McCarthy's desire to keep networking open connected her with people like Mehdi Rifai. A journalist based in Syria, Rifai found McCarthy through her . Rifai considers himself a Syrian Canadian, and for him, the cause immediately hit home.

"The only place that I have remained myself has been the Internet," Rifai says, noting that he's felt like a "second-class citizen" in the offline world for years now.

"The emergence and popularization of blogs allowed my opinions to be shared, and the further development of the social web ... took that freedom further," he says. "That I am now being told that, since a portion of my identity is objectionable to the U.S., my freedom is to be taken away from me -- [that] is very hard to hear."

Rifai is far from alone in his concern. Dozens of other Facebook users from around the globe have joined McCarthy's fight. There's Anwar Dafa-Alla, a computer engineer working toward his Ph.D. in Sudan; Sahar Tag, an architect in an embargoed country; and Hatim Al Nouwery, who relies on Facebook to keep in touch with family throughout embargoed nations. And that's just the start.