Having said that, I believe that you can be pretty socially conservative and still see that Facebook really needs to lighten up when it comes to nudity.

And no, I’m not suggesting that we turn the news feed into a porn tube or we turn the Timeline into an exhibition show. Let’s be real – this isn’t Myspace.

What do you think should be the line when it comes to nudity on Facebook? What do you think of their current policies? Have you ever had a post removed and you felt it was unjust based on their policies? Let us know in the comments.

All I’m suggesting is that we stop acting like the catalyst for the fall of our moral civilization is a 15-year-old catching a glimpse of a painted breast. I’ll now step down off the soapbox and get to the real story.

Parenting blog strollerderby (a Babble property) reports that Babble’s social media manager Andrea Zimmerman recently had a photo removed from her Facebook page. She received that standard rigamarole about Facebook’s nudity and pornography policy and the obligatory “do this too much and we’ll kick you off” warning. Many of us have seen this first hand in our many years of Facebooking.

The photo in question is of a fully nude woman with both breasts exposed. Both nipples are visible and the subject of the photo is touching herself. Check out the incredibly obscene photo below:

Are you as horrified as I am?

The photo, part of a pregnancy body art series, is about as un-obscene as it can get. In fact, it’s rather beautiful. But the problem lies with Facebook. It doesn’t matter that this depiction of nudity is what it is – and not some still image from Bangbus.

Facebook’s current policy says that the user “will not post content that: is hateful, threatening, or pornographic; incites violence; or contains nudity or graphic or gratuitous violence.” It goes on to say that a photo can and will be removed if it “contain[s] nudity, drug use or other obscene content. If the photo attacks another individual or group, it will be removed as well.”

Nudity, drug use, or other obscene content. When did nudity just automatically become obscene content?

Let’s take another photo example – this time one more personal to me. I shared an article of mine to my personal Facebook page as well as WebProNews’ Facebook page. The article in question was about Porn sites participating in the internet-wide SOPA protests. This was its lead image:

As you can see, the young lass in the photo is rather buxom, and her assets aren’t exactly hidden away. But as you can clearly see, no nudity in the classical sense. No more skin is shown in that photo than in a bikini shot the average college girl posts after Spring Break. Nevertheless, Facebook removed the entire article from both my personal account and the WebProNews account. They also temporarily suspended my account and gave me the whole community guidelines lecture. All for the above photo, let me remind you.

Facebook and breasts have already been in the news this week. Breastfeeding activists who say that Facebook has removed countless breastfeeding images of theirs scheduled “nurse-in” protests at Facebook offices around the world.

Facebook’s policy on that is that breastfeeding photos are allowed as long as they don’t show “an exposed breast where the child in not actively engaged in nursing.” The activists claim that Facebook is unable to keep up with their removals and are unjustly taking down images that do not violate the policy.

It’s totally understandable that many photos get removed in error. Just imagine the volume of photos that hit Facebook every day. Mistakes should no doubt be expected.

But could a laxation of policy alleviate a bit of the problem? If Facebook lightened up, just a bit, could it prevent images like my (clearly not nude) lingerie girl from being removed unjustly?

I’m fully aware that it is Facebook’s right as a company to set up their policies in any way they choose. And trust me guys, I don’t want to turn Facebook into YouPorn. I just want Facebook to stop acting like nude pregnant body art is obscene.

What do you think? First, what do you think the line is when it comes to images on Facebook? Secondly, how big of a problem is the fact that photos are being removed in error, having not violated Facebook’s stated policies?

Should Facebook create more specific guidelines differentiating nudity from pornography? Let us know in the comments.

You might have seen the painting, entitled “The Forgotten Man,” circulating around Facebook and other social networks. And the commentary provided was probably either laudatory or derisive, depending on the sharer’s political leanings.

The controversy, as you can see, arose from the imagery used in the forefront. It depicts President Obama trampling on the U.S. Constitution.

Apparently, all of the controversy has led to a boom in business. McNaughton tells CBS Las Vegas that he sold “in one day, what we would sell in three months.” After the painting went viral, he says that traffic to his site increased at such a pace that it crashed it. It took four attempts before the site was functioning again.

It’s probably not surprising that many people said that the painting was inherently racist. A group of former presidents (of course, all white) look on with amazement and derision as the first black president steps on the nation’s most important document.

