The Arrogant Internet

There are some things that really worry and concern me about the Internet in general. I feel these concerns may well be matters that need to be sorted out by some pervasive and world-wide conglomerate body with internationally binding laws and regulations and though whilst I'm certain such things are very complex i also feel that out there somewhere someone is doing something to address some serious issues.
I find that owners of internet sites can be supremely and extremely arrogant; they set up a platform and consider themselves to be smart enough so as to be able to anticipate how anyone and everyone might find their site useful then they duly set up a FAQ section which users can then use to supposedly sort any problems they may be encountering using the platform before the creators and/or owners of the site and platform magically disappear from view!
If you happen to have a problem or indeed a number of problems that are not satisfactorily dealt with by the ubiquitous FAQ Pages then life can get more than a little frustrating for you. Site developers disappear from our view after the development of their platform; perhaps holidaying in some luxurious location whilst raking in what they consider to be their rightly earned millions.

Personally I try to avoid sites that do not have a 'live chat' option; but even these live chat operators very often merely regurgitate the FAQ pages anyhow. I haven't yet encountered a live-chat operator who appeared to have a good understanding of the site and of all its possible problems to the extent that their knowledge could be utilized to quickly solve your problem.
I believe that real people who can speak in a non-bot like manner and who are working on behalf of sites selling you a product or providing a platform for you to use should be easily contactable. Perhaps it is true that the FAQ pages may deal with most problems but I have had many problems that are not covered by the FAQ at several sites.

At this moment I am very angry and imagining going into a great battle with Facebook that involves a 'test case' played out in a very public arena.
Since the death of my sister who had a pretty high profile on Facebook I have been using the Facebook platform to, as is culturally expected of me, to inform her many, many friends of her death. This, I might add is an enormous task and I am only half way through it at the moment. I have also been inundated talking to and consoling many of her dear friends.
My sister also administered many facebook groups and was a member of many networks.
The problem is compounded by the fact that she lived, and duly died in the war-torn country of Pakistan. It is not at all easy for us to get any of her possessions as the Mail, more often than not goes missing. We are currently trying to arrange for someone who is shortly visiting Malaysia to back up her HDD with a thumb-drive and then post it to us here in Australia from Malaysia..
It is also extremely difficult to even visit there and we are waiting for her business partner to procure a visa so he can visit us here in Australia to bring back her personal possessions. This also is not an easy task.

She regularly changed her logins so we now find ourselves unable to log into any of her facebook, yahoo, msn and other accounts. If we had access to her laptop then such problems would most likely be solved.

This evening, without any warning, Facebook disabled my account.
And I am furious - extremely so.
Who 'owns' my profile and all my information held in there?
Facebook is my major lifeline to my financial livelihood, amongst other uses.
I can draw an analogy between using their platform and renting an apartment. When renting an apartment many of my worldly goods are stored in there; it is a space for me to 'live'.
I pay the rent and have furniture whose utility serves to make my life comfortable, there are cupboards in which to store my clothes and other possessions, there are ways and means for storing and cooking food, there are goods whose primary purpose is recreation plus there is a telephone or two for contacting friends and others.
I'm sure I could expand this analogy further but these necessities of life can, for the purposes of this analogy be likened to the many ways that Facebook can be used. It provides recreational games and activities, it provides access to my friends and contacts which can be likened to clothes or other primarily useful things, it allows me to administer Pages and Groups which can be likened to cooking and food storage plus it provides easy access to friends, clients, business people and political and academic networks.
Whether you find this analogy to be superfluous, humorous and/or entirely frivolous I contest that I 'pay my rent' to Facebook when I glance, read or even click through to some of the advertising provided on the site.

Imagine returning home one day to find that someone has completely removed your house and all of its contents?
If you had been throwing tomatoes out of your windows at people would your home be entirely removed? And what if those people at whom you were throwing tomatoes were members of a secret sect of people who believed that they needed to have tomatoes thrown at them by you in particular?
Throwing tomatoes out of a window might bring me to the attention of the police and I also could 'cop' a charge of disturbing the peace but I would not be robbed of all my possessions and kicked out of my home.
Can Facebook possibly contend that they 'own' my Facebook account and all of its 'contents'?
And, if they thought I was acting unusually (something I doubt they would know) why did they not ask me to justify my behavior instead of stealing my front door key, i.e. access to my account?

That sites offering various interactive platforms can apparently disable you completely at their whim is indeed, for their users, a serious matter that I think should be dealt with using and applying contingencies dealt with by the aforementioned hypothetical body and keeper of internationally applicable internet laws.
Throw out the purely commercially based TOS' and bring in something with a little more humanity at it's core.
I also feel it imperative that such sites have easily accessible contact information and clearly displayed phone numbers where users can access 'real people' twenty four hours a day.
In fact whilst looking around the FAQ at facebook I noticed that it was not possible to be told why your account is disabled. This is disgraceful; guilty without trial and such arrogance should be outlawed and made illegal.
They should never be able to disable you without fair warning and they should never, ever be able to 'kick you out of home on the spot'. They could surely have instead limited my use of the site temporarily (very temporarily) whilst ascertaining whether there was/is an extenuating cause for unusual behavior. And what would be even nicer would be that Facebook had a contingency to help me in such circumstance.

As an important aside I think that our family owns all of my deceased sister's emails, email accounts, photos, and networking site profiles and I think just about everyone with any moral sense would agree with that but I have been afraid to ask assistance in case any of them choose to dismantle any of her accounts all of which contain information we may find useful and important in some way and I don't feel that site management should legally have the prerogative of dismantling them.
It is very easy for the powers-that-be on Facebook to see that for the last fortnight I have been openly doing 'sorry business'. It would be even better if they could help me to find a far easier way of informing all of her friends.

I'm still seething even after writing this article and I hope that within a few hours Facebook have re-enabled my account and that I am not, instead sending this article off to every major media outlet I can find a conduit to.

Keep posted.