“It is absolutely clear that Raoul Moat was a callous murderer, full stop, end of story. I cannot understand any wave, however small, of public sympathy for this man. There should be sympathy for his victims and the havoc he wreaked in that community. There should be no sympathy for him.”

More interestingly, the British government also subsequently contacted Facebook and asked for the content to be removed. Facebook has declined to remove the comments. That’s right. A Prime Minister isn’t a community manager. Here’s why:

- A community manager doesn’t enforce a view. Disagreement is allowed in every online forum. Actually, it’s encouraged. More than that, dissent and plurality is the point. All comers are welcome. A community manager should encourage diverse views, not damn them. Unsavoury opinions are cool. There's something wrong when a community manager censors an opinion simply because he or she disagrees.

- A community manager doesn’t silence conversations. We marshal them. We sometimes moderate them but we always enable debate. But it’s usually the style and the words that we deal with, rather than the content. Threats of violence are right out. Swear words, in most communities, aren’t permissible. Freedom of speech is, generally, golden. Silence isn’t.

- A community manager isn’t a CEO. A Prime Minister is. He or she has more important things to do than meddle with the online discussions. A CEO should leave the moderation of an online community to people who are experienced. It’s hard for a CEO to see that sometimes, but they do need to learn.

- A community manager is accountable but not elected. They should seek approval by being good at what they do and not for currying favour by what they say.

Stephen Fry is a geek. The second man (after Douglas Adams) in Europe to own an Apple Mac, he's long enthused about technology (ever since I was a boy) and long websited, blogged, podcasted and more recently Twittered prolifically. This is a man who has nearly 100k followers on Twitter. That's love. That's credibility.

John Prescott is 70 and rightfully proud of his recent conversion to the internet. In the past few months he's taken to 'the Facebook' with enthusiasm and verve: he told us proudly that he was going to become a granddad one Sunday afternoon and shared his brilliant wife Pauline's birthday party pics only last week.

And in the past few days both have had their personal online credibility punctured by critics. Robert Scoble accused (and later retracted) Stephen Fry of emplying a social media agency to twitter on his behalf. The agency, we are social, rebutted the accusation forcefully. Scoble apologized.

Notable British Conservative blogger Iain Dale questioned, with typical civility, whether it was actually John Prescott himself blogging and Facebooking. Prezza, in his imitable style, put the record straight on YouTube. Dale took it all back.

As a follower of Fry on Twitter and one of Prezza's friends' on Facebook, I never doubted either. Fry was too personal and frequent to be false and Prescott too sent emails that were quite simply him. In short: they were both authentic. What a shame that it was ever doubted.

Fry employs an agency to help him (and with his following who can blame him) and makes all his tweets personally.* Prescott is open that he has expertise at his disposal, but that doesn't matter because evidently the words are his own. Both spoke with their own unfiltered, personal voices. And that's all that matters. It's a great example to everybody, everywhere: be yourself.

* Except last night when he told us he was handing the reins over to his webmaster Andrew while he was speaking at the Apple Store in London. I only add this footnote because if I don't, it will be pointed out.