Do deleted Facebook comments go to FB purgatory?

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In Malaysia, most of our brouhahas tend to break out online these days, especially on Facebook. Just in the last two months, we've had people start Facebook campaigns to boycott bread, rally against a new national healthcare program called 1Care, and just last week, the focal point was the award of an honorary doctorate to the Prime Minister's wife, Datin Sri Rosmah Mansor, by Australian university Curtin. The criticism of Curtin via the university's Facebook page was so ferocious that the University had to suspend the comments feature on its Wall. Some users claimed that their comments had been deleted from the Wall.

It's not, however, the fact that Facebook is assuming such a monumental importance in the public consciousness in Malaysia that is of interest, but this business of deleting comments that intrigues me.

It is an open secret that organizations and brands who have gone big into social media use the delete post button to do damage control on their Facebook Walls. The more insidious but less blatant method of controlling negative posts is to populate the Wall with "Fan" posts (usually employees of the company or alter egos invented by the company specifically to deal with such instances) to push down and out of sight, the aforementioned "negative" comments. As in the case of Curtin University, after it was alleged that some comments were deleted (although the University is entitled to do so with regards to comments that are abusive or defamatory), the University obviously decided it was better to simply suspend the function entirely. Unfortunately, this might well have turned out to be just as bad because the post announcing that the Comments feature was to be suspended in turn attracted 444 comments, most which were negative.

The "sanitizing power" of the Delete Comment button exists for corporate/brand pages as well as personal pages. But there might be an argument for saying that whilst the choice as to whether or not to leave personal embarrassment and indiscretions online should be within the control and choice of the individual, the same option should not be so freely or easily available to brands and organizations as well as public persons who are out to court the public and use social media for positive publicity or to burnish their credentials. Should a company that has committed a boo-boo be allowed to simply "delete" their infraction or cover it up from the public?

I'm not saying that abusive, vexatious or frivolous comments as well as potentially defamatory statements should not be removed. The law doesn't go out the window simply because we have entered the Universe of Facebook, contrary to what I think many Facebook users probably think or feel. Certainly, total freedom of speech does not exist on Facebook, again contrary to what a lot of people think. But, seeing that no one ever gets to see the comments that are deleted as abusive, vexatious, frivolous, reposts, spam or defamatory, it seems rather hard to be sure if it isn't being used as an excuse for essentially removing embarrassing or highly critical comments. Sure, Malaysians are not always the most lucid or eloquent writers when they express their views on FB (I blame that on the lack of a Dislike button on Facebook). And at times, comments do degenerate to the level of name calling, but spamming a Wall with the same comment until one receives a reply that is satisfactory surely can be argued as the digital equivalent of holding a Picket Sign or protest chanting outside a physical venue?

Perhaps Facebook Page administrators should be required to "tag" the comments they delete with a justification. In such an instance, the actual comment would be blanked out BUT the poster's identity can remain with a label that indicates it was removed for being defamatory, spam or abusive. If the poster is irritated that the comment has been deleted or feels the deletion is not justified, one can repost it on his/her own page with the @ feature to tag it (thus, becoming personally responsible for the comment should it be defamatory) while absolving the party that has deleted it from defamation problems. In the same vein, by forcing the administrator to justify the deletion of the post by providing a basis, a greater degree of transparency and openness is achieved because now everyone knows WHY a comment was deleted and can also choose to make their own decision on whether or not the deletion was justified or actual censorship/sanitation. This might go some way towards dealing with the increasing perception that Facebook Walls are becoming over managed and that Facebook allows brands and organisations to "censor" the negative comments.