Un-Facebooked
I have no trouble believing this of Facebook; that said, I find it frustrating that he could very easily be seriously misrepresenting what triggered this block, and still be "honest" about this report. More direct quotes from his posting history would help a lot.
Note that Facebook isn't saying they blocked him for that most recent post; more likely that something in that comment triggered a human review of his history, and that review concluded that he should be blocked.
Now he's asking us to evaluate that review (ok, good) and consider the repercussions of Facebook's overagressive filtering on free speech (sure) but this is very hard with only a 2-line summary of what he posts about in his account, and no direct quotes.
I do think this is a likely a completely legit complaint; but it's still very open to the risk that his style of posting was much more noxious than he represents.
(Alt: maybe if he posts too much detail, then the conversation veers into discussing those details rather than the free speech issue, which is more important than his single case).
I find it very disturbing to see these allegations of censorship directed at large tech companies like Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and even Google.
I thought that the Internet was the greatest empowerment of free speech in history. Now that so much communication happens through private services, it seems like free speech is effectively being damped.
Can you imagine decades ago, the phone company revoking your phone number because they didn't like what you said to your friends over their wires?
Do not use FB for work or anything important or serious. Have a blog, host it yourself and own the domain directly.
You cannot judge if Facebook acted in contradiction of their own terms (https://www.facebook.com/terms) when Jonathan Spyers original facebook post is not available for review. As a moderator of an interreligious group I made rules myself and often I get the accusation of unfair censorship. Some censorship can be just and some censorship rules do not inhibit free speech (for example using bad language).
Now we know Facebook is a supporter of progressive left fairytales and similarly aggressive about it as its supporters. Try to debate anything and you'll provoke serious emotional response, get shutdown and called a "Nazi" as a bonus. But otherwise they're "enlightened" and full of words about freedom of speech and personal rights.
So as Facebook never fails to boast about their important platform for human expression, they do the same.
Hypocrites.
OK, so since this discussion have been going on for some time, let's skip some steps. We all know "private company" argument, right? I did it before as well.
But market forces only work well when there's a lot of competitors. Facebook, on the other hand, is very close to being a monopoly — and just like relativistic speeds break classic mechanics, just like that the monopoly status breaks the classic market forces. And they should decrease the amount of freedom the company enjoys as well.
Of course, there's a question about how we define "monopoly": there's a lot of counter-arguments to this, and a lot of them perfectly valid. There's Twitter, there's self-hosting, there's all these forums around the internet... But at the same time, isn't it strange that "monopoly" as we understand it is a binary category? I think it's reasonable to think about it as a continuum; and Facebook today would certainly be very far on that axis.
Every time I meet a new acquaintance, we add each other on Facebook. If I tell them about my music project, they search for it on Facebook to like it. If I go to a party, I search for the Facebook event, and so on. After disabling my Facebook account for half a year, it became painfully evident that I wouldn't be able to keep in touch with a lot of family and friends without it. Of course, it's their voluntary choice — but at the same time, depriving a person from access to this website could seriously decrease his quality of life. It's not just commercial product that you can choose to use or not anymore; thanks to the network effect, it's a necessity.
And a commercial entity that becomes so essential to everyday life should not enjoy the same freedom in wielding the ban hammer as "some website on the internet".
Playing devil's advocate: If I go on his Facebook page, what will I find? The usual "we are surrounded by terrorists they let in, etc." pediga-style litany or some well researched papers from a "middle east analyst" ?
Maybe this type of FB behavior will finally kill that awful web site.
Sites like this have become a 'punitive tease' -- it's hard to know when the rug will be pulled out from under you, yet you're lured into using it because "all my friends are on it."
There really is a need for a neutral Twitter, a neutral FB. It won't happen though due to entrenched network effects.
I suspect the only way FB and Twitter could be killed off is if they:
1) listed all the banned users and the reason each was banned
2) disclose the current "reasons to ban" list
3) and freely admit that banning is a subjective choice for these websites, that the "reasons to ban" list is not fixed.
It's only anecdotally we hear about someone being banned, we have no idea the numbers of users, the scope, involved.
If you were invited to a dinner party but were given a list of reasons why you'd be asked to leave ('talked down about person X', etc.) and also told "our list of reasons to kick a person out of our dinner party is evolving and is subject to change without notice" -- hey no one's putting up with a manipulative, baiting host like that, no one's going to that party.
