Friday 3 August 2007

Facebook in the dock

A couple of days ago I reported that YouTube was under fire (see post below). Well, the dock is getting a little crowded, because now I hear that FaceBook is in trouble too. It's been reported on the BBC News that the social networking website has had 6 major British companies withdraw their advertising from its site. These are big spenders including Virgin Media, Halifax Bank and Vodafone. The reason they are taking their trade elsewhere? They don't want to be associated with a Neo-Nazi political organisation (I am not even going to mention their name) that FaceBook has allowed to advertise on the site. It appears that advertisers have no say about who their adverts appear next to, so unless something changes, they won't be back.

It's all a little disturbing I think... I haven't actually seen the offending adverts, but I can guess what they are there for. Recruiting for their cause amongst the majority of young people who subscribe to the site I guess. So here's the question.... should FaceBook do a volte face and (jack)boot out the fascists? Or should we see this little episode as simply Web 2.0 democracy in action? What do you think?

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