Facebook ‘Rage Against the Machine for Christmas Number 1′ Group Shut by ‘Bug’

By Robin Scott; published on December 14, 2009 at 4:00 pm

Rage Against the Machine - who's track "Killing in the Name" has sparked an online Christmas Number One battle

For a number of hours this afternoon, a Facebook ‘bug’ shut down the “RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE FOR CHRISTMAS NO.1″ Group that has been making headlines all month.

The Facebook Group, which implores its members to buy Rage Against the Machine’s “Killing in the Name” rather than X Factor winner, Joe McElderry’s track “The Climb” in the week preceding the Christmas chart, went down shortly after lunchtime today, following a lengthy outage yesterday evening, and remained inaccessible for a period of up to five hours.

This morning, the group had in excess of 700,000 members.

Interestingly, the group became inaccessible and invisible in any Facebook search, nor did the group’s homepage display the standard “page inaccessible” notice which Facebook say should be present when a group is experiencing technical issues. Instead, any user trying to access the Facebook group was re-routed to their Facebook homepage, with no explanation proffered.

It is highly likely conspiracy theories will be rife on the web following the high profile outages – which have not tended to befall other popular groups – including many with the same aims as the RATM Christmas No.1 Group.

The group URL is: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2228594104

Jon Morter, the original founder of the group told The Global Herald:

“the group went down last night in which a member of facebook’s PR team contacted to say it was a “bug”

Later in the evening the group returned as normal, but now it’s gone yet again I do start to be concerned. If anything I have some media interviews coming up and it wouldn’t look particularly good for facebook if they have indeed pulled it. If not anything for the fact that it slows down rapidly our charity donations (£21,000 so far)

I’m awaiting a response once again from facebook and I’d hope it will be a swift one. In the interim, we’ve set up a ‘back up’ group and have already gained 81,000 members as a precaution. (http://bit.ly/thexfactor)”

Around twenty minutes after access to the group was restored, Sophy Silver of Facebook told The Global Herald “we hadn’t removed [the RATM group]… I would imagine this is a temporary issue due to a bug and [the RATM group] should be active again soon.”

There are several copycat Facebook groups and pages, with one Facebook Page on the subject climbing through 18,000 to over 22,000 ‘fans’ during the period of hours the original group was inaccessible. One alternative Facebook page was located at http://www.facebook.com/pages/RAGE-AGAINST-THE-MACHINE-FOR-CHRISTMAS-NO1/197877130755.

There is a backup Facebook Group set up by the original founders in case outages should continue for the rest of this week. It is located at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=37655682127. The Christmas Number One UK Chart being based on music purchased before midnight on Saturday 19th December 2009.

Irrespective of the outages, it must be recognised that there is a real possibility that Rage Against the Machine may well be this year’s UK Christmas Number One. Indeed, one punter has bet over £7,000 on Rage Against the Machine being either Christmas number one or number two to the X Factor winner Joe McElderry, and the current odds of 5-1 (William Hill) on RATM achieving the top spot look long considering the publicity that the “anti-X Factor” campaign has managed to gather to date.

The original creators of the Facebook Group, however, are keen to point out in the ‘info’ section of their page that they are not anti X Factor, and that their primary interest is helping to raise money for the homeless charity, Shelter, for whom they have set up a Just Giving page at the following address: http://www.justgiving.com/ratm4xmas/ at the time of writing, this appeal had raised in excess of £22,000 for the charity.

The very fact that the group has dropped out for several hours – on a website which can usually handle many millions of concurrent users – may well indicate that there is real interest in ousting the X Factor franchise from their strangle hold on the Christmas Number One slot.

Early indications from the online download websites are that this battle is much closer than originally expected, with many sites showing the RATM track as more popular than Joe McElderry’s ballad.

Only time will tell whether the Facebook generation is able to land it’s first Christmas Number One after last year’s narrow defeat.

Posted by Robin Scott on December 14, 2009. Filed under Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry

News Tags: Christmas Number 1, Entertainment, Rage Against the Machine, UK, X Factor.

About Robin Scott

Co-Founder of The Global Herald, Robin Scott has written for many publications. Prior to establishing a series of digital publications, Robin completed a Bachelor of Laws degree at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK.

Website: http://theglobalherald.com/

49 Responses to Facebook ‘Rage Against the Machine for Christmas Number 1′ Group Shut by ‘Bug’

art insurance Reply

October 1, 2010 at 7:02 am

THE GROUP IS STILL INACCESSABLE
oh dear Reply

December 20, 2009 at 9:15 pm

JOE mcelderry al the way that other syuff is crap emo music!
Chris Reply

December 17, 2009 at 1:16 pm

Either way Cowell’s going to make some money. I want Rage to be Xmas number 1 ‘The Climb’ is such a weak song. Article here worth reading and there’s a list of websites you can get the ‘Killing In The Name’ and prices. I think Amazon is the cheapest though.
Ash Reply

December 16, 2009 at 6:51 pm

PLEASE NOTE you need to buy from another service other than amazon! the track needs to be over 40p to count towards xmas number one John. Buy from itunes or 7digital or something.
- Editor Reply
  
  December 16, 2009 at 7:45 pm
  
  Please look at the following link: http://www.amazon.co.uk/tag/mp3/forum/ref=cm_cd_et_md_pl?_encoding=UTF8&tag=deal85-21&cdMsgNo=24&cdPage=1&cdSort=oldest&cdThread=Tx3U7MN4WDHUQUA&cdMsgID=Mx1V43X5O8FDTWD#Mx1V43X5O8FDTWD – the Amazon UK team clarifiy that all sales on their website do count towards the UK Singles Chart.
  
  It appears that Amazon are running a price promotion – which falls within the scope of acceptability for the download rules of the chart. We have spent a while going through this to date!
DeLaRochaFan Reply

December 16, 2009 at 6:25 pm

Typical, people act out against this yearly terrorism and get shut down.
I can guarantee the bosses at ITV had something to do with that.

It made me laugh what simon said about it on the radio… Thing is its not about him or the Xfactor really, its a wider focus they are just the name to the face at the moment.
The face of our biased music industry and the tripe that gets brought out that people are “supposed” to like.

Its about time a REAL band got some recognition in the mainstream over here, the majority of england is blind to music beyond whats put infront of them by the people making money.
And Simon Cowell’s comment that it’ll ruin that kids chances is rediculous, he appeared on a contest and won, he doesnt deserve any more than that, he got the quick fix to his desire to sing and he will pay the price in a year or so when we say Joe who? he doesnt need RATM’s help to fade away lol
Mat Reply

December 16, 2009 at 5:48 pm

Yep still no accessible, have to use the other links at the moment. SORT IT OUT FACEBOOK!!!
Zack Reply

December 16, 2009 at 5:22 pm

RATM for no1!
John Reply

December 16, 2009 at 4:56 pm

Come on people! 1,000,000 on the facebook group (I think, because I can’t see it right now) but only 170,000 have bought it! It’s 29p on amazon and pissing in Cowel’s cereal is worth at least double that! Let’s keep going!
Matty Reply

December 15, 2009 at 9:58 pm

Who cares just keep getting the word out! We have the support we need, just keep downloading. RATM are amazing!
bob Reply

December 15, 2009 at 8:50 pm

THE GROUP IS STILL INACCESSABLE
Peter Reply

December 15, 2009 at 8:29 pm

woooo rage for number 1!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Dannybuoy Reply

December 15, 2009 at 7:35 pm

Go RATM GO!
Editor Reply

December 15, 2009 at 7:25 pm

Please note this article was written yesterday – though it appears the event has repeated itself.