FB and Twitter, were they to be transparent about the scope of their banning, their DAU would crash.
A central point of the post:
> The last posting which I made on my profile related to recent events in Europe.
> I wrote that I considered the wave of terror attacks in Germany and France to indicate that a ‘low level Islamist insurgency’ was now taking place in those countries.
> A few hours after placing this posting, my account was ‘disabled.’
It is sad that the promise of a media that facilitates worldwide free exchange of thought and speech was voluntarily dismantled.
Instead it was transformed in another unidirectional media tightly controlled by corporations.
It happened because:
- the content creators traded freedom for convenience
- the audience preferred centralization to the web of hyperlinks
There is still time, unlike radio and television there is still no legislation or regulation preventing people from hosting, creating and broadcasting their own content.
It may be hard and ir may be almost too late but is reversible.
No company will ever live up to the ideals of freedom of speech, assembly or otherwise. Companies have a goal, and it is to advance the objective of their owners.
Anything they may do that give people the impression that they are fair and good is just an artifact, a momentarily alignment between whatever gives that impression and their short term interests.
> and perhaps also a general support for the Kurdish-led, western-backed forces fighting the Sunni jihadis of the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.
Facebook have been removing some, but not all, content from the Lions of Rojava, the YPG and the YPJ.
It's inconsistent what gets left up and what gets taken down.
https://www.facebook.com/Lions-Of-Rojava-1702231736666880/
At a guess anything that says "come and join us, and this is how to get past border control" gets taken down.
I am sitting here and thinking. What will world look like when traditional media (newspapers) are gone forever (extinct), and our communication lies in hands of few people (like owners of social media platforms and other media outlets). How will the bitter truth which may not be very rosy for such companies be able to reach such a massive population reach, when they control how the information flow.
I see a dark future.
Facebook is a private corporation expecting to get rights from it such as free speech is idiotic. You want free speech host your own blog on your own server.
>>I wrote that I considered the wave of terror attacks in Germany and France to indicate that a ‘low level Islamist insurgency’ was now taking place in those countries. A few hours after placing this posting, my account was ‘disabled.’
This is very scary for the freedom lovers, humanists and liberals. Mainstream media already practices self-censorship when it comes to discuss the topics related to the vicious ideology of Islam as described in mainstream Islamic scriptures Quran and Hadiths. The social media also following similar practices. It's sad how Facebook is behaving here.
The liberals/critical thinkers have attacked earlier and do attack now also various bad and evil aspects in other religions (Christianity/Judaism/Hinduism) and our free society never suppresses their thoughts. Islam should not be an exception and hence Islam should not be given special treatment. Else we may have to lose the hard earned values that we cherish so much.
I guess, some Islam apologists (whether bought and paid for or not) are hunting down any thoughtful and legitimate criticism of Islam, its prophet Muhammad. They are using various types of pressure tactics for this. For example, labeling any criticism of Islam as racist attacks on Muslims or Islamophobia. Who knows Facebook may have been threatened with some financial consequences by fanatical Islamists (e.g. some Saudis) with deep pockets.
The freedom lovers, liberals and humanists must understand this threat posed by the vicious ideology of mainstream Islam. These views by Bill Maher and Sam Harris may help understand this point in a better way. [1], [2], [3]
The USA and the west now must also invest similar (if not more) efforts and resources to fight this vicious ideology as those that they invested to fight another vicious ideology called communism. We must realize that this is an ideological war and must be fought on the ideological war-front. This can and must be done by supporting liberal minded humanists (like, Bill Maher, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins) who are exposing the viciousness of the ideology of Islam and upholding the modern humanist values like freedom of expression and separation of 'mosque and state'.
It should however be noted that there are many people who have been Muslims just by birth and they do not necessarily follow the vicious ideology to its core.
So the fight must be against Islam and not against all Muslims, per se.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8E1u9lQeAsY
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/sep/30/angela-merke...
Seems like this is what they were talking about. Of course reporting violence gets equated with committing violence, but that's how governments work.
Preventing violence is hard. So they don't. Especially not when preventing violence might gasp limit how easily big companies can abuse immigrant labour. We can't have that. Preventing people from finding out about the violence, however, that's much easier.