魚翅及撐港台運動 Facebook 專頁故障最新情況 Updated Service Notice

Please scroll down for the English version.

【 2010 年十月廿六日】　由十月十六日起，因為本人 Facebook 帳戶的某些問題（詳見另文），本人的帳戶與及所管理的專頁（包括以下）被暫時停止服務。直到今天（十月廿六日），本人的帳戶終於可以重新使用，但不幸有關專頁仍未能重開。本人正在與 Facebook 繼續磋商，希望能夠重開這些專頁，但情况並不樂觀。我已作好了最壞的打算，必要時要重建這些專頁。如真的要重建之時，希望大家能夠支持。對各位造成不便，謹此致歉！

* 魚翅婚宴。人情七折 Cut gift money for shark fin banquets (two groups and a page)
* 請曾特首在施政報告中暫絕魚翅 Please say no to shark fin soup in your CE policy address
* 但願春茗無魚翅 No shark fin soup in our company banquets, please
* 「撐港台運動」專頁　SaveRTHK Campaign Community Page
* 我撐頭條新聞；要求立法保障獨立公共廣播

另外，「但願春茗無魚翅」登記網頁 (Google Form) 和查看結果網頁仍然運作正常。各位請繼續踴躍登記。

登記網頁： http://bit.ly/NoSharkFinCompanyBanquets
查看結果： http://bit.ly/ResultNoSharkFinCompanyBanquets

李銳華　謹啓

Service update about these shark-fin-soup and SaveRTHK facebook pages:

[ October 26th, 2010] Since Oct 16th, my Facebook account as well the above pages that I managed were disabled (c.f. another blog about this incident). Finally today (Oct 26th), my account was re-enabled. Unfortunately those pages were still not functioning. I have contacted Facebook hoping the problem can be resolved, but the outlook is not good. I have already been prepared for the worst and am contemplating a re-build of these pages. I hope your support will still be there should we decide to rebuild. Please accept my apologies for any inconvenience incurred!

On the other hand, the registration page (Google Form) for the campaign “No shark fin soup in our company banquets, please” as well as the result page are still working properly and are not affected by the above outage. Please keep adding your company’s name to the said registration page.

Registration Page: http://bit.ly/NoSharkFinCompanyBanquets
Result Page: http://bit.ly/ResultNoSharkFinCompanyBanquets

Best Regards,

Yui-Wah (Clement) Lee

A non-conspiracy theory of my little Facebook incident

Yesterday I talked about my Facebook account was temporarily because Facebook found out the birthday information was fake (see this article).

Now after some pondering, perhaps I can provide a non-conspiracy theory to this little incident. Perhaps Facebook does not really know my real birthday. What they know is only that the birthday information is fake. This can happen if they detect the date I gave them is out-of-range (e.g. Jan 1, 1900) or non-existent (e.g. Feb 29, 1971).

Frankly speaking I forgot what date I told them.

Actually, I hope the above explanation is true. It is a very scary thought that Facebook can know my real birthday with doing any serious investigative work.

In any case, as Facebook becomes more and more useful (and hence powerful), we should be watchful for what Facebook can do (or could have done). We need check and balance in this society. If any single entity becomes too powerful, then the chance of abuse will be elevated. This is true to government, to media, to Google, to Microsoft, to the pre-1984 AT&T (before it was broken up by the US Government in 1984 by anti-trust law, if you remember that), to the US unipolar superpower, and to Facebook.

I still like Facebook. I hope it is just useful, not evil !

魚翅及撐港台運動 Facebook 專頁故障啟事 Sevice Notice

Please scroll down for the English version.



【 2010 年十月十七日】　由於本人 Facebook 帳戶的某些技術問題（請見另文）。本人管理的專頁（包括以下）被暫時停止服務。本人正在與 Facebook 進行手續，以便及早能重開這些專頁（以及本人的帳戶）。有所不便，敬請原諒。各方垂詢，感激不盡，銘記於心。同仁請繼續努力，讓明天更美好！謝謝！

• 魚翅婚宴。人情七折 Cut gift money for shark fin banquets (two groups and a page)
  
