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Facebook may be the in place to blog nowadays, unless, maybe, you’re pro-abortion.
About a month ago, the CBC encouraged Canadians to participate in the Great Canadian Wish List , an unmoderated public forum on Facebook on how to improve the country.
Anti-abortionists overwhelmed the site with calls to revoke abortion rights. But when pro-choice bloggers blogged back, some found their access to the site denied.
Chris Kelly, chief privacy officer of Facebook, Inc. , says some pro-choicers were denied access because they were spamming the site, violating its user terms and conditions.
“We have a variety of rules around how often you can message and how many posts you can make,” he says.
Judy MacDonald , one pro-choice voice, says she only posted “a few times” before receiving a warning message from Facebook site administrators to stop or lose her account.
“The CBC had to trust Facebook’s standards for use, which turned out to be punishingly restrictive,” she says.
CBC spokesperson Jeff Keay
says the network knew that the contest “had the potential to head off in all directions” but defends it as a “cutting-edge experiment” in social networking.
A wish to return to the traditional definition or marriage finished fourth on the list. The CBC aired a few short clips about the top wishes on Canada Day.
Says Joyce Arthur, spokesperson for the national Pro-Choice Action Network , “It’s an experiment that went badly. A slugfest between pro-choice and anti-abortion groups is not something that Canadians want to see on Canada Day.”
