Flickr deleted a popular photographer’s collection. Thomas Hawk reports this eviction from start to finish. Arbitrary justifications, no notice, no appeal, no ability to restore the photos, deletion of third-party intellectual property (thousands of comments). It seems the justification was without merit.

Does your city give landlords this much power?

Should you have . . . → Read More: Graceful Exit: Yahoo!’s flickr evicts Shéhérazade]]>

Flickr deleted a popular photographer’s collection. Thomas Hawk reports this eviction from start to finish. Arbitrary justifications, no notice, no appeal, no ability to restore the photos, deletion of third-party intellectual property (thousands of comments). It seems the justification was without merit.

Does your city give landlords this much power?

Should you have the power to fight eviction?

All was definitely not well.

Facebook obliterated Nakedjen.

Obliterated.  Deleted.  Made me disappear. 

And they did it without any warning or even a simple email telling me that I had done something wrong.

My email to them . . . → Read More: Graceful Exit: facebook evicts Nakedjen]]> Excerpt from a tragic exit, a story of online eviction from Facebook, without notice, merit, or recourse: 

All was definitely not well.

Facebook obliterated Nakedjen.

Obliterated.  Deleted.  Made me disappear. 

And they did it without any warning or even a simple email telling me that I had done something wrong.

My email to them asking what I might have done to cause such a brutal outcome was just met with an automatic reply telling me that I must be in violation of the TOS and to read it carefully.

Which I did.  Every single word.  Carefully.  There is absolutely no term or stipulation that I even came close to violating other than that my name is Nakedjen.  However, as I mentioned, that is MY name.  And it has been my name on Facebook since day one.  The email that I used for the service is even nakedjen@nakedjen.com  Could I be more clear or obvious?  I don’t think so.

What I also learned, while reading each and every word carefully, is that my account on Facebook is at will and can be terminated by Facebook at any time for any reason they deem “reasonable.”  Basically, our accounts are being hosted for free on their servers.  So this actually does make sense.  If someone in their offices wakes up today and decides that the word Naked is pornographic or even just decides that my photo of Buddha wearing a ski cap is offensive, that person can just hit the delete button and bye bye Nakedjen.

In addition, all content that is published by me (or anyone else) including photos, blog posts, and videos becomes the property of Facebook.  You may own it, but so do they because they are now hosting it on their servers and they have claimed rights to it in their TOS.

Nakedjen‘s full post challenges definitions of data “ownership”. She concludes:

This is a lesson in our digital rights and freedoms.  I know it may seem like a trivial thing.  A Facebook profile being deleted because I call myself Nakedjen.  However, if they can obliterate me (and my entire group of friends and family and all my files) just because I have Naked in my name, how long before they obliterate you because your name vaguely sounds Islamic?  Or Muslim?  Or even just American?

Think about it.