The trouble is, Google also has personhood laws that, upon receipt of complaint, could get any pen name account bounced off of it as well, so if all my fans wonder what happened to this blog should it disappear, know ye in advance that the City of Enid was behind it. They've been the reason why the stats of this blog have reflected unusually high traffic--there's a video they're monitoring for posting because it's unflattering in a big way, and I haven't posted that yet. Same is true for Gov. Mary Fallin's office. But they have no idea where else I might post that video, and it may be all over cyberspace in all kinds of places before it's all said/done. What matters is that the proper authorities already have possession of copies of said videos, and there's no putting THAT toothpaste back in the tube. As much as Facebook fancies itself to be a proper authority to the point of demanding compliance with its demand for personal documents, it isn't. And neither is Google. (mini-update note--I just posted that statement on Twitter, and it's getting re-Tweeted. There are a lot of people not happy with #Facebook right now)
My fans know where to find me and I celebrate the fact that neither Facebook nor Google own the entirety of cyberspace, and just like that mole in Whack-A-Mole, I'll pop up elsewhere. That's one of the benefits of having a pen name that dates far back into the world of print-on-paper media, as very little of that has been scanned and posted online--I'm in closer touch with my fans than Facebook is with its clients, which it just decided was too big of a group and so culls it with its demands for personal ID documentation it has no legal right to demand as part of its terms of service. Neither does Google, for that matter.
1) Facebook isn't an administrator of elections devoted to curtailing voter fraud, so it can't use that excuse to claim a right to a person's identification documents.
2) Facebook doesn't charge money as a condition of membership and therefore has no right to include bank statements in its demand for personal identification documents.
3) Facebook doesn't maintain roads and has no standing to demand a person's driver's license in its demand for personal identification documents.
4) Facebook isn't a government agency, and as a peer citizen has no standing to demand identification papers of any kind.
3) Facebook has a feature for accounts like Twitter does, to display a check mark on an account to mark it as a "verified account", and that's a case in which the holder of the account voluntarily surrenders its personal ID documents. Facebook fails to realize that ALL accounts for which personal ID documents are surrendered are therefore "verified accounts", but Facebook fails to mark them as such. A voluntary option has become an involuntary demand by Facebook and in that, Facebook commits an overreach and therefore is an EPIC FAIL I can readily kick to the curb. But so is Google Plus should it make the same mistake.
Unless and until any given Internet entity has standing as a government official or financial institution or medical provider, they have NO RIGHT WHATSOEVER to demand personal ID documents as part of its Terms of Service. Bubbye, Facebook. I won't miss you and my fans can still find me, loser.
Businesses who get snookered by Web dot com into buying a presence on #Facebook don't realize they've been fleeced, but I'll wager it won't take 'em long to find that out that paying for Facebook presence is a rip-off because Facebook itself is a rip-off.
The trend is to make Facebook a verified-celebrities/business-only exclusive club as the customers and fans thereof realize increasingly that Facebook hasn't sufficient legal authority to make the demands it's making on its hoi polloi denizens. I find that, on Twitter, are the very people who have been fed up with Facebook long before Facebook gestapo bounced my pen name off for being a "fake person". Hey, Facebook--Mark Twain doesn't have a birth certificate and you permit THAT fake person to have an unverified account, you idiot.
YouTube is on a similar self-destructive path with its copyright nazis, and everybody who has viewed old pages on this blog with links to YouTube content know all too well what I mean--YouTube has even yanked content that is public domain simply because the person who posted the vids didn't respond to its copyright nazi challenges, and it must be said that, by and large, the average person lacks the legal competence to make a counter argument. I've been hit on by these copyright nazis filing complaints about videos I've made of Christmas displays playing what they claim is copyrighted content being infringed upon. But I don't have an average lack of background in copyright/patent law and I have successfully argued in my favor.
More than once, and that's the problem with YouTube--the copyright nazis make crazy claims like the one they made about the Christmas displays and YouTube bans innocent people because they don't have the ability to respond to such insanity. Like Facebook, YouTube is an insane asylum populated and run by the inmates and is more exclusionary than inclusive. FAIL
Far be it from me to tell my fans to drop their own accounts on Facebook--that decision is entirely theirs to make--but I will say that as long as they or anyone else stays on at Facebook, they're presenting themselves as commercial farm animals to be milked by Facebook advertisers and commercial accounts. People, it's your funeral.
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