• by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, March 2, 2010

Coincidentally, on the subject of whimsy: just a few days after I wrote about the Facebook fan page for the Norwegian Men's Curling Team's pants, Facebook has ventured into censorship territory again -- this time with political overtones. The whimsical victim of political repression: a Facebook page called "Can this poodle wearing a tinfoil hat get more fans than Glenn Beck?"

I told you it was whimsical. Apparently the poodle page is also too political for Facebook, which has "publish blocked" the page so it doesn't appear on the pages of Facebook members who try to add the poodle as a friend, and updates don't appear on the pages of Facebook members who are already friends (in whimsical protest, the creator of the page has since modified the picture, so the poodle now sports a muzzle). Currently the poodle has 267,612 friends, versus 710,020 for Beck.

Facebook administrators haven't stated their reasons for the "publish block," but the political nature of the page would seem to be the likely explanation: Glenn Beck is a conservative TV host on right-leaning Fox News, the poodle stands in front of an unfurled American flag, and the tinfoil hat is a favorite motif of informal political discourse, applied derisively to people with extreme views at either end of the spectrum. And the poodle is... well, the poodle is just silly.

To establish that political content is in fact the objectionable factor here, we need a control group -- a virtually identical page without the political spin. Luckily, we do: the page called "Can this pickle get more fans than Nickelback?" which exists solely to beat the popular post-grunge band on Facebook. As of this writing, the pickle had 1,536,086 fans, versus 1,435,305 for Nickelback, so the answer is clearly, yes, the pickle can and did.

And interestingly the pickle isn't "publish blocked," even though it shares most of the poodle's elements: it's a competitive Facebook page, lacking "genuine" content of its own, which is devoted entirely to besting another Facebook page, representing a real, legitimate entity. Like the poodle, it also tweaks the whole idea of Facebook fan pages, suggesting the whole enterprise is meaningless and absurd. And yet the pickle roams free, while the poodle languishes in the Facebook gulag.

The question I'm left with: is it wise to block political discourse (however silly) on social networks whose primary aim is self-expression? Clearly I'm leaning towards "no," although I would welcome an opposing viewpoint explaining why this isn't actually a mistake on the part of Facebook. Based on my current knowledge of the situation, the decision seems arbitrary and ill-advised, especially considering widespread interest in and engagement with politics.