Facebook sparks activist anger after removing profiles

Facebook has incurred the wrath of anti-cuts and anti-tuition fees groups after it appeared to purge the site of some 50 related user accounts.

The social networking company removed the profiles on Friday, causing anger and bemusement among political activist groups such as Arts Against Cuts and the London Student Assembly.

UCL Occupation, a group protesting against public sector cuts and university tuition fee rises, argued that the takedown, on the eve of the Royal Wedding, may have been timed by Facebook in collusion with the authorities to prevent any protests being organised at the event.

The group also noted that such organisations will have to resort to email lists and Twitter to organise their efforts in future.

"We don't know for certain, but this purge of online organising groups could be linked to the wider crackdown on protest by authorities in Britain," UCL Occupation said in a blog post.

"Either way, it is a scandalous abuse of power by Facebook to arbitrarily destroy online communities built up over many months and years."

However, it emerged that the sites were actually taken down because they had breached Facebook's terms and conditions by using a 'profile' rather than a Facebook 'page'. Only individual users are allowed to register a profile.

Jim Killock, executive director of the Open Rights Group, argued in a blog post that the matter was poorly handled by Facebook.

"Facebook is exercising very significant power over political activity and speech as a result of its huge user base," he said.

"While we as users should ask ourselves whether we are content with that, we must also ask Facebook to act with full corporate responsibility. Its policy of simple takedowns, without notification, strikes us as crude."

According to Killock, Facebook has since notified some site owners that it was migrating their 'profiles' to 'pages', but said that "advance warnings would be more appropriate".