What a difference a week makes.
Just last week the UK government (in the shape of Prime Minister David Cameron) were proudly (and painfully embarrassingly) talking to Mark Zuckerberg - owner of Facebook - about their joint initiative to “embrace” the people in governance debates via the social network behemoth. Cameron appeared live from the No. 10 Downing Street, full business suit. Zuckerberg appeared to be sat in a back bedroom with a scruffy top and unwashed hair. I don’t think “awful” quite describes the subservient display that went on.
A week later, somebody has created a page on Facebook in memory of Raoul Moat - the nutcase that recently killed himself after flipping out and going on a murdering spree in northern England. The page ended up being talked about in the House of Commons - and Mark Zuckerberg’s newest fan promised to have words with Facebook.
The words happened last night. Facebook told the civil servant that drew the short straw to get stuffed. Quite predictable really.
It re-opens a can of worms to do with free speech, governments, and commercial organisations. I’ve seen the same thing happen again and again on the internet - commercial organisations (or governments in this case) embrace the internet, think they can take advantage of it, and then discover that it doesn’t quite work how they want, complain bitterly, and try to force change.
Apparently it’s not okay for citizens of a supposedly free country to express their views openly. Granted, in this case the views are in direct discordance with the general public, but it doesn’t mean those views aren’t held. I suspect a lot of it has to do with political parties and commercial organisations defending their “brand”, which says a lot about the way government policies are sold to us - we have become nothing but consumers.
I never thought I would be saying this, but well done Facebook for not caving in.