Facebook

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Facebook (facebook.com) is a privately owned website, USA based, hosting a large social network. Social activists have expressed concerns about the use of corporate-backed tools for organizing, due to the fact that you can't know how your private data is handled. Alternative managed by activists like we.riseup.net.

Facebook has been criticized for its closed and commercial nature, its frequent privacy issues and was sometimes accused of censorship practices.

corporate websites and LEA:

"With a court order, Facebook will release even more information about you. They've even developed an application called "Neoprint" to deliver a handy packet of information about subscribers, including profile contact information, mini-feed, friend listing (with friend's Facebook ID), group listing and messages."

Censorship of file-sharing links in private communications has been reported

Censorship on Facebook is usually opaque, meaning that no record is shown and no reason posted when content or a user are removed or suspended.

You never know what they will block tomorrow. No you can't send 'such' message to your girlfriend or wife, because: “This message has been reported abusive by some Facebook users.”

Closedness

• Facebook has not adopted OpenID, despite providing an equivalent custom service.
• Facebook chat has adopted the open standard XMPP, but is not federated with the open Jabber network.

Censorship reports

February 2010

The group "Tell Facebook to use clean energy in its data center" was suspended for 12 hours, with no reason posted.

May 2010

Facebook blocks bittorrent link for downloading Ubuntu GNU/Linux.

You can report more instances of censorship

Alternatives

Freer, more open and FLOSS alternatives to Facebook exist and are emerging:

• RetroShare, secure friend-to-friend application, beta software
• gnewbook.org, website based on beta software Elgg
• BuddyPress
• we.riseup.net, website based on Crabgrass