Roger Ebert, movie critic, cancer survivor and undeniable king of the Twitter bon mot, publically debuted his new prosthetic jaw on a blog post Facebook blocked as "abusive content."
Ebert, who returns to TV Friday with the premiere of his PBS show, "Ebert Presents at the Movies," lost his jaw in 2006 during his battle with thyroid cancer. "After surgery, I studiously avoided looking at myself in a mirror," Ebert writes in the blog post, though he has been candid about his radically changed appearance, most famously appearing last year on the cover of Esquire magazine.
Titled "Leading with my chin," the Jan. 19 blog post details Ebert’s two–year journey with David J. Reisberg, a specialist in facial reconstruction, in the development of the jaw prosthetic. The post includes images, though none of a medically graphic nature.
In a note introducing the blog post, as well as its absence, Ebert writes on his Facebook page:
In which I receive a great deal of help in making the best of things. My new blog entry has been idiotically blocked by Facebook for "abusive content." You can read it here: http://j.mp/dVM9Iw
According to Facebook’s Help section, the social network identifies the following types of behavior as abusive:
• Feature overuse: There are limits to restrict the rate at which you can use features on the site. Overusing features is not allowed because it may make other people feel annoyed or unsafe.• Unwanted contact: Our systems detect when friend requests you send to others are being ignored at a high rate and volume. Using Facebook to contact many people you don't know is not allowed because it may make them feel threatened, harassed, or unsafe.
Facebook is looking into the matter, according to a spokesperson for the social networking site who responded to Technolog via e-mail. Attempts to contact Ebert are unsuccessful at the time of this post, which will be updated as information unfolds.
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- Forget the news! Twitter is now a game
Helen A.S.Popkin writes about Facebook ... a lot. Follow her on Facebook and Twitter.