High School Forces Students To Delete Their Facebook Account Or Be Expelled

Controversy ensued after the Beis Rivkah all-girl high school in Brooklyn, N.Y., pulled from class every 11th grade student who used Facebook and handed them a written ultimatum: delete their accounts from the social networking site and pay $100 to the school, or be expelled, community website CrownHeights.info reports.

A school official, who wished to remain anonymous, says that the Facebook crackdown was to restore a level of Tznius -- the Jewish Orthodox code of modesty -- which they claim was on the decline because girls were using the site.

Jewish newspaper the Algemeiner spoke to several students about the incident, all of whom requested to remain anonymous, saying the school felt Facebook wasn't compatible with their moral code.

“People on the board said it’s not proper for us to have Facebook because girls might be talking to boys on Facebook or they might be putting up immodest pictures,” an unnamed student told the paper.

Shaindel Teichtel, the school's principal, told the Algemeiner that the Facebook policy isn't new.

“There is nothing new about Beth Rivkah’s Facebook policy, which is over two years old," Teichtel told the paper. "In keeping with the highest quality standards of educating our students, within the context of a pure and sacred Torah (Jewish law) environment."

The Crown Heights community website reported, however, that students were encouraged to create Facebook profiles last year to vote for the school in a Kohl’s charity giveaway -- an accusation Teichtel told the Algemeiner is "patently incorrect and hurtful."

Earlier this month, WDAY-TV and CNN reported that the American Civil Liberties Union was getting involved after a 12-year-old was allegedly forced to hand over her Facebook password when school officials claimed she was having "online conversations about sex with another student."

Despite the ACLU's claims that the school violated the girl's First Amendment rights, school officials said they believe they acted responsibly.

Twittus Puts Tweets Into A Box On Facebook Timeline

Twitter users posting their tweets to their Facebook accounts is nothing new, but new Facebook application Twittus takes advantage of timeline to allow users to create a separate box on their profiles to house all Twitter activity, including retweets and mentions.

Twittus instantly updates users’ Facebook feeds with each new tweet, displaying new content in its box on the timeline.

Content in Twittus can be navigated and searched by time, date, month, and year.

One advantage gained by using Twittus rather than Twitter’s native solution for Facebook integration is that all Twitter content is gathered in one place, rather than spread throughout users’ news feeds.

Another is the inclusion of retweets and mentions.

Twittus added in the description of its app:

The idea behind this app was to create a better tool to connect Twitter with Facebook in a way that would correspond to real-time changes of the open graph platform.

In the decade of social media, creation and distribution of consumer-generated information amasses such an amount of data (per person/per day) that can hardly be consumed totally.

An additional piece of information in the chaotic Facebook news stream brings more distortion and obscurity rather than incremental value for the user.

Status quo organically created the need for feed curation so that one would clearly separate certain posts from the rest — this is what Twittus is all about.

The philosophy behind the loyal servant is to tidy up users’ Facebook timeline and present tweets in a more informative and aesthetically appealing manner.