From the article:<p>"Just this December, Facebook agreed to censor the page of Russia’s leading Putin critic, Alexei Navalny, at the request of Russian Internet regulators."<p>"Critics have previously accused the site of taking down pages tied to dissidents in Syria and China; the International Campaign for Tibet is currently circulating a petition against alleged Facebook censorship, which has been signed more than 20,000 times."<p>"“I’m committed to building a service where you can speak freely without fear of violence,” Zuckerberg said in his Hebdo statement."<p>The outlandishly egregious doublespeak of Zuck aside, Facebook is a data mining company devoted to making money from its users. The only terms on which it can be said to support free speech are the terms under which it is able to mine user data, then sell user data. In less polite terms, Facebook is a no-limits whore for anyone with cash, so we should expect to see exactly what we are seeing.<p>Here's a question: what are the conditions under which Facebook will censor the content in the US/European market? I guarantee you that it's coming, provided the right topics are being discussed and the right groups are interested in squashing discussion.
Blocking access to pages from countries where the court order was issued seems entirely reasonable to me. GitHub does the same[1].<p>The censorship here is the responsibility of the Turkish government, not Facebook. It's supposedly a democratic country so maybe even represents the will of the people living there.<p>And anyway, when social sites block "objectionable" pages on their own or under criticism, but with no involvement of the legal system, anyone who complains about censorship is quickly shut down with arguments that it's a private company under no obligation to protect free speech. Why expect them to defy sovereign states when they usually can't handle a little outrage on Twitter?<p>[1] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8703650" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8703650</a>
I still find the supposition that Facebook was supposed to defy a court order hilarious. Yes, I understand it's a court order from Turkey, not America, but you can't just flagrantly break the law in other countries simply because yours believes differently.<p>Or put another way: As much as Americans like to act like it, we can't enforce our ideals around the world without significant investment that I don't think anyone wants us making after the last couple of times.
I find France's own crackdown on non-protected free speech during and shortly after their legendary march for free speech to be much more ironic than a business obeying local law.
When a company blocks a page in the US due to a US court order: they're a respectable, law-abiding company.<p>When a company blocks a page in another country due to that country's court order: censorship! Where's the freedom of speech?!?!<p>I am an American, but: if my fellow Americans want to see censorship in play, take a look at the fight Al Jazeera had to get into cable networks (especially in the days after 9/11). And they had to start a subsidiary, Al Jazeera America, to get around some hurdles.
For HN discussion, see <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8951262" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8951262</a>
If you carry out the request of an oppressive government, you are as much a part of it as the people physically performing atrocities. Facebook should be ashamed of themselves.
I'm curious what the legal consequences to Facebook would have been for ignoring the order. Would the Turkish government have sufficient authority to make local ISPs block the site? Would Turkey fine Facebook?<p>Enforcing any penalty would be a problem. If Facebook has no assets in Turkey, Turkey would need to go after Facebook's assets elsewhere, perhaps in California. U.S. courts probably wouldn't enforce a judgement of a Turkish Court that was at odds with the First Amendment in the U.S. Constitution, though the cases on this are mixed.<p>It's also interesting to compare this "graven images takedown" system the U.S.' DMCA takedown system. Here you can post some pretty offensive things on the 'net, but god help you if you post a picture of Mickey Mouse!
It is silly to expect a company to not comply with local law. Do we expect Facebook to give up its business in the US if it decides tomorrow that it doesn't agree in principle with some aspect of American law?<p>If Facebook was censoring content in America to assuage Turkey, there would be a good reason to gripe about it. It is not doing that.
how fb gonna ban pictures that nobody could verify it is him? every person who use his name? or just picture with m* string on it?<p>this is absolutely crazy and very uncommon sense.<p>so the image is him because people claim it is him, but in reality the truth is, it is not him, just bunch of ... perceive it is him.
i quit facebook 12/31/2014. before doing so i explained to many of my friends and family why i was doing so. every single one of them, no exaggeration, agreed with my reasons, but said they couldn't because of (reason x, y, z). now that ello is patenting their ip i think it is especially important to begin thinking about ways to create <i>public protocols</i> for these type of <i>services</i>. what do you think it would require for most people to give up fb?
A quick mention of the first comment; true, we Americans can't expect to be able to break the law overseas and get away with it...but, as anybody who's spent time in a Muslim world, etc, or perhaps has a ton of family from that tradition - it's easier to see why Je Suis Charlie could give Facebook a headache.<p>I can't sue a journalist overseas for slander that occured about three years ago and still exists; for the most part, I only recall it as an example of how the "international justice," issue cuts both ways. We have the United Nations for a good reason and in both Costa Rica and another country, some of my best friends worked there.<p>If another country, not the USA, wishes to use an invention of my people (the internet) to crap on me, well, they should also either suffer the consequences of American justice...OR, even better, we should all realize that <i>living</i> in one place doesn't and should never subject one to <i>another</i> place's definition of right and wrong.