Facebook Talk

A young girl in Toronto, named Stefanie Rengel, was brutally stabbed by two fellow teens on New Years Day for reasons that are yet unknown. In Canada, there’s something called the Youth Criminal Justice Act (YCJA), which prohibits the publication of information by newspapers, radio, TV, etc “… if it would identify the child or young person as having been a victim of, or as having appeared as a witness in connection with, an offense committed or alleged to have been committed by a young person.”

Basically it means that if a minor is the victim of a crime, then the media can’t run around saying the minor’s name. We have something similar here in the US and until recently, it’s usually been followed by most media outlets. That is, until the Internet came around.

Anybody who has tried censoring something on the net knows that it’s impossible. From illegal music downloads to sex tapes to smuggled footage of a protests in Myanmar. If it’s not being shown on TV, but people want it, then they’ll get it on the Internet. It’s as simple as that. But what happens when people inadvertently break the law while trying to do good? In Stefanie’s case, that’s exactly what happened, as multiple “tribute” groups were created in her memory. People wanted to show their support for her and remember her life together, but what they were inadvertently doing was breaking the YCJA by “reporting” on her death.

It’s a pretty slippery slope to navigate, but it’s one we need to look at, because “Facebook is the way of the future” and all that other crap. People are on the Internet more and more and we’re getting our news from it now more than ever in the past. What happens when somebody breaks a gag order by posting about something on their Facebook page. Or writing about it on their blog or away message? I certainly don’t have the answers, but what do you expect from me? When have I ever had the answers? Well, other than with all that stupid application spam. But I digress.

[via Social Times]

Facebook, Stefanie Rengel

Look out world, there are drunk chicks on Facebook. This is shocking news to me. Wait, did I say shocking? I meant sexy. Yes, this is sexy news to me, because drunk chicks are awesome. And they certainly make their parents proud when they have their druggen photos plastered all over the web and in the news.

Basically, there’s a group called “30 Reasons Girls Should Call It A Night” which has over 150,000 members. In it, there are more than 4800 photos uploaded of people passed out in funny positions, many without clothes, while drunk. As if that wasn’t enough already, The Daily Mail decided they wanted to run an article about the group and accompanied the article with almost more pictures than words. Which I’m pretty sure is proof that this was just a bored intern’s way of convincing his boss that he wasn’t wasting time while on the clock, but instead was “researching” and “article” while looking at semi-nude chicks. Smart kid, if you ask me.

Anyways, let this be a lesson to you young girls out there. If you take stupid, drunken, half nude photos of yourself and upload them to Facebook, you’re screwed. There’s no real way around it. Either a newspaper will publish them or you’ll end up featured on FBChicks. Either way, make sure you show enough skin to make it worth my time looking at all these photos!

Sexy Update: After all the different news attention this group got, there is now a website devoted specifically to the group, the girls, and the photos. God Bless America.

Facebook, drunk

In case you live under a rock (in which case, we need to talk, because I’ve always wondered how somebody could actually live beneath a rock), then you probably already know that late night funny man Stephen Colbert is running for President in his (and mine!) home state of South Carolina. What you might now know is that his Facebook group dedicated to his all-but-failed campaign is what some people estimate as being the fastest growing Facebook group. Ever. In just nine days, it peaked over 1,000,000 members. In five more days, it topped 1.3 million and as I write this now, it currently stands at 1,355,014 members. Not too shabby of a following for a “fake” campaign.

To put this into perspective, legitimate candidate Barack Obama might be one of the Democratic parties front runners for the nomination, yet his official Facebook group has only managed to snag 400,000 members in nine months. Critics often complain that young people in the 18-30 age group rarely vote enough, yet Stephen Colbert and Facebook actually stood a chance at changing that - even if they were only voting for a comedian. Sadly, Colbert won’t find himself on the South Carolina ballot, as they recently elected 13-3 not to allow him to appear on their ballot.

While this may be an unfortunate turn of events, there still is hope in the form of Colbert’s massive Facebook group. There’s already a large contingent of people organizing an e-mail drive to the South Carolina Democratic Party to protest their recent decision and my hunch is that if Colbert actually talks about this group on his TV show sometime soon, there could be even more half-shenanigans half-serious efforts displayed from the group in an effort to keep him in the race.

It’s times like these that make it quite fun to be on Facebook. Colbert in ‘08!

After seeing over half a million people join the Students Against News Feed group in a little over 24 hours, student Anne Rushing wondered if there wasn’t a better cause they could joining as well. She quickly got the idea to start a group called Fight Newsfeed, but Fight AIDS. Here she points out that if every member of the Anti-News Feeds group donated a mere dollar to AIDS research, then we’d be close to $1 million dollars. Not a bad idea, we here at FacebookTalk think. Then once you factor in that many people might donate $2, $3, $5, or more you realize that we could easily raise a few million dollars all in the name of a good cause. Kudos Ms. Rushing!