[Sparkle]

Originally Posted by martyh

Ok here's your chance ,give us an example of government interference ,denial of freedom of speech ,censorship of the media ,all those things that you constantly accuse the police ,governments ,big corporations of doing and i will discuss them with you in a adult fashion .
I'll start with the current Facebook issue .I do not think it is any more than Facebook cleaning house ,my reasoning behind this is that pages such as the BNP and EDL are still up ,if the government realy wanted to influence politics then they would shut those down

Martyh, I think you should read again what I actually wrote. I honestly don't know if it is or isn't related to the government - this is why there was a question mark at the end of my post, admittedly I should have worded it better to avoid giving that impression. At the same time, I'm saying that I wouldn't put it passed them either, if history is anything to go by.
However, these account deletions certainly have fallen right in line with what the government would like to see happen, and that I think is suspect and worthy of closer inspection - but it could be nothing other than the product of a rather fortunate coincidence, instead of another sign of social engineering in an increasingly Orwellian society.

The BNP is a democratically elected body, if the government where to be seen to be waging a stealth war upon their democratic right to exist, then there would be trouble, more trouble that it'd be worth. The EDL is another big name group - but neither (or even together) is a significant threat. The big threat right now is from the likes of the anti-cuts brigade. Big cuts are being made with questionable public support (a potential powder keg), and the sum total of these groups is a force to be reckoned with, very capable of fanning the flames of public dissent. They're a thorn in the side of the government's current economic strategy, a thorn that the government (i'm sure) would like to see disappear off the radar completely. So in my view, though we might not have found the smoking gun, we have found a motive.

Originally Posted by martyh

yes you did ,quite clearly

Originally Posted by Sparkle

I can't see why facebook would have any grievance with these groups, I'd have thought surely the government has a hand somewhere in all this?

Just because I can't see it (especially as I know little about facebook and how it conducts its affairs), doesn't mean it isn't so - this was why I was asking the question.

so you think the government has a hand in this ,please state why you think this is so

I don't have sufficient facts to draw such an absolute conclusion. I have suspicions, that's all. I'd be interested to hear if anyone of you with all your legal knowlege, knows of any low-key methods the government could employ to put pressure on facebook to remove certain accounts?
I'm not sure what they could do, or what could the Obama administration do? Tax breaks? Risk of being branded as an accessory to whatever activities are planned on facebook? Or perhaps its simply that facebook is finding these political associations tiresome and wants them off their site for reasons having nothing to do with government censorship.