Summary: Facebook account required for bicycle theft victims to see whether their bike was recovered by Brussels police
A bicycle was stolen in Brussels (one among many). The Brussels police shortly thereafter recovered 74 stolen bikes. Instead of announcing this on their official openly public website, the announcement was jailed in the exclusive private walled-garden of Facebook, where non-members are denied viewing access and where opening an account just to view the post is preconditioned on obtaining a mobile phone and then trusting Facebook with that number.
"Does a bicycle theft victim in Brussels have to compromise their ethics, dance for Facebook and attempt to solve the Google CAPTCHA just to see if their property was recovered?"But what if the serial number had been removed? This is where everything falls apart. In some cases, it's simply a sticker. Descriptions and/or pics of recovered bikes are only accessible in the city the bike was recovered in. So if someone steals a bike in Brussels and they go to Antwerp, and the they get raided in Antwerp, Brussels police have no access to the inventory of recovered bikes in Antwerp.
The Brussels front desk officer had no idea about the 74 recovered bikes, and suggested the recovery must have been in a city other than Brussels. Yet we know the article said the recovery was in Brussels, but non-Facebook members are blocked from even viewing the Facebook page.
Does a bicycle theft victim in Brussels have to compromise their ethics, dance for Facebook and attempt to solve the Google CAPTCHA just to see if their property was recovered?
This story was censored
This story was originally posted in Reddit but was censored by “Octave”, the moderator of r/Brussels. ⬆