Facebook Deletes University’s History Project for Violating Social Network’s Rules

January 11, 2012, 4:17 pm

The two students brought back to life on Facebook by a University of Nevada at Reno librarian have been returned to the history books for violating the social network’s terms of service.

Facebook shut down the profiles of Joe McDonald and Leola Lewis this morning, according to Donnelyn Curtis, the director of research collections and services at the University of Nevada at Reno. Before the accounts were taken offline, Ms. Curtis used the couple’s profiles to give students a glimpse of university life in the early 20th century. When Ms. Curtis logged in to update their profiles today, she was greeted with a message that said the profiles had been suspended. The development was first reported early today on the social-networking news site Mashable.

Facebook’s rules specify that users may not “provide any false personal information on Facebook, or create an account for anyone other than yourself without permission.” Ms. Curtis said she understood why the historical profiles violated Facebook’s policy, but added that she would have appreciated a warning before the company took action.

Ms. Curtis said the pair’s popularity boomed after receiving coverage in The Chronicle and other publications, sometimes approaching 30 to 40 new friend requests per hour. By the time they were shut down, Mr. McDonald and Ms. Lewis had amassed about 3,000 friends. Ms. Curtis said the extra attention ended up being “the kiss of death” for the couple’s virtual selves.

Ms. Curtis plans to create “pages” for the students, rather than profiles, which are permissible under Facebook rules. But she’ll have to do so from scratch, because she can’t recoup the questions and comments that their friends posted on their Facebook profiles. She’ll also have to choose a category for the pages, which are typically used by businesses and celebrities and don’t necessarily apply to historical figures.

“There’s a category that you can choose, but they don’t really fit into any of those categories,” she said.

Although the suspension presents a temporary setback for the project, Ms. Curtis said she’s encouraged by the amount of attention the couple received.

“From what I saw, there are a lot of people interested in learning history from simulated real people,” she said.

[Photo courtesy of Special Collections, University of Nevada at Reno libraries]

Update: Ms. Curtis has finished building the couple’s Facebook “pages.” Mr. McDonald can be found here, and Ms. Lewis is here.

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http://www.briancroxall.net Brian Croxall

I saw you did there, Jones…
http://www.facebook.com/people/Peggy-McDonald/1234462494 Peggy McDonald

Joe and Leola had over 2000 friends each before their pages were disabled
mbelvadi

Given what happened the first time around, I’m surprised and a bit saddened that these librarians will continue to sink their resources into Facebook, aiding the for-profit company that ruined their experiment the first time around.
emmadw

Wonder if it would have been disabled as quickly, had it not been reported here … they’ll have to move to twitter, you can be historical (e.g.
https://twitter.com/#!/samuelpepys or
https://twitter.com/#!/genny_spencer )
http://www.facebook.com/isafakir Isa Kocher

you can google the date before it was deleted and google should have it. google doesn’t delete its photo
http://www.facebook.com/isafakir Isa Kocher

i did it when couch surfing crashed and got back all my friends: rule #1 BACKUP!
ahamel1976

This was certainly a creative use of facebook, that could engage students in a use of media used in their everyday lives. Sad that facebook doesn’t see this as an educational use instead of just a violation of their policy. Have to wonder if there are other pages that violate their policies that have yet to be taken down . . .
misstrudy

What a pity! Facebook should have given some warning so that the content of the profiles could be saved.
adkins9b

Cheers to Ms. Curtis for an innovative use of social media. Use the page vs. profile on FB is an easy compromise, just wish they had alowed for the transfer of data from one to the next. Seems a little bit mean to shut down without notice.
inimical44

What is a “simulated, real” person?
nyceducator

Has anyone had diffculty posting this story to their Facebook page? I tried twice…with no success
11111924

Facebook deleted a project of mine a couple of years ago — not as clever or useful as the simulated Nevada students, but something that was filling a need on our campus. Again, no warning, no appeal, though they did let us salvage the content of the page to use for other purposes. Meanwhile, there are millions of phony people on Facebook (did you ever check how many FB pages Sherlock Holmes has?) doing nobody any good at all. FB needs to be considerably more flexible.
dmoser5

If FaceBork was on the ball, they’d “find” the files from the deleted profiles and make them available to Ms. Curtis in order to create a page for these two historical figures.

I personally know of two organizations (the University Archives at the DeGolyer Library of Southern Methodist University — https://www.facebook.com/pages/Southern-Methodist-University-Archives/87619307012 — and the Emmett Chisum Special Collections at University of Wyoming — https://www.facebook.com/pages/Emmett-Chisum-Special-Collections-at-UW/109335266282 ) who have been trying to bring to life historical figures and materials via FaceBork, with significant response.