McNaughton responds to this criticism by saying that “this is not a racial painting – it is about the vanishing of the American dream.”

The only exception to the disapproving faces is the handful of historical democrats – Clinton, F.D.R. – that seem to applaud the action. However, McNaughton also says that the painting isn’t partisan. “I take no favoritism of Republicans of Democrats. Both parties are guilty,” he says.

The painting itself is more than a year old, but it seems to have hit a resurgence after it appeared on the popular blog of MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show.

Apparently, McNaughton isn’t planning on calling it quits on painting controversial political subjects. His next painting is called “One Nation, Under Socialism.”

The political ad, put out by the campaign of Michigan’s Pete Hoekstra, aims to use the issue of government spending to swipe at his opponent – not an uncommon topic for a campaign ad in today’s political climate. But it’s the way in which he’s presenting the message that has spurred the controversy.

Pete Hoekstra, a Republican, is a former Michigan Congressman who is running for the GOP Senate nomination. His would-be opponent is Democrat Debbie Stabenow, a two-term incumbent. Hoekstra’s Super Bowl ad, which only ran in Michigan, features an Asian woman, strings of broken English, rice fields, and the message that Senator Stabenow’s practices are helping China grow, while hurting Americans.

Check it out below:

Hoekstra labels Senator Stabenow “DebbieSpendItNow,” and you can see from the commercial why some folks find it a bit over the line: “Thank you, Michigan Senator Debbie SpendItNow. Debbie spends so much American money. You borrow more and more from us. Your economy get very weak. Ours get very good. We take your jobs. Thank you, Debbie SpendItNow.”

The backlash has been pretty severe. The LA Times quotes the Asian & Pacific Islander American Vote group as saying:

[We're} deeply disappointed. [It] plays on harmful stereotypes of Asians speaking broken English and has stereotypical Chinese music playing in the background. It is very disturbing that Mr. Hoekstra’s campaign chose to use harmful and negative stereotypes that intrinsically encourage anti-Asian sentiment.

Michigan politicians have called the ad “shameful” and said that his tactics are “ignorant and bigoted.”

And even some GOP colleagues are calling Hoekstra out for the ad. A Michigan GOP consultant said “Stabenow has got to go. But shame on Pete Hoekstra for that appalling new advertisement. Racism and xenophobia aren’t any way to get things done.”

And Mike Murphy had this to say:

But Hoekstra isn’t backing down, in the slightest.

We knew we were taking an aggressive approach on this. But this is a time where the people in Michigan and across the country are fed up with the spending, and we wanted to capture that frustration that they had with Washington, D.C.,” he said. “This ad … hits Debbie smack dab between the eyes on the issue where she is vulnerable with the voters of Michigan, and that is spending

And on Twitter:

He’s also still standing behind this donation website (debbiespenditnow.com):

What do you guys think? Is the campaign ad fair play? Or is it racist and way over the line? Let us know in the comments.

The point is, most people would agree that they don’t want Facebook turning into a porn site. There are plenty of young kids on the site – sometimes younger than 13 (even though Facebook policy forbids it). But sometimes the policies that are supposed to be there for protection end up going just a little too far.

According to some activists, this is precisely the case when it comes to breastfeeding photos. Apparently, Facebook is a little overzealous when it comes to removing images of new mothers feeding their babies.

The campaign to get Facebook to ease up a bit is spearheaded by breastfeeding activist Emma Kwasnica. According to her, Facebook has wrongfully removed numerous pictures and blocked her account on multiple occasions for the simple act of posting breastfeeding photos.

Facebook’s policies state that “you will not post content that: is hateful, threatening, or pornographic; incites violence; or contains nudity or graphic or gratuitous violence.” They also clarify that photos will be removed if “they contain nudity, drug use or other obscene content. If the photo attacks another individual or group, it will be removed as well.” Currently, Facebook’s specific positon of breastfeeding photos is the they are cool as long as they don’t show “an exposed breast where the child in not actively engaged in nursing.”

The problem then, is that many mothers like Kwasnica feel that Facebook isn’t playing by the rules of their own policy and are removing breastfeeding photos too indiscriminately. She says that Facebook has basically told her sorry, they can’t keep this kind of thing from happening on a regular basis.

