Reach Singapore violates Facebook Terms of Use
choongyong.koh June 28th, 2008
Reach Singapore spent some money to stage an event at Toa Payoh Hub yesterday — to launch a Facebook profile, something that anyone with an email address can set up within minutes at their own home computer.
Attempting to engage the thousands of net savvy Singaporeans already on Facebook is a commendable effort, but before one understands the platform, it is usually not advisable to blow one’s trumpet about it.
If the person who signed up the Facebook profile has actually spent enough time in the Facebook community to understand what Facebook really is and how it works, or if the person has taken the time to read the Terms of Use, it would be apparent that the Reach Singapore profile has violated the Facebook’s terms of use.
Quoting from Facebook’s Terms of Use:
In addition, you agree not to use the Service or the Site to:
register for more than one User account, register for a User account on behalf of an individual other than yourself, or register for a User account on behalf of any group or entity;
Think about the money spent and the media coverage on the new Reach Singapore profile, I wonder what happens when Facebook discover this violation and terminates the account.
Update 2008-07-01: Tomorrow.sg link:http://tomorrow.sg/archives/2008/06/30/reach_singapore_violates_faceboo.html
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I seriously don’t think it is too big a deal. The terms of use is there to protect Facebook should someone or some organizations decide to sue them.
It’s like YouTube. It should be 100% original materials. The downright violation is that people all post recorded TV materials, converted DVD materials, into YouTube. Even the so-called original materials, there are gray areas such as using copyrighted materials as the soundtrack. YouTube won’t sue the users, not that I know of. But if say the record company is making noise or the Sport Channel, YouTube will shutdown certain videos.
I would suppose if someone impersonated Reach Singapore and creates a profile there, Reach Singapore may complain or sue that user. In that scenario, Facebook can then take action because the user has violated the Terms of User obviously. Easy fix for everybody.
Maybe Facebook will not take action, but being a government-related body, shouldn’t Reach Singapore take more effort to find out more before embarking on something that is obviously wrong? Any Facebook user worth his/her salt will know there is something wrong with this.
I am just asking for a proper understanding of the platform before embarking on them. Don’t jump on bandwagons just for the sake of it.
Time to drop a tipoff to facebook and blow this barge out of the water…. Yo Ho Ho! Arrrrh!
[...] blogged about Reach Singapore’s Facebook profile a few days ago. Today, it was picked up by tomorrow.sg and I saw quite a number of visitors to my [...]
Well I believe that the event staged was a roving exhibition to highlight the efforts on active citizenry and not solely focused on launching a facebook account. The media chose to focus on the facebook account. However, it would be useful to note that there are other exhibitions etc on as well.
Agreed with Wilfrid. The term of use is most likely to prevent people from profiteering from registering of famous organizations / people and then attempting to sell it at an exorbitant price.
Well, no big deal. Facebook is for everyone to social network etc.
It looks to me like an honest mistake. REACH seems to have rectified the problem.
Lets move on.
Honestly, its really not a big deal. Less you can find an ill intent on the part of Reach. Am happy as it is that they do make the effort to move to other media.
So dun go on the moral high ground and make woulda, coulda, shoulda statements. go do something useful like pointing out the perceived problem with the Reach folks to help them along.
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Why single out REACH when the SDP Young Democrats (SG YD) did the same with their profile?
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=720545621
Seems all very partisan, even for a WP member… Am disappointed…
Sivid, just saw your message today.
You asked why single out REACH, my answer is very simple - REACH represents the Singapore government, and if the Singapore government cannot do something like this right, there is a problem. It is our duty as a Singapore citizen to check on such things. However, I acknowledge that they have since remedied the problem, which is commendable.
Why not comment on SG YD? Because I only know about this profile when you mentioned it here. I don’t belong to SG YD, and I don’t have a say with how they engage the Internet.
Although I don’t view the comments I have about REACH to be partisan views, I do have to correct your perception. You said “seems all very partisan, even for a WP member”. Isn’t it a fact that members of a political party are partisan? I don’t understand what is there to be disappointed about.
I guess if some unknown guy violates the T&Cs, no one will take a second look. But the fact is that this is a government body or a representation of the government body, and thus they need to be aware such things. If they can’t get simple things like this right, there are tons of things that they can get wrong.