sebastian troen

Those of you who are slowly switching all your online communications from email to Facebook messages (like I have), take note. Facebook has been caught censoring messages. And not unauthorized spam either, but rather messages from one user to another that includes a link to torrent files.

Now it gets tricky for Facebook because torrent files aren’t actually illegal in and of themselves, in fact they are often used for the sharing of legal information (as well as lots of sharing of illegal content), but Facebook claims to have the right to sniff out links that it finds to be dubious.

Where this gets tricky is that Facebook is quickly becoming the de facto messaging standard on the web. I read somewhere awhile back that Facebook messages now account for more messages than web-based email services, such as Gmail and Hotmail. That’s dangerous if and when Facebook decides to act as ‘Big Brother’. At least with public email, I can send my friends anything I want, without worry that Google is going to block my messages.

It’s a slipper slope and it’ll be interesting to see how Facebook manages this situation. Meanwhile, don’t close that Gmail account just yet.

Facebook’s E-mail Censorship is Legally Dubious, Experts Say | Epicenter.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 7th, 2009 at 9:53 AM and is filed under Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.