Controversial social networking law blocked by Missouri judge

JEFFERSON CITY, MISSOURI — A Missouri judge has blocked a controversial law not allowing teachers and students to communicate on Facebook, or other social networking sites.

The Cole County Circuit Judge said that the law prohibits freedom of speech. In doing so, the law is now on-hold until February. A hearing will now be held to see if the controversial law should be blocked all together.

If the law would have taken effect this Sunday, communication through social networking sites between teachers, current and former students, who are minors, through private messaging, would have been banned.
   
There is debate on whether the law also meant that students and teachers could not be friends at all on social networking sites.
   
When asked earlier in August, State Representative Zachary Wyatt said he’d like to see the legislature revisit that section of the law because teachers wouldn’t be allowed to friend their own relatives.

Missouri Governor Jay Nixon announced Friday that he will ask the General Assembly to repeal the controversial provision in the special session next month.

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Facebook kills daily Facebook Deals, keeps Check-in Deals alive

Facebook quietly announced that it is killing its Facebook Deals product. After four months of testing, the social networking giant is calling it quits. This may ease some competitive pressure on industry leaders Groupon and LivingSocial, according to Reuters.

“After testing Deals for four months, we’ve decided to end our Deals product in the coming weeks,” a Facebook spokesperson said in a statement. “We think there is a lot of power in a social approach to driving people into local businesses. We remain committed to building products to help local businesses connect with people, like Ads, Pages, Sponsored Stories, and Check-in Deals. We’ve learned a lot from our test and we’ll continue to evaluate how to best serve local businesses.”

Wait Emil! When you told us earlier this week that Facebook had killed Facebook Places, you said that Check-in Deals wasn’t going away anytime soon. Don’t worry, that’s still correct. It’s important to note that there is a distinction between Check-in Deals (alive) and and Facebook Deals (dead).

In November 2010, Facebook announced Check-in Deals, a subset of Facebook Places. It allows you to check in from restaurants, supermarkets, bars, and coffee shops using an app. In turn, you are rewarded with discounts, coupons, and free merchandise. This product is still going to be around for the foreseeable future. It will be, however, changed slightly given that Facebook Places is being killed (see my previous article to learn how this will work).

In April 2011, Facebook announced a pilot program for Facebook Deals, offering online coupons and discounts from local businesses. Facebook started making offers in five cities (San Francisco, San Diego, Dallas, Austin, and Atlanta) and then recently added three more (Charlotte, St. Louis, and Minneapolis). The social networking giant had a small sales team arranging deals with local merchants but also ran offers set up by 11 other daily deal companies. This product is now dead.

All this product axing is being announced right after Facebook started rolling out a major privacy revamp this week. More details are available at the links below.

See also:

• Facebook moves privacy controls inline, simplifies sharing
• Facebook kills Places, but emphasizes location sharing more
• Security experts have mixed feelings about Facebook’s privacy revamp
• Facebook digs at Google with updated privacy controls
• Facebook offers new privacy policy for regular people

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