The creativity of Ms. Curtis is to be applauded and perhaps a campaign to wake up Zukerberg et cie to the greater value of supporting such efforts is needed. Reddit, are you listening?
dmoser5

There are almost certainly such pages; the problem is that we haven’t heard about them and probably never will.
tee_bee

“If FaceBork was on the ball….” Given that there is little evidence of its ever been on the ball from the day it was created, there’s little hope that FB will ever change.
dmoser5

:-) … @chronicle-c68c9c8258ea7d85472dd6fd0015f047:disqus — oh, there WILL be change, just not the kind many of us would like to see!
http://www.facebook.com/jonathan.wade2 Jonathan Wade

See attached article. Perhaps Facebook should consider a new category for historical or memorial personas. I can see the educational value of putting adding these sorts of profiles, and to some extent a curated memorial for people who pass away might be a feature to consider. It could be though, that remembering a person who has no “real” (that is, by Facebook definition – definable data points in the now) connection or “being” is not worth doing. From what I know about the defining goals of Facebook it is about connection of living beings. But, there are a number of pages that exist that still memorialize the lives of people who corporealy left this life but whose digital remnant/revenant still “lives” in the aether that we call “the Internet.” Food for thought.
dmoser5

@facebook-502524379:disqus — your attachment isn’t showing?
http://twitter.com/carminka carmin karasic

This is a perfect example of using a profile vs fan page in FB.
syllabus_geek

My son’s school utilized Facebook for a similar project. Each student was assigned a leader; Facebook was the media by which they posted detailed information about the explorers, kings, queens, leaders, etc. Students were required to interact as if they were their leader, they would participate and interact with other students by recognizing the challenges and discoveries each leader faced. For example, Gandhi may try to convince Napoleon that peaceful protest would be a better way. The students seemed very engaged.

Sounds like we need a Facebook.EDU platform.
dmoser5

Seriously. If YouTube can do it, why can’t FaceBork?
slaclair1980

Instead of concerning themselves with historical figures, why don’t they work on the children under 13 that create FB profiles. Oh wait, that might cut into their advertising budget.
bleckb

So dumb. This is the sort of project that can give FB more cache in the academic world instead of being a time-suck. You’d think they would be smart enough to allow pages that venture into new realms. I guess they can’t sell dead people to their advertisers.
bleckb

I envision the near Supreme Court Justice Bork with this comment. What about FaceBorg?
dmoser5

Slight topic drift, but sure — “FaceBork” as in “this is well and truly borked.”
bleckb

Okay. As a verb then. I may start using FaceBorg to go with BlackBorg.
mnordberg

I can’t post it through the share feature. Hmmm…so I just posted the link, which it took.
http://www.adventuresinthriftland.blogspot.com Laura’s Last Ditch

Glad to see they’ll be back. I liked their posts.
ychumanities

That is exactly the issue. They only want data on their site that can be harvested for profit.
latino2

I agree with slaclair1980, there are thousands, also fake profiles, fake pictures, etc….
ellenhunt

This is just stupid. What is wrong with the androids at Facebook?
ellenhunt

Ah, but the most certainly can!
False personas are valuable.
ellenhunt

No! Say it ain’t so! I am just so, so steamed! I will have to take a bath in cold water now!
akprof

This is too bad – Facebook needs to have a special category for such projects!
http://twitter.com/Vaimasenuu Tony Patu

I love this link, keep it up.
http://twitter.com/bwasson Brian Wasson

They do allow pages to venture into new realms. That’s exactly the point. The librarian choose the wrong place to start (a profile v. a page). The unfortunate thing is the quick removal of the profiles without warning (although their TOS also state that that will in fact happen). We should all pay closer attention to the TOS of a site before we voluntarily agree to use such sites. Yes, there are lots of other fake profiles out there, so why this one was shut down versus one of the others who knows. They want real people to make and fill out their profiles primarily so one cannot make dozens of fake profiles and spam users or profit from that. This is really not a big deal. The creators of the profiles failed to follow the TOS. End game.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001073783563 Amanda Katz

The way in which Facebook enforces Terms of Service is inconsistent at best. I’ve run across several fake profiles on Facebook, some created specifically to harass others. They have been reported ad nauseum, yet Facebook does nothing. If it were possible to export your networks, Facebook would be losing users right and left.
clarinetsarethebest

I’d feel bad if this weren’t CLEARLY a violation of the site’s terms of service. Facebook was neither designed nor meant to be an educational tool; it was designed to facilitate the interaction of real people. Facebook has the right to decide what it considers to be appropriate use of its site and what it considers to be inappropriate use of its site, and the popularity of an inappropriate use does not negate its inappropriateness.
clarinetsarethebest

I’d feel bad if this weren’t CLEARLY a violation of the site’s terms of service. Facebook was neither designed nor meant to be an educational tool; it was designed to facilitate the interaction of real people. Facebook has the right to decide what it considers to be appropriate use of its site and what it considers to be inappropriate use of its site, and the popularity of an inappropriate use does not negate its inappropriateness.