So Facebook shut some things down?

I am actually very worried about this. 

No, it isn't because  I won't be able to communicate with friends - and hopefully that will still happen. It will happen unless Mr Zuckerberg  stops Downunder accessing Facebook at all.

No, there are other reasons to be concerned. Back in the dim, dark ages before the internet and email I relied on the postal service, photocopiers and fax machines to do my job. It wasn't entirely satisfactory but all of those involved did our best. 

When the internet came along I had email. Not everyone had email but there were enough people that it was definitely a big improvement. My workload increased of course but I didn't need to do quite the same amount of travelling into the university library. I didn't need to wait around for my turn to use the photocopier or the fax machine quite as often. 

And the internet has grown since then. It is now a massive thing. In many ways it controls our lives. Someone has to pay for it. We do. We pay for access to the internet through our Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and because people pay to advertise on the internet. My BIL works for a company that sells the space where the advertising will appear. It is not simply based on the price someone is prepared to pay but all sorts of fancy mathematical research as well. I don't pretend to understand it.

All sorts of groups, organisations and individuals advertise themselves on the 'net as well. Some have web pages they pay for and others don't. One group I belonged to has a web page they have just updated. They also have a FB page. I don't know whether they have paid for the web page or not. I know they won't have paid for the FB page but it has several hundred members.

I know this because I set up another FB page recently. It has a specific purpose and, at the end of the project, I will see if there is a way of removing it. There is no point in cluttering up the internet with things that no longer serve a purpose. But it didn't cost me anything to set the page up. Nobody checked on what I was doing before I put it up for everyone to see. 

Earlier this week I was contacted by a person who runs the "digital media" for a company which supplies the sort of materials used in the project. She asked if I would like some information about the project to go on to their FB page. Yes thank you. We've had some additional interest in the project as a result.

That company hasn't paid to put their page on FB. There are all sorts of other organisations out there, some of them government organisations. None of them have paid a fee to be there. Media companies have pages on FB too - without paying a fee. They are advertising themselves. It might not be the same as the "in your face" advertising on your home page but it is advertising.

I belong to several groups. I try to keep it to a minimum. I have two accounts, a personal account and an account that is used by a group of us. I don't mix the two. The group account is very definitely a work related account. Ideas go up, queries are made, solutions are suggested. I opened it first thing this morning and I will continue to work on what is there during the day...and more work will come in. We are not paying to use this space. Perhaps there is an argument that we should not need to because we are not being paid for what we do. If we had to pay we would but FB provides a vital platform for us to help some aid workers do what is often a difficult and very dangerous job. We use Twitter in much the same way.

Take those things away and we cannot do our job. Unlike government departments and the media we don't have the capacity to set up web pages and keep them running totally at our expense. When they complain that FB is taking news from them and not paying for it they ignore the way they are using FB. 

I am no fan of Mr Zuckerberg. I have no desire to meet him but, if I did, I hope I'd be polite enough to say, "Thank you for making my job possible and allowing me to help the people who risk their own lives working for others in complex humanitarian emergencies."