er ætlað það hlutverk að fræða fólk um ESB, starfsemi þess og hlutverk. Einnig sem að saga ESB verður til umfjöllunar ef svo ber undir. Ég hvet alla stuðningsmenn aðildarviðræðna og umsóknar Íslands að ESB til þess að ganga í þennan hóp.

Hérna er hægt að skrá sig í umræddan Facebook hóp.

English.

Some time ago I created a group on Facebook for foreign people how support Iceland EU membership bid. This is for people how live inside the EU and want to tell them about there experience and knowledge of EU for Icelanders to learn from, or just to enjoy. This Facebook group can be found here. I encourage everyone how want to show there support to join this group.

Birt þann

Facebook caves in, censorship starts

It looks like that Facebook has censorship the group Everybody draw a Mohammed day and closed it down. It is a real same that Facebook backed down and caved into treats by fundamentalists and cowards from the muslim world that demand that we follow there own rules, that in fact only applies to the muslim faith. But not to other individuals of other religion, or perhaps lack there of. It is also serious matter that Facebook has violated the first amendment of the U.S constitution by removing the Facebook group. That they them self did say that did not violate there own terms and rules. Given that, it seems clear to me that removing that group was nothing more then act of pure censorship on Facebook side, in order to please the muslim world by caving into treats and demands.

It is clear that non-muslim are not required to follow the rules of the holy (yea right) book of islam (the Qur’an). Demanding that non-muslim do so is a demand that is a violation of chose for the free western world. Such demand is also a violation of free speech that is guaranteed in the western world and by human right standards.

Those muslims how want to censor the western world, and there own countries for that matter I have only one thing to day. Fuck off and don’t come back! I also suggest that you put your threats into the trash and keep them there, because I have grown tiered of being afraid of you and your demand for submission of the western world. It is now clear to me that muslim that demands submission and want to me respect there rules are demanding something that I cannot agree too follow on. I have mentioned the reasons above.

Please have in mind that with the free world comes responsibility. But that is not the same thing as outright censorship that we are currently seeing at the moment.

Birt þann

Draw a Mohammed day 2010

Here is my picture of draw Mohammed day 2010. I did not draw those, as I am poor at drawing at the moment. But here are some historical pictures.

Taken from here. Mohammed drawn ca 1489.

I also want to add this picture, found on the internet. But I do not know how the creator of this picture is.

Author currently unknown. But copyright belongs to him.

Birt þann

Facebook doesn’t want you to speak about your privacy on Facebook

This is a quite interesting fact. But it seems that Facebook doesn’t seem to want you to speak about your privacy on Facebook. Specially on how to make your privacy settings stronger on Facebook. All such guides or help tips provided over Facebook gets automatically blocked by Facebook, both in Facebook Chat and in messages or by posting them on your wall. I have tested the message and the Facebook chat already. The message on the wall is based on those facts, but remains untested today by me.

I say that there is something is bad in Facebook headquarters and it needs investigating by the authorities, as it is not normal or legal to block people from increasing there privacy or give them tips about it with there friends on Facebook.

People can easily test the Facebook word block on privacy (it also blocks links in this regards it seems), just use privacy and some manner to relate that to Facebook and it’s lack of privacy controls or settings.

Birt þann

DMCA abuse on Youtube, Twitter and such

I am getting really annoyed by the hopeless legal system in the U.S. Specially since the legal system there allows for abuse when it comes to certain laws there. I am in this case speaking about DMCA laws. It is also interesting fact that the U.S wants to put this crap on the rest of the world with the ACTA agreement on copyright and piracy preventions, but they are currently pushing this trough WIPO that mandates that the member countries must take the agreement up as a law at some point in time.

When it comes to abuse the DMCA laws in the U.S are heavily used for censorship proposes, as the law require that the DMCA claim is acted on right away and does not allow for a buffer period to exist so the claims can be verified by the content holder or the person that the DMCA claim is used on. This loophole is used by both individuals, companies, religious groups and other how want to silence any and all how criticise them on any manner of subjects. It does not matter if the far use doctrine is in effect or not. The reason for this why this happens is also the fact that people, how are often the victims of this due not have the money or the resources to fight these false DMCA in court. They due file a counter claim, but in the case of Youtube account it does not help people, as in the end the Youtube account is banned according to Youtube rules. It does not matter if the DMCA claim has been counter-notified or not. Here is a good sample of that fact.

This DMCA abuse also extents to twitter, facebook and other sites today. Where some sick people have the need to silence criticism on there religion, crazy ideas and so on. Here is more reading material on the DMCA abuses and the effect that it has on the internet in the U.S and elsewhere in the world.

Victims fight back against DMCA abuse (2007)
Examples of DMCA Abuse
Mom Sues Universal Music for DMCA Abuse (2007)
Perfect Pitch Accused Of DMCA Abuse To Censor Criticism [Update] (2009)
DMCA ABUSE EXTENDS TO TWITTER POSTS (They did write the title in caps, sight!) (2010)
Judge Dismisses DMCA-Abuse Lawsuit Over Video Of Baby Dancing To Prince (2008)
YouTube to McCain: You Made Your DMCA Bed, Lie in It

Text updated at 08:24 UTC on 27th of April 2010.