HolyCoast: Got a Conservative Group on Facebook? Not for Long
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Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Got a Conservative Group on Facebook? Not for Long

Oh, you'll still have your group, but you'll lose all your members:
 Facebook still ugly, annoying; now also fascist -- If you've got a Facebook group and you're not a liberal, get ready to start all over. TheDC's Neil Munro reports: "Facebook’s managers are deploying a new software upgrade that will dismantle myriad groups of like-minded political activists unless they get a special software-key from the company. But Facebook managers are providing very limited information about which groups are being favored with the new key, prompting some activists to complain about possible political favoritism among Facebook managers, and many other activists to experiment with techniques and tricks to get the needed upgrade-key... The new software-upgrade will automatically archive all groups. Once archived, each group’s past activity will be still be visible on Facebook, but the groups’ administrators will lose access to their lists of group members. That means the administrators lose contact with everyone in their groups, and will be forced to recruit all those members again – unless Facebook provides them with the special upgrade software." Well, it should be easy enough to keep Facebook from trashing your groups. Just don't express political opinions that differ from those of Facebook's administrators. 
I know of one conservative group with 60,000 members that is not being given the opportunity to upgrade. They'll have to rebuild that group from scratch. Meanwhile, some relatively small but less politically incorrect groups are being allowed to upgrade.

I've got a little experience with that myself. I created a group a couple of years ago for Southern Gospel Music Artists that has 466 members. I was given the upgrade for that one. I belong to another small group of 67 members that's made up of people who all used to attend the same church. That group was also upgraded.

However, I started a group several years ago that was intentionally politically incorrect: The National Association for the Advancement of Colored Lights, a satirical group to promote my fondness for colored Christmas lights that currently has 595 members. It was also a chance for me to poke fun at the NAACP and their race-centric activism.  Facebook has not offered me an upgrade for that one and I think I know why.

We'll see if they change their mind.

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