“It is obvious to me now that Facebook really has lost control of their network, especially when their written policy clearly states they support the sharing of breastfeeding images, yet they say they cannot control the actions of their employees who keep removing breastfeeding images and who block accounts of the users who post them – usually ‘in error.’ This is exasperating to me,” said Kwasnica.

Her and other frustrated mothers just want Facebook to leave all breastfeeding photos alone.

There is an official Facebook group that serves as the open petition to Facebook. It’s called “Hey Facebook, breastfeeding is not obscene. Here, users share their photos and discuss the position that breastfeeding is part of their life, so they want to share it with their friends on Facebook.

One user posed the question “why is there a need to post a pic of someone breastfeeding on Facebook in the first place?” to which hundreds of commenters replied. Many of the mothers feel like it is akin to sharing something beautiful like a picture of a sunset. Others feel that people post pictures of their food all the time, and these are simply images of their baby eating.

On Monday, breastfeeding activists are holding a global “nurse-in” at Facebook offices around the world. Here, women will go and sit outside the offices and breastfeed as a way to protest Facebook’s policies. Here’s an image posted to the nurse-in Facebook page from a protest in Paris:

In the end, whether or not you believe that people should be posting breastfeeding photos on Facebook is irrelevant. It doesn’t matter what kind of “nudity” or “semi-nudity” that it is – we all know that Facebook can be a tad draconian with their regulations. And I’m of the opinion that the atrocious grammar and alternating capital/lowercase typing that has become an accepted part of Facebook communications are much more damaging to the mind of a 14-year-old than a breastfeeding baby on a slightly exposed nipple.

NBC’s attempt to protect us from this horrible gesture failed, as their censoring system kicked in too late. Super Bowl viewers were treated to a blurred out screen a couple seconds following the middle finger incident. M.I.A. also appeared to say “sh*t,” but it was barely audible and overshadowed by the gesture.

NBC was quick to release a statement on the incident, calling it a “spontaneous gesture” similar to Janet Jackson’s famous wardrobe malfunction a few years back. “We apologize for the inappropriate gesture that aired during half-time. It was a spontaneous gesture that our delay system caught late,” they said.

The NFL’s statement was a bit sharper and put the blame on NBC’s broadcasting failures.

There was a failure in NBC’s delay system. The obscene gesture in the performance was completely inappropriate, very disappointing, and we apologize to our fans.

Continuing the mini war-of-words, NBC amended their statement to say that the NFL “hired the talent and produced the halftime show.”

It’s comforting to see that both the NBC and the NFL seem to be containing the outrage.

M.I.A.’s “flip-slip” is nowhere near as shocking as Janet Jackson’s nip-slip, but it definitely appears to be overshadowing Madonna’s performance. And M.I.A. has definitely succeeded in spurring on the country’s fake outrage machine.

If you’re shocked by a split-second middle finger then you obviously haven’t been paying attention to Bill Belichick’s wardrobe. Talk about offensive. And aren’t we missing a bigger point here? That trying to shock the world during the Super Bowl Halftime show after the legendary wardrobe malfunction is like trying to shock a SNL audience after Sinead O’Connor ripped up the picture of the Pope. You’re going to have to doing something more than flip the bird to really shake things up.

A perfect example of this happening is the story of a 9-year-old autistic boy from Kentucky that was allegedly put into a bag for misbehaving. According to the boy’s mother, Sandra Baker, the Mercer County Intermediate School called and said her son Christopher was “jumping off the walls” and that she needed to come and get him. When she arrived at the school, she found her son in the hallway in a bag.

“When I reached the end of his hallway, all I saw was this big green bag lying in the middle of the hall floor with the aide sitting beside of him,” said Baker. “It wasn’t just his body down in it and his head out, his whole body was down inside the bag.”

After the local news outlets reported the story, Lydia Brown, an autistic college student at Georgetown University, saw it and created a petition on Change.org. The petition calls for the school to take action against the teacher involved as well as provide comprehensive training for all school personnel.

As an advocate for autistic individuals, Brown told us that she felt compelled to create the petition because what had happened to Christopher was “abuse and torture and wrong.”

“It’d be wrong to do to anybody, not just to somebody who’s autistic,” she continued.

