CENSORSHIP, FINANCIAL WOES, PEDOPHILIA LEAD TO FACEBOOK IPO

Mon, 7 May 2012 21:05:06 -0400

Melvin Martinez
Monday, May 07, 2012 - 9:00:58 PM

Facebook's silicon valley record-breaking IPO (to be valued between $77 to $96 billion), is looming. So far, however, the social network's trek to Wall Street hasn't been exactly smooth sailing.

As Facebook's engineers scramble to perfect the site's infrastructure, and Mark Zuckerberg pleads to investors via roadshow on why they should put money into his company, the corporation hasn't been entirely successful in sweeping the dark areas of the site under the rug.

On Sunday, World Net Daily's Chelsea Schilling began her four-part vetting series of Facebook, kicking it off with an exposeon exactly why your parents warned you to stay off the internet: child predators are there.

Her report contains graphic details of sexual abuse of children as it has appeared in numerous locations on Facebook, and while WND immediately reported images of child pornography and child sexual abuse to the FBI, it's still safe to say that any site that prides itself in being family-friendly, while allowing child predation to breed, isn't the safest investment.

Facebook has, in other ways, earned the title of being a family-friendly social network. Unfortunately, it's a merit achieved via censorship (something we know that the internet hates).

By displaying a message reading "This comment seems irrelevant or inappropriate and can’t be posted. To avoid having comments blocked, please make sure they contribute to the post in a positive way." whenever an infringing quip is attempted to be posted, Facebook has essentialy created a system to curb inappropriate discussion on their site. However, no censorship system is without it's downsides.

As TechCrunch reports, this could be similar to what happened to film critic Roger Ebert back in January 2011, when Facebook temporarily disabled Ebert's blog because of an allegedly "abusive comment." It turns out that Ebert's blog never actually contained objectionable content — a number of Facebook users had flagged his page as "abusive" after he wrote a critical tweet about Ryan Dunn, an actor who died in a drunk driving accident.

Yet to advertisers, functionality is more of a superficial thing (as would be expected), and the lack of premium ad slots has led to a decrease in enthusiasm for the site; monetarily at least. But that's not to detract from the site's potential reach, since a 900-million plus audience still managed to net $3.2 billion for the site. 85% of the site's revenue. But how long can that last?

Facebook is unique in the sense that while universal connectivity is a love-or-hate notion, it's been the only network to truly refine it. It's the best thing since email. For now at least.

Monetizing Facebook would essentially be monetizing life itself, being that it showcases all aspects: the good, the bad, the ugly, the firebrands, the pedophiles. But for how long will the innovation of the site continue to increase the functionality, in order to sustain such a large active audience, while still being a lucrative output for advertisers? Will it metamorphosize into such an innocuous thing that checking Facebook becomes as arbitrary as checking mail? Only time will tell that.

Facebook is on track to go public on May 18th.

Melvin Martinez's Open Salon Blog

CENSORSHIP, FINANCIAL WOES, PEDOPHILIA LEAD TO FACEBOOK IPO