CAIRO: Last week, the Facebook account of Egyptian political dissident Gameela Ismail was disabled by Facebook. She was not given any warnings and Facebook has yet to provide a reason for the closing of her account. Ismail, a well-known and respected opposition figure in Egypt, has over 4,000 friends on Facebook and uses the social networking site extensively to keep in touch with Egyptians and their opinions both at home and abroad. On the morning of October 5, Ismail received the following notification when she attempted to log in to her Facebook account: “Your account has been disabled. If you have any questions of concerns, you can visit our FAQ page.” According to the link provided, there are various factors that could motivate Facebook to disable a user's account. Among them are impersonation, using a false name, spamming, or posting content which violates Facebook's terms of use, including that which would incite violence or is sexually or graphically explicit. Almost as an afterthought, the last line reads: “our systems sometimes disable accounts temporarily for security reasons.” None of this, however, explains why Ismail's account was closed. Ismail believes the issue may somehow be politically related. The night before her account was disabled, she posted comments about the firing of Ibrahim Eissa from al-Dostour Newspaper on her Facebook status as well as on various groups she is a member of. Almost instantly she received dozens of comments on her status, nearly all of which supported the decision to remove Eissa as editor of al-Dostour. On October 5, Bikya Masr received a message from Facebook's press office following an inquiry into the issue. The statement read: “We do not take groups or accounts down simply due to unpopularity or complaints – they either violate our policies or they don't. If they violate our policies, we will certainly remove them when we are made aware of them. We don't typically take down groups or Pages that speak out against countries, religions, political entities, or ideas.” Yet Ismail had not violated Facebook's Terms of Use, leading her – and others – wondering what happened. Follow up inquiries about Ismail's case to Facebook's press office have received little response beyond insisting that closing accounts due to political reasons is not Facebook's policy. The most recent response, dated October 8, said Facebook had attempted to contact the owner of the account. Ismail, however, has yet to receive a single e-mail from Facebook regarding the matter. Ismail's case is not unique. A Google search for “my Facebook account was disabled for no reason” returns over 200,000 results. A similar search on Facebook yields over 500 groups, many with over 1,000 members. In related news, a Facebook group called Ikhwanwiki was shut down without warning in August according to a report by Ihkwanweb.com on August 17. The report says the group, which had less than 3,000 members, was closed without warning and its administrators were never given a reason for the group's removal. On October 6, conservative American political commentator Debbit Schlussel reported her Facebook profile had been closed without warning. Schlussel, who considers herself an expert on radical Islam and Islamic terrorism, said on her website that she doesn't know why her account was removed, but that “it appears it is for political reasons.” BM