This move can largely be credited with online spread of this story. In just two days, the petition exceeded 10,000 signatures and began circulating all across the Web. Brown told us that the story started spreading through the autism community, then reached broader disability communities, and was eventually picked up by people who have no connections to autism or disabilities.

“By the time that this hit the national media, it had already been splashed all across the blogosphere,” said Brown.

“When you hear that someone put a kid inside of a bag, that kind of makes people think, ‘What just happened?’ “So, I was not really surprised that that’s how the story got out.”

Baker told us that she did not expect it to go as far as it but said she was extremely thankful that it had.

“That just touches my heart to know that there are that many people who care,” she said.

As fortunate as the spread of this story has been for Baker and Brown, the incident has also raised some controversy regarding the bag that was reportedly used. Some people from the autism community defend the school and the teacher’s action saying that bags are often used in therapeutic treatment for autistic individuals.

These specific bags are called Abilitations BagOBalls and are filled with multi-sensory balls or other soft objects to encourage sensory integration. According to the product description, the BagOBalls is used in conjunction with “playtime or quiet time.” However, according to what the school told Christopher’s mother, he was put into the bag for misbehaving, which results in another point of contention with the case.

Amy Dawson, the Founder of the Autism Advocacy & Law Center, LLC, spoke with us and said that the use of seclusion or restraint could have a very harmful and negative impact on any child, but especially one with disabilities.

“The use of seclusion and restraint can really harm a child, any child, but especially a child who has autism and may not be able to communicate and explain to parents what has happened or even understand what is happening to him or her,” she said.

She, instead, recommends a form of treatment called behavior analysis and said that roughly 48 percent of children that get this type of therapy will experience a “good degree of independence.”

Even though there is some debate around the story, it is still gaining a lot of attention. The petition now has over 180K signatures and is continuing to make national headlines.

Last week, Sandra Baker presented the petition to the Mercer County Board of Education hoping to see the action taken, but nothing happened. The school board says it has concluded its investigation and is putting the incident behind it.

James Gallini, who is leading the legal team made up of The Gallini Group in Alabama and Chevalier Ginn Shirooni & Kruer in Kentucky, told us that they would soon be filing a complaint with the Kentucky Department of Education on behalf of Christopher. In a statement, they said:

“It is disheartening that the Mercer County Board of Education has shown little to no concern over this incident and has taken steps attempting to justify the events of December 14, 2011.”

Gallini also asked that anyone who wants to help to contact their representatives and ask for the finalization of the Keep Students Safe Act.

Until the incident is resolved, Christopher’s mother told us that she is not sending her son back to the school. He is currently being educated through homebound services from the Mercer County School district.

While it doesn’t look like the U.S. will see any legislation regarding online piracy this year, intellectual property attorney Miles Feldman tells us that it is a serious issue.

“It’s really a serious issue because of the volume,” he said. “We have a content industry that’s in trouble, and we have rampant copyright infringement that is going on, and it has decimated the music industry… and is deeply impacting the motion picture and television industry as well as the gaming industry, video gaming industry, and publishing.”

Feldman specializes in media and intellectual property and has personally been involved with litigation involving the Black Eyed Peas, Will Smith, and other high profile personalities. He told us of a recent incident, in which a video game that was just published by one of his clients began appearing on other websites and was available to download. Another site was also involved and, even though it did not make the game available to download, it still contained infringing content.

Since the sites were based in other countries, they couldn’t be effectively sued or shut down. According to Feldman, getting any action done is not only very cost-prohibitive, but it is also nearly impossible.

An option that is often the only alternative and that is non-judicial is the idea of turning the infringing sites into licensed fan sites. Feldman said he used this option with the site that did not include the download.

One of the specific arguments that has risen up against the bills recently is the fact that the Department of Justice shut down MegaUpload, one of the world’s largest file sharing sites, the day after the Internet blackout. Protesters say that, if the DoJ could take down this site, then why is there a need for new legislation?

“What the problem keeps being is it may take years to shut down the offensive site, like it did with MegaUpload, but the infringement continues and the damage continues,” said Feldman.

Even though there is clearly a problem of piracy online, Feldman told us that the SOPA and PIPA bills were not the right solution. He did believe the original purpose of them was well intentioned but said the language of the bills were not clear.

