Tom Brake has now managed to get in contact with Facebook who have advised him that his account was automatically suspended when their system detected an unusually large amount of traffic to and from his account.
Clearly, a social network originally set up for networking amongst university peers needs to evolve to cope with new types of users and their networks, balancing communications amongst large groups with safeguards against spam.
Facebook say they are working hard to get Tom’s account back up.
Tom Brake, Liberal Democrat MP for Carshalton and Wallington, has had his Facebook account disabled just hours after he used it to organise a large public demonstration in his constituency.
Tom, who last year became one of the first MPs in Britain to offer his constituents regular online advice surgeries, is widely noted in the media for his use of the internet to engage with the public.
Hundreds of people gathered last night in Wallington town centre to protest against the axing of the N213 night bus service. They were mobilised largely through the Save the N213 Facebook group which had grown to over 2,000 members – Tom Brake was one of the administrators.
This morning he found that his account had been disabled and that he had been removed as admin from several groups, including “Save the N213.”
Tom said:
“Much of my casework now comes through Facebook – the bizarre and heavy-handed decision to disable my account only hours after a protest organised through the social-networking site, severely disadvantages my constituents who rely on the net to contact me.”
“I’ve sought to use Facebook to keep local people informed about my work on their behalf, and I’ve seen an overwhelming response to this way of engaging with people.”
“I’m surprised and disappointed that in this high-technology era Facebook believes it’s appropriate to delete the accounts of elected representatives without warning, who are seeking to engage with the public.”
“The N213 protest illustrates the power of social networking sites to mobilise people quickly and effectively as part of a campaign – the event was a huge success, but Facebook’s decision to withdraw my account is a setback to the campaign, and to my constituents.”
Facebook are yet to respond to Mr Brake’s request to reinstate his account with immediate effect.
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14 Comments
Does Facebook have something against Lib Dem MPs? They did the same thing to Steve Webb.
“Much of my casework now comes through Facebook”
Well, he’s an idiot then, as are his constituents. Why let your casework come through an insecure, commercial website who retain the rights to do pretty anything they like with what you put up?
Obnoxio, while the points about being insecure are correct, it’s no less secure than a typical web based email service.
And they don’t “retain the rights”, they need a licence from users in order to do anything with the content–you might want to read what the lawyers said about their terms of service, not what scaremongerers who should know better sai when they were last revised, US law isn’t that clear, but a perpetual licence is a fairly common TOS clause, services without one are probably going to get in trouble some day.
I’ve sent a message protesting about this to facebook’s International Vice-President, Chamath Palihapitiya, via his facebook account
http://www.facebook.com/chamath?hiq=chamath,palihapitiya
Others may want to do the same.
Facebook are notoriously difficult to communicate with. There is no email address and certainly no contact number to call.
I guess their free market line is that if you’re unhappy with their service use another provider!
Not good.
I understand that this does happen from time to time generally because automated security controls are triggered by activity on an account. I have raised Tom’s case with the user account management team at Facebook and hope that they will be able to resolve the situation and reactivate the account as soon as possible.
Richard Allan
Director of Policy EU
Facebook
I check Tom’s facebook on an almost daily basis as its a great way to find out what work is being done in the local area. It is an important resource for people in Carshalton and Wallington especially young people who would not otherwise have a connection to local politics. I hope its back asap.
“working hard to get Tom’s account back up”? To get it back up, they have to flip a bit in the database from “disabled” to “enabled”. It’s not hard.
Sounds like an excuse to me.
Andrew, It depends on how their system is set up. As it disabled the account through high usage, there could well be a time limit on reactivation to allow for an investigation.
Re. Obnoxio and MatGB: MPs should be using encrypted e-mail and secure contact forms for casework, especially since we now know that journalists as well as the state could be snooping.
Yes, Niklas, of course they should … except for one little problem. Not many constituents have PGP or SMIME keys, or would know what to do if they did.
Granted HTTPS forms are a possible solution, but using Facebook for initial contact and/or non-confidential casework is just much more natural to many people.
All it shows is how the world is increasingly in the hands of unelected, unaccountable, unregulated, uncontrollable and undemocratic organisations and persons.
But I suppose anyone who uses Facebook for political campaigning has it coming to them.
Tony Greaves
@Tony. “has it coming to them?”
I disagree. It’s about the same argument as saying that someone who crossed the road and got hit by a speeding motorist running a red light “had it coming to them” because we know that some people do that.
The point is that it’s a tool with significant benefits, and if used wisely, can make the job of representing constituents a whole lot easier.
It’s certainly not something to rely on, or to assume is secure, but it’s not like people are daft enough to put their name address and home phone number on a FB Wall, is it? (okay there might be one or two given the education system of the day).
I had the same problem not so long ago. Too much site traffic, apparently. It took about two weeks to sort out. No good at election time!