Two big judgments out of the United Kingdom that, in all likelihood, won’t affect us Americans one bit. But since we’ve all been on the Facebook and engaged in a Nazi orgy once or twice, they’re worth schooling you on so you don’t run into the same fate as a pair of gentlemen who had to sue to restore their good names. (Well, one of the guys who sued probably only soiled his name more.)

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Though it is unlikely to surpass Scrabulous in membership, John McCain’s new Facebook video game Pork Invaders which turns the Republican candidate’s campaign against pork barrel spending into a lunch-hour escape for would-be Internet predators. This is proof that Mr. McCain, like Barack Obama, gets Web 2.0, hurrah! [Joystiq]

A new feature on Facebook lets viewers rate the ads they see up or down, which will supposedly tell the social networking site which type of ads they’re more amenable to. (Of course, you could vote down all the ads, which would be fair, because they’re all pretty terrible.) Except the feature is only available to a select few in Facebook’s test group, so it’s likely most of you will have to suffer through a News Feed crammed with Blockbuster pitches with no recourse. [VB]

When somebody attaches the name of a social networking website and the word “suicide,” we think of that tragedy in Missouri where 13-year-old Megan killed herself after a being taunted on MySpace. For the irreverent magazine AdBusters, “Facebook Suicide” is something else entirely. Based on the site’s maniacal policy about removing one’s profile, AdBusters has spotted a trend where users, desperate to leave the site but unable to easily do so, are killing themselves.

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“More 80,000 people signed up as a Sex and the City fan on Facebook as of early Sunday, many writing enthusiastic reviews.” [Clickz] By comparison, the “For every 100 people who join this group, I will donate a child to NAMBLA” group has 1,426 members. And “Jihad against Sex and the city” has but 9 members.

A new Facebook look is coming! Tweaks and updates and all sorts of minor, barely worth mentioning goodies that will debut sometime in the near, soon-to-arrive, imminent and sure-to-come future. [Facebook]

In an effort to placate parents who watch Dateline: To Catch a Predator and privacy advocates whose No. 1 goal in life is to make the Internet safe for kids to upload photos of their puppies, Facebook is implementing new privacy safeguards for minors.

None of which can’t be completely fudged, of course.

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STATUS CHANGE Time.com Washington editor Ana Marie Cox leaked that she was leaving her post, to become a “contractor” for the magazine, by updating her Facebook status. “It’s a change in status, not a change in affiliation,” says a Time spokesperson, but Facebook doesn’t know the difference. [Calderone]

Facebook will introduce new privacy controls today, allowing its 67 million users decide which groups of friends get to see last night’s photos of you doing keg stands: Your parents, your boss, or your college buddies. [Reuters]

Here’s a video clip of a SXSW interview with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, hosted by Business Week tech columnist Sarah Lacy … that’s been panned by every geek with a Tumblr account.

Audience members, it appears, did not appreciate Lacy’s interjections with her own anecdotes, her inability to form a question, and her general fawning over her interview subject.

After the interview, which drew outbursts from the audience, Lacy explained what the hell went down. Hint: She blames attendees for causing such a commotion that SXSW will never get high-profile guests again!

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Bill Gates has been knocked off the top of Forbes‘ billionaires list after a 13-year run. In his place? Warren Buffett. (Mexican telecom mogul Carlos Slim Helú is No. 2.) For what it’s worth, Mark Zuckerberg, who founded Facebook, the social network that Gates recently removed his profile from, is No. 785.

Have you heard? Social media isn’t a fad! In a study sponsored by Nielsen-killing-hopeful TNS, more than 50 percent of “senior marketing executives agree that the use of social media for corporate, brand and product marketing” is here to stay because it’s tres important. “Poking” friends is productive! Which is all well and good, but before you begin dumping a few million dollars (or several hundred, in the case of Microsoft and Facebook), just 18 percent of those surveyed thought social media would increase brand loyalty. So heads up to Sprint, where some 638,000 customers are defecting: Don’t bother with Facebook ads. [MP]

Facebook isn’t exactly making money hand over first. Sure, they’ve got $240 million from Microsoft (creating a $15 billion valuation), but even the search giant can’t figure out how to monetize its tens of millions of active members. Ad campaigns on the site notoriously perform poorly, so it’s a bit shocking that Facebook would find itself forced to turn away ad dollars that it so desperately courts. But that’s what they’ve done with a campaign from Universal’s upcoming movie Untraceable.

Like MySpace, Facebook allows advertisers to create profiles to promote their goods. But the Untraceable campaign turned out to be as gruesome as it was innovative, proving too much for Facebook’s standards and practices department.

Perhaps that’s because the movie – about a serial killer who creates an untraceable site where he live broadcasts his murders – skewed a little too close to the Facebook ad, which unveiled more of the film’s torture scenes as more people visited the profile?

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