“What this legislation was intended to do was to provide a mechanism very much like the DMCA but with a little bit different of a process,” he pointed out.

However, the bills were written in a way that would put a big burden on companies such as ISPs, financial transaction providers, advertising providers, and more.

“The problem with crafting language and legislation is that it’s an imprecise science, and it has to be done with care,” said Feldman. “The aspects of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act which work so perfectly are clarity and a procedure, and that’s what we need with respect to foreign sites.”

SOPA and PIPA also called for criminal enforcement, which Feldman believes is a very bad idea.

“I think that it’s a mistake to use criminal law to deal with streaming and to deal with file sharing of content, especially when that could potentially be used by consumers,” he said.

Feldman told us that he would like to see the entertainment and Internet communities come together to talk about how both sides can benefit from legislation.

“What the entertainment industry should do is try to embrace the consumers and try to embrace the technology rather than just trying to control it,” he said.

He went on to say that the attacks that both sides have been making are not all true and that more dialogue was needed to work out the conflicts. If this happens, he believes these groups could create a more current DMCA that embraces the concept of SOPA and PIPA but that has a clause that eliminates a safe harbor for companies who are in compliance with the law.

Another outcome that Feldman potentially sees happening is that, instead of a new piece of legislation being written, the principles that were in SOPA and PIPA could be absorbed in other bills.

While the SOPA/PIPA debate is being celebrated as a victory in the Internet community, there is rising concern over the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). Many people believe it would bring the same harm that SOPA and PIPA would have brought in regards to freedom of speech and intellectual property.

“Every time you restrict or you impose copyright regulations, copyright laws under jurisdiction, you’re gonna limit expression – and that is always a concern,” said Feldman.

Incidentally, the European Union signed the agreement into effect this morning.

According to Feldman, the debate surrounding these issues will be around for a while saying, “this drama is still being written.”

What would you like to see result from the anti-piracy debate? Let us know.

Do you think Google’s privacy strategy is good or bad? Let us know in the comments.

“Regulators globally have been calling for shorter, simpler privacy policies—and having one policy covering many different products is now fairly standard across the web,” Google says.

Google users have been receiving emails about the changes:

You know that whole “Google+ is Google.” mantra? Essentially what the new privacy policy means is that Google+ is in fact Google. It also means that Gmail is Google. YouTube is Google. Essentially, it affirms what we’ve been saying for quite some time. Google is the product, and all of Google’s services are basically features of that product – the way Facebook is the product, and the news feed, photos, videos, chat, etc. are features of that product.

In Google’s case, this concept embodies the majority of its products – the ones that aren’t being kept separate for “legal and other reasons”.

“The main change is for users with Google Accounts,” explains Alma Whitten, Director of Privacy, Product and Engineering at Google. “Our new Privacy Policy makes clear that, if you’re signed in, we may combine information you’ve provided from one service with information from other services. In short, we’ll treat you as a single user across all our products, which will mean a simpler, more intuitive Google experience.”

Whitten says Google’s “Search Plus Your World” (or SPYW) is a good example of what Google can do when its products are one. Not everyone agrees that that is a “good” example. In fact, the move has been highly controversial, as is the new approach to privacy.

“Today we can also do things like make it easy for you to read a memo from Google Docs right in your Gmail, or add someone from your Gmail contacts to a meeting in Google Calendar,” Whitten adds. “But there’s so much more that Google can do to help you by sharing more of your information with … well, you. We can make search better—figuring out what you really mean when you type in Apple, Jaguar or Pink.”

“We can provide more relevant ads too,” says Whitten. “For example, it’s January, but maybe you’re not a gym person, so fitness ads aren’t that useful to you. We can provide reminders that you’re going to be late for a meeting based on your location, your calendar and an understanding of what the traffic is like that day. Or ensure that our spelling suggestions, even for your friends’ names, are accurate because you’ve typed them before. People still have to do way too much heavy lifting, and we want to do a better job of helping them out.”

The changes go into effect on March 1.

What are the people saying?

Here are some quotes from a WebmasterWorld thread on the topic:

Wow – what are they smoking in Mountain View?

