Facebook Vs Pet Owners

A while ago a friend sent me a link to one of those Myspace survey sites. The fact he sent me the link didn't surprise me, but the survey I found did. It was a survey to complete for your pet's Myspace account. Yes your pet's Myspace account. I really did laugh it off. Okay, I do joke that my birds most surely have accounts and that they Myspace all day while I am at work. However, the only time I ever considered making a Myspace account for one of them was as a joke to a friend. How hilarious would it be for said friend to get a friend request from Beaker? Still, I never went through with it. That would be a great deal of work just to make an account as a joke. My birds are my kids, but I am not obsessed enough to think they really need their own Myspace or Facebook accounts. However, some people really do feel the need to make these profiles for their animals.

I never really thought of it as a widespread issue until I joined a cockatiel group on Facebook. Yes, about half the members of the groups were not human, but they were apparently birds. I had to laugh a bit. I'm really apparently just to lazy to keep up with my own Facebook page, let alone make one for one (let alone all four) of my birds. Then I saw the posts start to roll in. Facebook was starting to disable non-human accounts. Of course, the owners of these accounts are all up in arms. They are posting angry comments and creating groups that accuse the site of "speciesism."

I do feel for these owners. They love their animals so much they felt the need to make them their own profile. After putting in the time and energy, it would be disappointing to have the account disabled. Once again, I love my birds. I talk to them and care for them like they were my children, but honestly do I think they would care about some social networking site? I'm just not sold on the idea. I do not think it has anything to do with the emotional distress on the pet. It is all about the humans, and they need to get over it. If the owners would have read Facebook's own policies and procedures, they would see why this was a bad idea in the first place.

I'm not just talking about the terms of eligibility. Once you actually read all of the terms, it becomes clear that these pet accounts are in violation of the policy. Based on the User Conduct section, you are only allowed to create one account, you are not to create an account for any other group, person or entity, and you are not to impersonate any person, group or entity (which essentially these owners are impersonating their pet...unless Fluffy can really type that well). Okay fine, if you really think you are translating your pet's own true thoughts and feeling on the page, you might not consider it impersonaltion, however, did you make the additional account? Okay well then you are still in a violation of the terms of serivce.

While these owners can complain it is unfair their pet's accounts have been disabled, if Facebook can prove it is a non-human account, and some one is impersonating another entity, that is a violation. If the owner has a Facebook account of their own, and then makes another account just for their Amazon, it is a violation of the policy. Not to mention, these owners are lucky Facebook is not tracking them down and disabling their user accounts. They are getting off lucky in that sense. If Facebook rally wanted to be mean about it, they would be well within their rights to disable all accounts the owner has created. As soon as that user violated the rules, they made themselves targets for the consequences.

I am all for sharing about your animals. I love mine, I talk to mine, and I talk to other about my birds. I put pictures of them on my Myspace and Facebook accounts, and I join groups that discuss birds in these social networking sites. I think that is well with in the reasonable bounds of a pet owner. No one is challenging that. However, throwing a fit because you violated the rules and were caught is not acceptable. Facebook has rules in place for a reason. It doesn't really matter if you do not agree with them. If they just let you go because it is a pet account, then they have to look the other way on everyone else who violates the policy.