Facebook has become the event planning system. It’s the place where you have all your friends (and other people) somewhat sorted and organized. All in all, it’s the organized system in the chaos that is otherwise known as the internets.

This is leading Facebook towards a virtual monopoly. There are lots of issues with monopolies, but one of the more interesting ones when it comes to Facebook is the impact is has on our social lives, online as well as offline.

A friend of mine creates music videos. He’s great at it. He is also very proud of them, so he uploads them to Facebook to show his friends and relatives. It’s the easy way to do it — all of us are already there.
Facebook however doesn’t like this behaviour. They deleted the videos and said that my friend was violating copyright. Even though they really have no clue if that is the case or not.

Both my friend and I are very into people being treated as they should. We don’t take crap from anyone. That’s why my friend wanted to get even with Facebook, in a sort of childish way. He uploaded a picture of a male genitalia as a profile picture. Harmless enough. Friends seeing his profile picture would laugh or become a bit annoyed that they have a childish friend.

So what happens when you do something like that? Facebook delete you. They erase you from the digital earth. All pictures that he was tagged in seems to be gone (I can’t find one single picture with him on there right now). He’s no longer in my list of friends. Facebook didn’t send out a notice saying that my friend was erased. I actually found out that he was gone from Facebook when he didn’t show to the moving in party at Flattr, when someone there told me he never received an invitation. It was weeks after, and I had invited him to another thing he didn’t show to either. I now know why.

Like everybody else today, I invite people via Facebook to events. If they’re not on there, they won’t get invited, it’s too much hassle, and “everybody is there” with few exceptions. This means that if Facebook deletes a friend from your online catalogue, you might actually stop hanging out with them offline as well. This is not acceptable. In a democracy we break monopolies and we allow for trials to happen (some of them are actually fair as well). On facebook, we’re being treated as goods.

We’re all in this mess together. Facebook owns us, our offline and online connections. If they have moral objections towards who you are, you might be erased. You’re never sure.

I don’t want to support this anymore. Is there another system, open in the way that makes me the master of my own profile, makes me safe from someone elses moral decisions? Facebook has (so far) censored 4 of my sites from being mentioned on their “walls”, in facebook mails etc. I am no longer allowed to speak of things that they object to. I am not allowed to know why. They do not condone some of my friends. We should all leave, we are obviously not welcome!