The question will be will gmail users opting in (to continue using the service)? How many are going to give up their established gmail accounts? I know many gmail users who do not use any other G products… and some with gmail that use bing for search. Will be interesting to see how this shakes out.

Some Twitter reaction:

Google+ Growth

The whole thing obviously bodes well for Google+ numbers. Google announced last week that Google+ has surpassed 90 million users. That’s a lot for the short time that’s been around, but it helps growth when it’s all tied to “the greater Google”. Sign up for a Google account now, and you’re signing up for Google+, Gmail, and nearly everything else.

That said, there are other forces at play for Google+ that could help that growth continue. It’s starting to break more into the mainstream. You have things like Anderson Cooper telling people to add him to their Circles. Remember when you first started to see TV shows tell people to follow them on Twitter? That helped Twitter immensely, no doubt. If more follow Cooper’s lead, that’s going to be huge for Google+. And with Google+’s impact on search results, why wouldn’t more want to do this?

More celebrities are joining Google+ – another thing that helped Twitter gain steam. Lady Gaga, one of the biggest celebrities in pop culture, currently, just joined Google+ last week. Expect more and more to follow.

And of course, there’s good old fashioned advertising. Google, historically not a big television advertiser, is much more about some TV ads these days, including Google+ specific ads.

Competitive Strategy

We’ve written a number of times (including as recently as last week) about how much sense it would make for Facebook to get more into search to compete more directly with Google. Not just as a social network, but as a web company. It still makes sense, and perhaps even more so now that Google has made this new move with its privacy policy. What the policy has done has, for all intents and purposes, made Google one entity, rather than numerous products. One big fat rival to Facebook for users’ time spent online, user data and ultimately advertisers’ dollars spent trying to reach those users.

Facebook is amping up its advertising offerings in a number of ways ahead of its huge IPO. And on that note, John Battelle points out an interesting social ad strategy from Google, where AdSense ads are allowing people to share them back to Google+. Battelle writes:

Why am I on about this? Because some weeks ago, Facebook told a bunch of advertisers and third parties (FM was one of them) that it was no longer OK to integrate Facebook actions into third party advertisements. This was always in their policies, but everyone was pretty much ignoring it – including most of the largest advertisers on the planet. After all, it’d be pretty hard to tell major television advertisers to stop asking viewers to “Like us on Facebook”. But for some reason, Facebook recently decided enough was enough online, and won’t let folks do exactly the same thing – with interactive functionality – online. You won’t be seeing ads on any site that integrate Facebook Likes, Shares, or other verbs, unless the advertisers paying for those ads have cut special deals with Facebook. (Or, of course, unless Facebook launches its own ad network…)

Makes you wonder about the potential of such a network. A Facebook version of AdSense. They certainly have the data, and Facebook is certainly all over the web. We’ve written on this before in the past .

Some have pointed out that Google’s strategy has kind of an Apple feel to it, in terms of having more control over what users do on its various products, and making sure that users have a “beautiful” experience, as Larry Page put it. This is quite interesting, considering the way Google has portrayed itself as almost the anti-Apple (particularly with Android) in terms of being more “open” – a philosophy that has been criticized a great deal by pundits.

Apple’s monster quarter made Google’s disappointing quarter look bad.

Googlers jumping ship

But back to Facebook for a minute. There’s also the competition between these two companies at the talent level. Plenty of Googlers have jumped ship to Facebook. Others are finding other ways to go. We know SPYW isn’t sitting well with some former Googlers, and apparently it’s not with some current Googlers either, and according to a report from PandoDaily, Google CEO Larry Page has basically told those employees who have a problem with it to get out and not let the door hit them on the ass. According to one report, even Foursquare (who has in recent times expressed interest in working with Google) is poaching a fair amount of talent from the company.

Wrapping up

Google has taken some very interesting turns since Larry Page took over as CEO. Whether these turns are in the company’s (and users’) best interests in the long run remains to be seen. Either way, some of the choices Google has made have proven to be incredibly controversial both among users, and even with insiders. Many have expressed intentions of stopping their use of Google products. If too many decide to do this, it’s obviously going to be a problem. But how many Google users (and that’s users of any Google product) are really ready to stop using every single Google product? For some that’s going to be quite a change of lifestyle. There’s no question that those making complaints about Google’s businesses practices (as well as privacy watchdogs) are going to have a field day with this, whether Google is in the wrong or not.

