Lindsay Lohan violated Facebook TOS, spokesman says
We knew Lindsay Lohan's rant yesterday wouldn't be the last we'd hear of her Facebook tribulations.
Lohan wagged a finger at Facebook (on MySpace, no less) after discovering her account had been disabled. She publicly chastised the company for erroneously deleting her real account instead of one of the many Lohan fakers on the social network.
The hurdle is not uncommon for celebrities, who regularly have competition to secure their online identities on every new social networking service that rolls around. But it wasn't a case of mistaken identity this time.
"Her claim was an incorrect assumption of the issue," Facebook spokesman Barry Schnitt said in an e-mail. "We've explained the actual issue to her and it has been resolved."
So, what was the actual issue?
"We don't comment on the details of individual users, including their interactions with us, without their consent," Schnitt wrote. Darn!
But wait! "However, since she has made her account status public, I can tell you that the actions taken were to enforce our terms of service and not a mistake," Schnitt said in an e-mail. "We've since been in touch with Ms. Lohan and the issue has been resolved."
What section of Facebook's 13-page TOS could Lohan be guilty of violating? Facebook wouldn't say, and Lohan wasn't available for comment. But Lohan did write on her MySpace blog that she was operating under a fake name. (Reports say she was using the alias Lindsay Ronson -- taking the surname of her companion Samantha Ronson.)
Under the "user conduct" section of the TOS, one clause prohibits impersonating "any person or entity" -- a situation of which Lohan is often the victim. But on the same line, it says that as a user you may not "falsely state or otherwise misrepresent yourself." So, her last name isn't really Ronson. I wonder if maybe ... whoops!
After a long day of social network mudslinging, all seems to be well in Lohan land. The Lindsay Ronson profile appears to be back in action -- along with about 14 others with similar account names and pictures of Lohan. Yup, every thing has been straightened out, all right.
-- Mark Milian
Photo: Lindsay Lohan. Credit: WireImage
