Another Facebook exile, but a whole different problem.

Pippa Wagstaff runs a critical blog on Welsh politics – Miss Wagstaff Presents. She recently found herself on the receiving end of an email from Facebook customer services, just like booted-out unionist Derek Blackadder. The charge though was that Pippa wasn’t really Pippa at all, and as such was in violation of the terms of service, which require you to give your real name.

How did Facebook come to doubt this Pippa Wagstaff, and not any of the others that it allows to keep their profiles? Her suspicions point to blogosphere opponents and miffed Labour/Plaid supporters raising false accusations with Facebook (shame on them if false, and still a bit of a boo on them for snitching if true). Facebook’s minimalist approach to customer service just sent the ban straight away, without spending 10 minutes of precious staff time to check out the allegation – not even actually asking Pippa whether she was indeed kosher or not.

This has happened before. SEIU Canada had a profile removed when trying to organise casino workers in Nova Scotia. This time they were clearly trying it on – the ToS says no profiles for organisations. Though given that so many other companies still get away with this, and given that Facebook don’t have the staff to go through their 65 million active users, checking for funny names, it points to a malicious complaint from a casino employer or other opponent of their campaign, alerting them to the breach. In Korea too, a union was booted from a similar service, following employer complaints.

Pippa’s case is more complex. She claims she *is* Pippa Wagstaff, and Facebook customer service have no more evidence that she’s breaking the ToS than evidence that she isn’t. They just reckoned that Pippa’s value as a customer (likely around tuppence, even if she’s clicked on one of the new ad spots of late) wasn’t worth sweating the chance the accusation might be wrong.

It wouldn’t even need to be an organised campaign against her. Given that decisions there are mostly taken by computer, a complaint from anyone (even anonymous themselves most likely) would carry the same weight, and you’d only need one. The blogosphere is such a great hostility-escalator that it wouldn’t take much to tip a common or garden troll over into a network nark.

Just as oddly this happened to Lib Dem MP Steve Webb too, when merely asking him to verify could have got them some pretty incontroversible proof straight back from an HoC email account.

Oy oy oy. Cutting off their nose will really spite Facebook. If Facebook keep booting power users and campaign groups, seemingly at random, they will lose the enthusiasm of anyone who might help them push and grow. Geeks will stop making the applications which differentiate it from the world’s MySpaces, NGOs will stop telling their supporters to join (at a time when Google, YouTube and Second Life are bending over to get the non-profits – and their members – in), and journalists may even turn off the publicity tap that Facebook enjoy regularly in most of the world’s papers.

But maybe Facebook isn’t a long term proposition after all. Maybe their unsavoury sounding venture capitalist board won’t invest in the service or even let them have the cash for a box of paperclips, as they really do need it all right absolutely now for the biggest yacht the world has ever seen. Or maybe they believe their own backlash. Facebook isn’t the first such service and it isn’t the last. They’re really just like a 90s walled garden portal, simplifying web stuff that geeks can do anyway, and bringing it to the masses. They reckon they got lucky, but any day now the next-big-thing will whoosh past them, and they’ll be left wiping their arses on a pile of stock certificates. Best to see what they can get out of it, without deluding themselves that it’ll last.

I think they’re making a mistake. But then I would, I’m just a user 😉

Hat tip to The Wardman Wire.