Is Google in the wrong here? Tell us what you think.

@LGBTFacts is a Twitter account solely devoted to “spreading the truth about the abhorrent homosexual lifestyle.” In reality, that translates to making up ridiculous claims about LGBT people and presenting them as “facts.” Here are some gems from their feed:

They get more specific and pointed in their “facts,” but you can clearly see what’s at work here.

Now, @LGBTfacts only has about 300 followers – so it’s not like they are some giant force on the social network. But by using extremely popular hashtags like #tcot and #p2 in their tweets, they are most likely able to penetrate some Twitter conversations. At least it looks like they were able to get the attention of some LGBT activists.

Now here’s where this story gets funny. Displeased with the bile being spewed from @LGBTfacts, some people on Twitter decided to turn their handle into a hashtag. And thus began the fighting of hate with humor:

Once @LGBTfacts caught wind of this campaign, they weren’t pleased:

But the funny #LGBTfacts continued, as did the hate-group’s resistance. They even referred to them as the #Gaystapo.

(That guy’s account is still up and running, by the way)

The #LGBTfacts hashtag is still active and tweets are still rolling in, so check it out for a little bit of midday humor. It’s nice to see humor take down misinformation. And on no other service could you see something like this happen. As one user put it, “I love that people have hijacked #lgbtfacts to mock @lgbtfacts. Twitter is cool like that.”

[Big Hat Tip to CNET]

The decision was reached with much opposition, especially from the advertising and marketing community. The Association of National Advertisers (ANA) has been the biggest force in speaking out against ICANN’s plan. It, along with 161 other organizations, formed the Coalition for Responsible Internet Domain Oversight (CRIDO) in order to raise awareness of their concerns.

These organizations believe that the new gTLDs could be harmful to both brands and consumers. In the interview below, Doug Wood, the General Counsel for the ANA, told us ICANN’s plan was an unnecessary move.

“Consumers have no problem finding what they’re looking for on the Internet through search engine technology,” he said. “This is more of a solution looking for a problem that doesn’t exist, and the costs that will be incurred by brands and then, ultimately, pushed on to consumers… is going to be far in excess of any justifiable cause.”

Despite the criticism, ICANN began carrying out its plan earlier this month, a move that Dan Jaffe, the Executive Vice President of Government Relations for ANA, calls both “reckless” and “premature.”

As he explained to us, there are problems such as cyber squatting and phishing that exist in the current system. That said, he thinks that those issues need to be addressed before the floodgates are opened for new top-level domains.

“Unfortunately in the existing system, there are serious problems of cyber squatting, typo squatting, phishing, the placement of malware, [and] the inability to find out who, in fact, really owns Internet addresses,” he said. “We’re afraid unless these types of problems are resolved that suddenly opening the top-level domains to as many as 1,000 new top-level domains, which is a thousand percent increase over the existing systems, it would be very, very dangerous both to businesses and consumers. ”

ANA and CRIDO have reached out to ICANN on several occasions in an effort to get the decision reversed. The FTC and various officials in the U.S. government have also expressed their concerns, but Jaffe told us that ICANN has not responded.

One of the big concerns that these groups have is that businesses will feel pressured to spend the $185,000 or more to keep a competitor or worse from buying their domain name. ICANN, however, says that it has protections in place such as its “Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy” that protect businesses from taking defensive measures.

“They have put in several protections, but they have never run a pilot project to see if those various protections really work in the real world,” said Jaffe.

“ICANN is running some of the fundamental areas of the Internet and, therefore, we want to make sure they run them properly or ICANN’s own future will seriously be undermined,” he added.

Last week, ICANN announced that it has already approved 25 successful registrants for new domains. Jaffe told us that the full impact of the move would not be felt until April when ICANN stops accepting applications and reveals the new registrants.

In the meantime, he is hoping that the U.S. Department of Commerce uses its Affirmation of Commitments authority and its oversight of the IANA contracts to get ICANN’s attention.

“We think this is absolutely a top issue for the business community across the whole of the world,” he said. “[It] needs to be done appropriately, or it will severely undermine the trust that has begun to be built up to make the Internet one of the largest marketplaces in history, the largest marketplace in history.”