• 請曾特首在施政報告中暫絕魚翅 Please say no to shark fin soup in your CE policy address
• 但願春茗無魚翅 No shark fin soup in our company banquets, please
• 「撐港台運動」專頁　SaveRTHK Campaign Community Page
• 我撐頭條新聞；要求立法保障獨立公共廣播

另外，「但願春茗無魚翅」登記網頁 (Google Form) 和查看結果網頁仍然運作正常。各位請繼續踴躍登記。

登記網頁： http://bit.ly/NoSharkFinCompanyBanquets
查看結果： http://bit.ly/ResultNoSharkFinCompanyBanquets

Service notice about these shark-fin-soup and SaveRTHK facebook pages:

[ October 17th, 2010] Due to some technical issues with my Facebook account (c.f. another blog about this incident), all facebook pages that I solely administer, including the above, are now disabled. I am now in the process of getting these pages (and my Facebook account) re-enabled.

Please accept my apologies for any inconvenience incurred. I am deeply indebted for all the kind and concerned inquires about this incident. Let's keep up our work for a better tomorrow. Thank you very much!

On the other hand, the registration page (Google Form) for the campaign "No shark fin soup in our company banquets, please" as well as the result page are still working properly and are not affected by the above outage. Please keep adding your company's name to the said registration page.

Registration Page: http://bit.ly/NoSharkFinCompanyBanquets
Result Page: http://bit.ly/ResultNoSharkFinCompanyBanquets

Facebook knows your real birthday -- even without you telling them?! (Updated)

This morning (Oct 16, 2010) I found that my facebook account was disabled. So I followed the link to see why that happened. It turns out that facebook knows the birthday that I told them was fake and asks me to provide them a real birthday (see the image below).

Indeed I provided them a fake birthday when I signed up my facebook account because I do not think they have a need to know this little piece of private information of mine. I was thinking that as long as I was not lying on my age to circumvent some age-based rules (e.g. those preventing kids from accessing pornographic material), I thought I am (morally) justified to hide my real birthday. But apparently facebook does not think so. They want to know your real birthday (not just age), and if you don't tell them, they will know it anyway?! Scary, scary!

Granted, my birthday is not top secret, and anyone who is determined enough can carry out an investigation and probably can find out the information relatively easily. Still, it is not public information, and I don't give it out easily. I think probably only my relatives and close friends, my employers, some government agencies, and some companies with whom I have some form of contractual relationship, such as my banks, know my real birthday. Also, I am not a person of such interest to facebook that they would start any special investigation on me or my birthday, so the explanation seems to point to this direction: that users' real birthday information, not voluntarily provided by users but acquired through another means, are readily available within facebook, and that through a simple match of the information in their different databases facebook knew who gave them fake information. If that is true, then it is really scary.

[Updated on Oct 17, 2010: Perhaps this little incident can be explained by a non-conspiracy theory. See this another thought of mine on this incident. ]



A fallout of this is that the several popular pages that I solely administer are now also disabled. So if you are a members of these facebook communities, I will have to apologize for the outage.

Also if some of you out there are administering some important facebook pages, I suggest you assign at least one more administrators to these pages. This is sometimes known as a "Business Continuity Plan". I actually thought about doing it, but my busy schedule kept pushing it to "tomorrow" ... until now this is too late.

Hopefully this outage is temporary. I am now going through the facebook procedures to re-enable my account. I don't know how long this is going to take. Please bear with us for the moment. If you have any questions, you can email me at leeyuiwah AT gmail DOT com

These are some of the pages that I administer:

• 魚翅婚宴。人情七折 Cut gift money for shark fin banquets (two groups and a page)
  
• 請曾特首在施政報告中暫絕魚翅 Please say no to shark fin soup in your CE policy address
• 但願春茗無魚翅 No shark fin soup in our company banquets, please
• 「撐港台運動」專頁　SaveRTHK Campaign Community Page
• 我撐頭條新聞；要求立法保障獨立公共廣播

If you are on facebook or twitter, please help me spread the following message out (exactly 140 characters)

李銳華 Clement Lee's facebook a/c is temporarily disabled, so are all his pages (Shark Fin /SaveRTHK) See http://bit.ly/ClementFbAc for details

哀清水灣公園淪為堆塡區

垃圾丢棄無節制
郊野公園被吞噬
西貢響起警世鐘
人人有責要減廢