Facebook and Seesmic have banned a promotion for the international rollout of the Diane Lane film Untraceable. The movie basically bombed when it was dumped here in late January, but because people on the internet love nothing better than making fun of mainstream cultural stuff that pretends to understand the internet, it garnered a bit of snarky blog attention for its ridiculous premise alone. Lane stars as some kind of FBI cyberterrorism analyst who is charged with stopping the mastermind behind KillWithMe.com, who pledges to murder captive victims when the site reaches a quota of page views. Totally misguided attempt to plumb the new web culture as dressing for the same old thriller, and thus a sure sign that Web 2.0 is dead? Or a genius satire of the internet publishing industry? Nobody cared either way, I guess––the film has so far failed to make back its production budget domestically.

Which means its international box office is key. Which explains why Universal, desperate to make some noise, would hire a firm to essentially replicate KillWithMe.com on social networks.

The Facebook page featured an explicit torture scene from the movie; as more users became Fans of the page, a larger portion of the scene would become viewable. Facebook pulled the promo before the full scene became viewable, on the grounds that it fell under the rubric of “pages that are hateful, threatening, or obscene.” On Seesmic, the Untraceable squad created an apparently normal user who seemingly had no connection to the film. At some point, that user appeared on the site “seemingly having been abducted and now being tortured.” Seesmic thought the torture was real––or, at the very least, a real stunt, not connected to a film promotion––and kicked the user out of the community.

In the Variety story about all of this, the head of the publicity company responsible for the campaigns vamped like he didn’t see this coming. “I am surprised and disappointed that Facebook has taken this action. These sorts of social media campaigns are the only way to be competitive at the moment…The key is to get people interested and talking about your movie.”

As if  there would have been a Variety story if the promos *hadn’t* been pulled. What’s more of a conversation starter: the 17th million Facebook app? Or the single thing deemed too dangerous for a virtual nation Scrabulous addicts who spend their free time meticulously grooming their Virtual Bookshelves**? The only way to be competitive on social networks is to do something that gets the mainstream media to care about social networks, and if you can acquire some “too scary for the internet!” cred at the same time, that’s just a double win.

**Yes, I’m talking about myself.