Why does Facebook Hate Bears?

Those of you who read our friend Naughty Bear's Blog will know that he, in common with hundreds of other wonderful bears, recently got kicked off Facebook for the really terrible crime of being a furry.

We were also kicked off Facebook at the same time and have been too angry to talk about it in public up til now (it also has something to do with the fact that we had other important matters to report on!)

Here is what we saw when we tried to login to Facebook to chat with all our friends, both old and new.


When we first saw the message we could not understand why our account had been disabled, our first port of call was the Facebook FAQ's for "Why was my account disabled?"

Your account was disabled because you violated Facebook’s Terms of Use, to which you agreed when you first registered for an account on the site. Accounts can either be disabled for repeat offenses or for one, particularly egregious violation.

Facebook does not allow users to register with fake names, to impersonate any person or entity, or to falsely state or otherwise misrepresent themselves or their affiliations.

This obviously did not apply to us, so we decided to send them an E-mail to ask why they had disabled our account. So this is what we sent:-

[Bearsunlimited@our-mail Wed Oct 10 13:41:14 2007]:

Our account has been disabled, yet none of your reasons for
disabling an account are valid. There is no false identity - are
bears not allowed to have names? and there certainly has been
no content that would offend. On the contrary all messages fall
into the charm category, make people smile and brighten their
day. What sort of an organisation is Face Book that it seeks to
ruthlessly and systematically terminate something that that
makes people happy and is entirely innocent - good, clean fun?
All I can say is that facebook is doing it's utmost best to make
the world a far worse place than it might otherwise be. Does it
make you feel better knowing that you have made happy
people sad because that is exactly what you are doing? We
really fail to understand. Only an unhappy, miserable person
would want to act in this way and we sincerely hope some
happiness comes into your life soon. Perhaps you should get
yourself a bear as they'll soon put a smile on your face.

Disillusioned Bears

Two days later we got a reply from their man Avery he wrote

From: Avery from Facebook [mailto:appeals-comment@facebook.com]
Sent: 12 October 2007 20:16
To: Bearsunlimited@our.E-mail
Subject: [rt.facebook.com #6715589] Baffled

Hi,

Fake accounts are a violation of our Terms of Use. Facebook
requires users to provide their real names. Impersonating
anyone or anything is prohibited. We will not be able to
reactivate this account for any reason. This decision is final.

Thanks for your understanding,

Avery
Customer Support Represetative
Facebook

We're still none the wiser. We're not fake, we've never impersonated anybody, and we've no desire to be anyone but ourselves (we quite like ourselves) !

So our message to everyone is if Facebook hates bears let's all boycott Facebook!

Love all at the Norfolk Branch
xxxxx