Internet Law

The Shame! Law Blogger David Lat Was Facebook Outcast

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It’s all been resolved now. But law blogger David Lat described the week he spent as a “online outcast” after his Facebook account as one of the worst of his life.

The Above the Law editor recounts the shame and horror of the experience in an article posted on the New York Observer’s politics page:

Unable to communicate with friends or receive anonymous Facebook tips about happenings in the U.S. legal community to post on Above the Law, Lat wrote in the Observer column that he became increasingly depressed. Despite his legal training, he was unable to figure out what he might have done to deserve such draconian punishment by Facebook’s administrators. (He now realizes that he apparently violated the social networking site’s terms of use by including portions of another user’s Facebook profile on his law blog, and he promises that he will never make such a mistake again.)

“The irony, of course,” he writes, “is that, as The New York Times reported last month, users who actually do want to leave Facebook were finding it nearly impossible to erase themselves completely from the site.”

Prior coverage:

ABAJournal.com: “Legal Gossip Maven David Lat Dishes on Above the Law”

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