Facebook Overhauls Its Inmate Account Takedown Process

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/06/facebook-reforms-inmate-account-takedown-process

92 70 11 years ago

balls2you• 11 years ago

Facebook cannot sells ads to inmates because they cannot purchase anything, hence the takedowns. Isn't that obvious ?

superuser2• 11 years ago

No. It isn't the inmates who are using Facebook, it's their family members. There could be a whole demographic category of "people with family in prison" which could be quite valuable to the (numerous) services around that market. Private companies manage commissaries, telephony, etc. and charge orders of magnitude above market rate. There's a lot of money in those services.

stephengillie• 11 years ago

Why can't inmates purchase anything? It might be more difficult for them to express demand for merchandise, but all of my tertiary and quaternary research suggests markets thrive within inmate facilities.

anawar• 11 years ago

Too bad I don't run @shit_hn_says.

jerf• 11 years ago

Well, it's probably fair to say inmates haven't got much purchasing power for the things that would be advertised on Facebook. Yeah, non-zero, but hardly a large segment of the market Facebook's going to go chasing down....

nostromo• 11 years ago

I feel like Facebook for inmates is a social good, not something that should be banned.

The last thing I want is for inmates to leave prison with no friends or family left to turn to.

ryandrake• 11 years ago

Think of it from the point of view of the (often for-profit) prison: The less of a chance of re-integrating with society the inmate leaves with, the greater chance he'll be back, which means more $$$ for the prison.

mason240• 11 years ago

Think of it from the point of view of the (often for-profit) prison:

Less than 5% of prisoners in the US are in privately run prisons.

Thriptic2• 11 years ago

I assume the primary fear, whether justified or not, is that prisoners will use the service to coordinate gang or illicit activity.

comrh4• 11 years ago

What about inmates harassing victims though? Or managing ongoing crime?

kashkhan2• 11 years ago

the laws are already adequate to prevent such abuse.

alogray• 11 years ago

Doesn't facebook already have policies in place that are inmate agnostic that cover both of those scenarios?

oh_sigh• 11 years ago

Why are inmates not allowed to use the internet? I can understand drug kingpins or gang leaders being prevented from using it to stop them from forming plans or whatever, but for your run of the mill inmate who does not have a bunch of goons to do his bidding, what's the problem?

knodi123• 11 years ago

Because that run-of-the-mill inmate will undoubtedly be vulnerable to coercion from kingpins and gang leaders?

And pretty soon it's "Send the following codewords to my goons on the outside, or I'll break your knees."

ceejayoz• 11 years ago

They already have phone calls for that. Why would they need Facebook?

kbenson• 11 years ago

I fail to see how this is different than payphones. Even if there was a difference, I fail to see how the appropriate way to stop the behavior of a small subset of people is to punish everyone when you can just punish those individuals. Even if is was the appropriate way, I fail to see why it would apply to prisoners and not the public at large. Maybe we should just turn the internet off for everyone because it's unfeasible to prevent it from being used in a crime?

anigbrowl• 11 years ago

Because the prison system (and the national conversation) is dominated by sadistic people who are fixated on punishment. Of course some prisoners would try to use Facebook or whatever to carry on their criminal enterprise, but I really think it would be much more effective in 99.9% of cases for represetnatives of the prison warden/parole board to monitor and comment on inmate's Facebook pages - prising them when they do well (eg completing an educational program or achieving some work goal) and questioning when they don't ('Getting another tattoo may help pass the time, but it won't help you on the outisde.')

venomsnake• 11 years ago

Even kingpins are better left to use internet. If they think they can outsmart the federal government by somehow concealing their communication on keylogged and monitored devices - be my guest.

nightski2• 11 years ago

I have a relative that was in prison for over a decade for a serious felony. He used the internet quite extensively. Even learned to program & work with databases.

argklm• 11 years ago

Facebook doesn't understand that humans who did errors are still humans and need to be treated as such. The goal of prison is to rehabilitate the person in order to make them come back to society. I wonder how eliminating their basic rights and cutting them completely out of the world will improve their situation. Maybe the desperate cases cannot be recovered but prisons are also full of people that can be reeducated and one way to do so is to let them be still a part of this world. Isolating them from Internet, stripping their rights and physical isolation will do only more harm in the long run.

comrh4• 11 years ago

Facebook? How about the entire country. When people laugh about being raped in prison it is because most people assume they deserve it. Not a very humane outlook.

the84722• 11 years ago

The goal of prison is to rehabilitate the person in order to make them come back to society.

That's how it should be, but is it in practice?

x5n1• 11 years ago

That's how it should be, but is it in practice?

Regardless they end up back in society.

ryguytilidie• 11 years ago

I don't feel like its fair to say "well sure, the stated goal of prisons is to rehabilitate, but they're not doing that now, so why would we even pretend like that is their mission anymore?"

cam_l3• 11 years ago

"The USA doesn't understand that humans who did errors are still humans and need to be treated as such."

Fixed it for you. The fact that the states strip prisoners (or even ex-prisoners) of the right to vote is just fucking astounding.

nightski2• 11 years ago

Care to elaborate? Seems like a legitimate deterrent for committing a crime. Especially since it is "fucking astounding" as you say.

ddingus• 11 years ago

It's all about punishment. Sad too. Not only is it cruel policy in many scenarios, it's expensive.

Oregon does not strip the right to vote, thankfully.

clamprecht2• 11 years ago

I can't understand why Facebook (and companies in general) are so eager to do whatever the government asks, even when they don't HAVE to. If they were compelled by court order, that's one thing, but that isn't the case here.

Zelphyr• 11 years ago

I believe its because there is such a cozy relationship between corporations and government now that its just a matter of back scratching at this point.

Thriptic2• 11 years ago

FB gains nothing by defying the government in this case. Very few people are realistically going to be up in arms about prisoners losing their FB pages. Meanwhile a headline reading "prison gangs use Facebook to coordinate gang activity" looks really bad from a naive public relations perspective.

downandout• 11 years ago

Why is Facebook involving itself in these kinds of issues at all? It is free to enforce its own policies, which say nothing about inmates not being able to use the service. It seems that no good can come out of this, but plenty of bad things can.

While I have never run anything the size of Facebook, I have run a (small) social network before. We blocked any IP resolving to a .gov address from accessing the site at all, and had a policy that we would only respond to actual court orders (or NSL's, but we never received one). Facebook would get far fewer requests from local and state law enforcement agencies if their employees couldn't browse the site from work.

the84722• 11 years ago

I think that's the wrong way of thinking about it.

Facebook is not a public service. They aren't required to give anyone a platform and if they see any benefit in banning inmates then they'll just do that.

The fundamental problem is that people treat facebook like a public/regulated service such as the postal system, bank accounts or common carrier internet providers that should provide service to everyone on an equal basis. Users are entrusting way too much of their internet presence to a single commercial entity.

Just another reason to put further thought into federated social networks. I'm saying "further thought" since I'm aware that current solutions are not practical.

woah• 11 years ago

Look into secure scuttlebutt

jqm• 11 years ago

Given the amount of stupid intentions, boasts and confessions people put on facebook, I'm surprised law enforcement doesn't allow and even facilitate facebook posting by inmates.

gertef4• 11 years ago

Indeed. LE routinely intercepts client<->attorney email and violates the principle of client-privilege, under a nonsense non-consensual EULA.

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Facebook Overhauls Its Inmate Account Takedown Process

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