What about the US military's FB page? Didn't they cause thousands of innocent deaths in Iraq? I'm sure some Americans can somehow justify it, but I doubt the grieving Iraqi's will accept it.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mukaradeeb_wedding_party_massacre" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mukaradeeb_wedding_party_massa...</a>
The outrage people have about censorship wouldn't be that big if those companies simply stated "we censor opinions we don't like, and we censor for political reasons" in their terms of service. Instead they create the outrage by having vague rules about what is allowed and not allowed on the platform and then, on top of that, start enforcing those rules selectively.
The argument regarding private platform freedom of speech/censorship isn't relevant for Facebook, where documented examples of the state/governments working with Facebook to censor opinions and restrict speech exist. The line between state/private is blurred at best, and disappearing.
A side-effect of actions like this is it makes it much easier for governments themselves to justify censorship or internet restrictions.<p>See, e.g., this interview by Der Spiegel w/ the president of Uganda:<p>> DER SPIEGEL: Observers complain that they have been denied access to social media.<p>> Museveni: If you're talking about the all-powerful rulers of Facebook, I can tell you it was the other way around. Facebook blocked my party's accounts. Is that freedom of expression? If the people at Facebook think they're silencing me, they're wrong.<p>> DER SPIEGEL: It wasn't just about Facebook. The entire internet was blocked in Uganda for days.<p>> Museveni: That was done for security reasons. The internet was misused to stir up trouble. The opposition spread misinformation about the election results. The block has long since been lifted.<p><a href="https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/interview-with-ugandan-president-museveni-the-europeans-suffer-from-arrogance-a-3fd99df3-10f4-4ff4-aa5f-d5b0c68395e4" rel="nofollow">https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/interview-with-ug...</a>
For all the people oblivious to why Facebook did this:<p>Because Myanmar people lobbied for it, and because the Myanmar military is terrorizing its own people, then lying about it.<p>The military is shooting its own people, kidnapping them in the middle of the night, and torturing them.<p>Over 10 protestors dead and 50+ injured, as they are using live rounds on protestors. Over 500+ disappeared or kidnapped. Protestors killed include two teenagers shot in the head, one of them a medic. They also shot at ambulance. They’ve threatened to kill doctors, and kidnapped many of them. Stole the covid vaccination after beating doctors trying to stop them.<p>Last night they shot a neighborhood watchman in my neighborhood (we have neighborhood watch to try and prevent late night kidnapping/disappearing by military).<p>We lobbied hard to get Facebook to take down this page and others where the Tatmadaw are attempting to cover up the truth.
So what happens if you are an FB grunt sitting in Myanmar?<p>Do they have people there?<p>Does that local manager have experience dealing with tanks driving into the parking lot?
I try to understand how this decision came to be and I have no idea? A standardised set of rules would surely lead to many many more pages being taking down. And why now and not last week?
Facebook takes down main page of Myanmar Military.
Myanmar Military takes down main service of Facebook (eventually, if they didn't already do.)<p>The question here is: would (some) misinformation be worth it to avoid total blackout. And I mean this places other than North America and Western Europe.<p>In huge swathes of the world, internet and facebook are interchangeable. And where democratic values are strong enough, any government can take down the main channel of (free, non-governmental sanctioned) information for a whole country.
It really does seem that this time, it wasn’t the United States that was responsible for the coup. If we were responsible you would see a lot of high level politicians on both sides saying that they were pleased that the people of Myanmar had overthrown a terrible despot (we do this even when, and especially when, the previous “despot” was democratically elected). And then you would see previously unavailable resources being opened up to the west. But this is not what is happening here; it looks to be just a power play by Myanmar’s military leadership.<p>Interestingly, Costa Rica went as far as to disband their entire army because in a poor and unstable state, having any military can actually be a big liability in terms of having frequent coups.
Well, here goes another thread about free speech vs. ethical discourse, where atleast one side uncompromisingly refuses to put themselves in the shoes of the other.<p>Just to fast-forward this thread a bit for everyone:<p>- Free speech doesn't exist on some for-profit company's platform. Communities should be moderated on some ethical standard for the benefit of peace<p>- Free speech trumps ethics and peace -- without free speech, we have neither
I doubt this exonerates Mark Zuckerberg.<p>It's a man who proposed Xi Jinping to name his firstborn.<p>Him attacking some minor military junta is barely symbolic.
turn the tables to consider actual reality: if a country like the US would be at the receiving end of meddling and influence by a Myanmar social media business at the scale of facebook, then any key-employee of the company would have been declared a terrorist, taken to black sites or murdered by drones. That's about the level of hypocrisy that we deal with when discussing Facebook's actions in Myanmar over the past years.<p>It's horrible injustice Americans not only get away with war crimes and aren't held accountable by the IIC, but also technocrats and buerocrats working for these public companies are able to do so with impunity.
Facebook should really come down from their high horses and let legal entities decide of stuff like this. They're a utility. (not saying that in a bad way, becoming a utility is the ultimate startup achievement)
It's interesting, Aung San Suu Kyi (with a freedom nobel-price) is/was responsible for the expulsion, killing and raping of rohingya's. But when the military takes over that's a big nono.<p>BTW: Hitler was also democratically elected, wouldn't have been the worst thing if the Wehrmacht made a coup then, like for example "operation valkyrie".
I'm in favor of Facebook taking down absolutely any page, whether it agrees with my political views or not. Why? Because Facebook's power comes from network effects. The more people, across the political spectrum, find their interests to be blocked on Facebook, the less people will find value in Facebook in general. Over time, this means Facebook is committing suicide. This is the best possible outcome for humanity.<p>Die Facebook, die.