The Catalyst

By Miranda Guadnola, Reporter

Facebook is a place for people to connect with old friends and sometimes make new ones. So when it was discovered that the high-profile terrorist known as Osama bin Laden had supposedly created a Facebook page, one has to ask, was Osama bin Laden trying to reconnect with his old friends or was he attempting to make new friends?

The Facebook page, created on March 25, was named “The leader of the Mujahideen, Osama bin Laden” and his location was identified as “The Mountains of the World”. The page was mostly in Arabic and was apparently used mostly to post videos and speeches to Islamic militants. Laden’s page had already attracted nearly 1,000 other extremist groups.

Facebook, surprisingly, does not have an anti-terrorism policy. Facebook’s user agreement restricts users from creating content hat infringes or violates the law or someone else’s rights. Content can also not be hateful or threatening. These regulations seem to rule out terrorism already but terrorism has not been directly forbidden.
There is the possibility that someone was posing as the terrorist but Facebook tries to prevent people from creating fake profiles. They have a number of technical measures in place to prevent this from happening but sometimes fakes are able to get through. Facebook has not been able to establish if Osama bin Laden’s account was real or fake.

As is standard procedure, Facebook has disabled Osama bin Laden’s account. I hope that if it turns out to be his account, that he will not take it personally.