There's been a lot of buzz lately about Facebook "censorship" of free speech.  The Blackadder One case I wrote about a couple weeks ago was just an early warning sign of more trouble to come.  Recently Jon Pincus has been posting a series of diaries at Tales from the Net and Liminal States about his encounter with problems very similar to those Derek Blackadder ran into when he tried to organize workers on Facebook.   Pincus's posts include a very good trail of documentation of the problems he's encountering, which make this series one of the more interesting resources on Facebook censorship I've seen.  (As an aside: thoroughly and clearly documenting the problems you have with software is one of the best ways you can help your software or service provider diagnose and fix the problem.  But that's a rant for another day.)

As it turns out, Blackadder and Pincus are running up against Facebook's rather crude anti-spam filters, which, in certain cases, flag a discussion board post as spam if the post includes a link to a web page outside of Facebook.  While one can certainly sympathize with Facebook's desire to block spam on its services, it's easy to see how this kind of crude filtering technology (which is well behind the cutting edge of spam filtering software, by the way) can cause problems for those trying to organize Facebook users for legitimate purposes.  It does appear that Facebook isn't trying to block or suppress speech per se, since spam-filtered posts are often ensconced in a trail of other, non-filtered posts with very free-ranging discussion.  Still, the result of Facebook's crude filters is, as Pincus says, a chilling effect on political speech.

Now Pincus is extrapolating his experience into something which is hopefully more useful to the wider Facebook community - a guide for responding when Facebook censors your political speech, based at Wired's how-to wiki.  If you're having trouble with spam-filtering on Facebook, check out this resource, and if you have more to add, go ahead and do so.

I hope that this resource will lay the groundwork for later resources which help online activists fight draconian online corporate policies in a variety of contexts, like Google account shutdowns and the plethora of Beacon-like Facebook abuses likely to come in the future.  Eventually, I'd like to see a resource that provides top-notch practical and legal advice to social networking consumers, and perhaps serves as a hub for organization, in much the same way that Chilling Effects serves bloggers who are harassed by corporate cease-and-desist letters.  Extrapolating out a bit, such resources could be the starting point for a well-organized online consumer movement which I wrote about yesterday.

For now, though, if you are running into Facebook's spam filters, or if you are having similar problems at other social networking sites, check out the Pincus guide, and add on to it if you have more to contribute.

Last weekend's blog post on the eBay sellers boycott generated some very interesting comments, and I want to follow up with some more thoughts on organizing online workers.

As background, I've been arguing for a few months now that labor unions should do more to organize online workers.  The argument goes that folks whose primary income is derived from activities as diverse as blogging, eBay auctioneering, Second Life merchandising, and so forth, compose a new industry segment which is already quite large and will grow in the future.  Furthermore, despite the fact that these individuals are hard to organize due to the nature of online work, their livelihood is essentially at the mercy of a small group of executives at web companies like eBay and Linden Labs.  Therefore, they comprise a group who have important collective needs, and who would benefit tremendously from workplace organizing.

While I still think most of this argument holds up, I'm less and less certain that a traditional labor union is the best vehicle for organizing online workers, for a variety of reasons.  The primary reason is that online workers are not actually employees of the companies whose services they are working with; they are consumers of those services.  Thus, the eBay sellers "strike" is not a strike at all, but a boycott.  The more I think about this round peg/square hole problem, the more I believe that the solution is to just build a round hole.  In other words, alongside a thriving labor movement, we need a powerful and well-organized consumer movement.  Follow me across the flip for more, and tune in tomorrow for some practical follow-up.

Last summer, I wrote that the labor movement should begin organizing online workers.  It appears that a group of eBay sellers are about to start striking boycotting, without any help from labor unions.  At issue is the sudden imposition of policies by eBay which sellers deem harmful to their business.  The policies will be imposed starting Feb. 20, and the strike boycott will go from Feb. 18 - 25.

There are a couple of issues at play.  One is that fees will increase by as much as 66% for some sellers.  Another, apparently far more explosive, issue is that eBay will soon turn off negative and neutral comments, requiring sellers to go through eBay's Security & Resolution Center to report bad behavior.  This move will almost certainly tie up sellers in needless bureaucracy, in place of today's simple system for resolving disputes.  CNN and Mashable have more.  Follow me across the flip for some thoughts on how the labor movement should respond to this development...

Update (2/18): There are a lot of interesting comments below; sorry I didn't get to them earlier. Some of the commenters are pointing out that this action is technically a boycott, not a strike, and that's a fair point; I've corrected the text here accordingly. Note, however, that there's a fine line between the two in this case, and I think that's pretty interesting. More this weekend.

One of the more interesting outcomes of YearlyKos was the discussion about organizing a blogger's union.  The idea was seeded by a post on Susie Madrak's blog, where she discussed her efforts to establish "a non-profit to help progressive bloggers".  The panel at YearlyKos, which I unfortunately had to miss, moved this idea a bit further down the field by discussing methods to pool together resources for health benefits, and things like that.  (Incidentally, if you were at the panel, please chime in with more notes on the panel - I'm kicking myself for missing it as I type this.)

There's been a bit of a media frenzy surrounding this idea, touched off by an AP report on the idea.  Salon covered both the right-wing's response:

And here's how Tom Blumer over at Newsbusters ("Exposing and combating liberal media bias") reacted to the affair: "Maybe I'm missing something, but when you want to form a union, isn't it sort of necessary that there be a mean, oppressive employer, or a group of them?"

... and a reasonably even-handed defense of Madrak's idea:

Susie Madrak ... understands that bloggers aren't employed by anyone, and that consequently collective bargaining wouldn't work. What Madrak is organizing, instead, is very different: a kind of grass-roots insurance pool to pay for health emergencies of progressive bloggers

So far, so good.  Madrak's idea is preceded by similar ideas housed at the Freelancer's Union, the National Writer's Union, and, coming soon, Qvisory.  It's a pretty good idea, but it's not really about unionization so much as insurance purchasing.

But it's worth thinking through the concept of unionizing bloggers.  Is it really such a ridiculous idea, or is there something to it?  More over the flip...

This week, the Senate debated the Employee Free Choice Act, a measure dedicated to restoring the right of collective bargaining for workers.  The act would increase punishments for union-busting activity on the part of employers and would lower the bar to forming a union, by allowing employees to form a union through majority card-check organizing drives.  A vote is expected early next week; call your Senator.

As much as a I hope EFCA becomes law, I don't see it happening until at least 2008: next week, Republicans will almost certainly filibuster the vote.  Even if we somehow get around the filibuster, George Bush will almost certainly veto the bill, and I don't think we have a veto-proof pro-EFCA coalition.

So I think it's imperative for progressives and labor activists to think about the kinds of things we can do to strengthen the labor movement, even without the help of EFCA.  Today, I'm going to write about organizing a group of workers usually overlooked by labor unions: online workers.  An online worker is someone whose primary work activity is centered around one or more web-based applications.  This group of workers includes professional bloggers, eBay vendors, Second Life users, etc.  There are a host of challenges to organizing this group of workers, but there are also a number of factors which facilitate union formation.  I'll go into much more detail over the flip...