It has nothing to do with privacy, it has to do with Facebook censoring messages. What if you couldn't send an email with a link to a questionable site? That wouldn't bother you at all?

No-one likes spam, but I've noticed that at least some email providers do this by domain/ip address of the emailed link in order to combat spam. Maybe its different since it ends up in your spam folder, but its effectively the same result.

Details: I've had a website that got hit once by this, which was funny because we never even sent any email. When testing it out, it seemed to be being filtered by the ip address the link resolved to. Even if I changed the domain name I emailed, if it resolved to the same ip, it still was being marked as spam. Note that this was being tested from a 3rd party email, not by sending from our own mail server.

Interesting, I wasn't aware of this happening. Unless they had a setting to disable it, my initial reaction is that I'd disagree with those email providers blocking domains/IP addresses too.

I do think, though, that there is an easily identifiable difference between blocking obvious spam sites, likely based on autonomous algorithms, and (I presume manually) blocking a site towards which you clearly have ulterior motives.

I am guessing you didn't read the article. This isn't about privacy.

It is more like the guy you are sitting to next to on the subway overhearing your conversation then grabbing your tongue and forbidding you to ever speak of the topic again.

Actually it would be more like the owner of the subway saying that you can't speak about that topic on the subway.

No, it would be more like the owner of the phone company saying you can't speak about certain things on the phone.

Which is fine if there is alternative phone companies to use. It's their service, their right to determine what it is used for.

Your statement brings to mind the monopolistic phone companies that many areas have where there is no choice so them limiting your usage seriously impedes on your ability to communicate. This isn't the case with Facebook. If they don't want you to talk about Lamebook then fine, it is their service and their systems. You are free to do it over email, IM, or one of the billions of other sites that are fine with it.

The thing is, if you don't have contact information for the person through another medium, then Facebook has a de-facto monopoly on your communication with that person. And Facebook actively prevents you from extracting contact information from Facebook in order to use in other services; you can only extract contact information for communicating through their messaging system.

Network effects matter. The privacy and censorship concerns people have about Facebook are for good reasons.

They don't yet block the ability to trade alternative contact information.

If you want to send something that is blocked by facebook send them another message instead asking for an alternative contact medium.

Unfortunately, there are many people with whom my only contact is Facebook. For almost all intents and purposes, these people don't use email, much less IM.

Enjoy your ivory tower. It's going to be interesting when we're laughing at articles entitled "Facebook to rival Google" only because we were so silly as to discount them at one time. It's going to be interesting when it becomes more and and more a defacto communication tool among younger generations.

For those who are growing up with siblings who in highschool have Facebook accounts and no email address, it's concerning to see Facebook so easily, and for such petty reasons, censor EVEN PRIVATE communications using their site.

Am I saying they have to not censor, no. Am I saying someone should (be able to) stop them, heck no. I'm saying I've not made my peace with the idea yet. How easy would it be for COICA to pass, Facebook to be white-listed, etc, etc.

(Bless Wyden's soul that at least COICA itself is dead for now).

I think your accusation of me being in an ivory tower is more than a bit unfair. You agree with all my points after that.

Yes, your younger siblings only have Facebook accounts but there is nothing stopping them from creating alternative means of communications except for a(tiny) level of effort.

It's far different from a situation with a local phone monopoly.

I don't even know the argument here anymore. Everyone accepts that Facebook should be allowed to censor whatever they want. If you are mad at the general populations acceptance of that face then that is fine but you have to accept that the great majority of people don't and won't ever care about these issues. At most they will complain for a day or two than forget about it.

Nothing on Facebook is private so saying they censor private conversations is wrong. They censor conversations using their medium.

I had to wiki COICA(not american) but I fail to see what this has to do with this discussion. Could you provide some context that I maybe missed from my wikipedia reading?

I don't know how you don't see the problem. Facebook is censoring.

I don't see the problem. Facebook is not a government entity, and thus is not required by anyone at all to not censor.

If the statement that you are making is that Facebook is hypocritical in that on the one hand they operate under a mantra of openness and on the other hand they censor, then sure, that's a problem; however, hypocrisy is a global problem that in some way is applicable to every human and every company.

Facebook has very little legal obligation, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be upset and to talk about it as much as possible.

Facebook could also randomly delete pictures and emails if it liked and it may be within their legal right to do so, but I'd find it odd if you just said, "If they legally can do it, I won't complain".