I’m an ob-gyn. When I used a surgically removed uterus as my profile pic, Facebook banned me. It’s an organ, not porn. Is Facebook in the wrong?

Let me guess: You were a color-inside-the-lines kind of kid. And that’s why you’re so discombobulated, because you don’t see where Facebook’s rules explicitly forbid images of uteruses. Granted, Facebook’s community standards make no specific mention of organ shots. But the guidelines are written broadly enough to give the service latitude to exclude anything it deems icky. The section on violent imagery, for example, states that Facebook has the right to remove “any inappropriately graphic content.” And what is the definition here of inappropriately graphic? That’s entirely up to Facebook, which wields Judge Dredd-like powers over its digital realm.

Having seen the photo in question, Mr. Know-It-All is going to side with Facebook on this one. Suffice it to say the picture is graphic enough that Wired would lose many a queasy subscriber if it appeared in these hallowed pages. Perhaps that’s a sad comment on America’s inability to handle medical imagery. But PG-rated Facebook probably isn’t the right forum in which to challenge our nation’s distaste for surgical photos. That’s really more for your personal blog. Or maybe Myspace.

An online store just notified me that my personal info was stolen by a hacker. Don’t they owe me a bit more than an apology—like maybe some cash?

Not to be overly cynical, but if it weren’t for data-breach notification laws, you wouldn’t have learned of this hack until someone in Belarus tried to buy an $8,000 stereo with your Amex. Forty-six states compel companies to tell consumers when their private info has been swiped. But none of them require financial compensation.

That doesn’t seem too in line with the Golden Rule, though, does it? If you accidentally break a dish in a shop, you’re expected to pay for it; why shouldn’t corporate America do likewise when its porous security causes you to spend precious hours canceling credit cards and changing passwords?

“I think it’s certainly within the customer’s right to ask for compensation,” says John Breyault, director of the National Consumer League’s Fraud Center. But it’s best to approach the store with a well-reasoned argument instead of shrill demands. Give it a precise tabulation of how much the hack cost you. Lost a few hours of work because you were busy canceling accounts? Missed a nonrefundable appointment while on interminable hold with your HMO? Add it all up.

If your pleas fall on deaf ears, then take to the tubes: Breyault recommends tweeting about the store’s hard-heartedness. No guarantees it will work, but at least your followers will know that the store is a place where the customer is a lightly regarded vassal rather than a king.

My Twitter profile includes the stock disclaimer that my tweets reflect my own views, not those of my employer. But is that really enough to keep my company out of legal trouble if I tweet something libelous while at the office?

Those disclaimers are to Twitter what the appendix is to the human body—near-useless relics that mostly just take up space. Back when email was a novelty, government employees often appended similar language to their personal notes so no one could mistake their words for Uncle Sam’s official line. You know, so if a viral Boris Yeltsin joke traced back to a diplomat, the State Department could credibly claim that its employee had gone rogue.

In crafting their social-media policies, many nervous companies decided to insist on similar disclaimers, even though the default assumption these days is that individual Twitter accounts are private playthings. (No one thinks @SHAQ speaks for @NBA, right?) But while the disclaimers have an intimidating whiff of legalese about them, they’re highly unlikely to do much good in court. “It’s certainly a piece of evidence that the company could use in its defense,” says Jane Kirtley, director of the Silha Center for the Study of Media Ethics and Law at the University of Minnesota. “But it’s not sufficient in itself to limit liability.”

Keep in mind that the disclaimer’s lack of legal heft cuts both ways: If you tweet something your bosses truly loathe, the disclaimer can’t prevent them from giving you the boot. And it doesn’t matter whether your offensive (but no doubt hilarious) tweet is made during office hours or right after a 2 am tequila binge—in the Twitter era, you’re always on the clock.

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