Everybody Abandon Facebook Day

Yesterday was the first ever Everybody Draw Mohammed Day.   My favorite Everybody Draw Mohammed cartoon is shown below.

For the troglodytes among us Everybody Draw Mohammed Day was a sarcastic reaction to years of bullying, death threats and fatwas issued against cartoonists for the horrible crime of drawing caricatures of Mohammed.  The point of Everybody Draw Mohammed Day was to drive home the simple fact that when it comes to free speech there are no sacred cows or prophets!  Nothing is beyond offensive satire.

For me free speech is an absolute inalienable right that overrides nonsense like religious belief.  If you attempt to regulate my speech I will resist.  The harder you push the more I will push back.  If you curtail or regulate my speech I will scream louder. If you pass laws restricting discourse I will break them. If you suppress my voice I will stop debating and start shooting.  And, if you think I am bluffing go ahead and call me on it.

Given the depth of this conviction I was sorely disappointed to see that Facebook dropped The Everybody Draw Mohammed Day page.  The cowardly weasels weren’t even responding to official complaints.  They just decided to self-censor themselves and a hundred thousand Facebook users as well.  Of course they had their reasons but let’s cut the crap.  They have shown us that when cards are in play they have no core beliefs beyond pimping user data to third parties for cash.

I cannot endorse such behavior so I deleted my Facebook account.  This was not an empty gesture for me.  As a divorced father living in another country I enjoyed seeing Facebook posts from my kids on a regular basis but sometimes we have to give up things we like when they clash with principles.

So I am inviting all that sincerely uphold free speech to join with me on June 5, 2010, (the day Facebook allegedly deletes my account), to celebrate Everybody Abandon Facebook Day by deleting your own Facebook account.