This time it's for real: Facebook has "deleted" Palestine

Facebook is probably the number one reason why I don't blog here so often any more. If blogging is akin to flipping through the last edition of The Economist, facebook is the web 2.0 equivalent of slouching in front of the television while drinking a coke. It's not that I think facebook will bring an end to civilisation as we know it, nor do I deny the fact that I enjoy catching up with old friends. It's not even the advertising revenues I mind: everybody knows that they never really follow an individual, but just trends averaged over and between networks as a whole.

What is driving me mad this morning, however, is that the administrators of facebook have taken it upon themselves to decide that Palestine is not a country. In the past, facebookers could use their profile to display or conceal any information they felt was important--hometown, educational info, etc. So, naturally for a Palestine, I typed into a text box that my hometown was "Abu Dis, Palestine".

This state of affairs kept everybody happy for some time--until, that is, some time earlier this month, when facebook changed the functionality of the site so that the hometown line of the profile had to be selected from a pre-determined list, instead of just filling in a text box. Bizarrely, given that there is a Palestine network, they have decided to dis-include Palestine from the list of available countries from which one can select a hometown.

If anybody knows how to contact the facebook site administrators, it'd be useful knowledge. I remain, for now, a Palestinian with a Palestinian hometown.