Facebook deletes Norway PM's post as 'napalm girl' row escalates

This is what you get out from centralizing your communications medium. Sure, we all can easily talk to each other but now you have to assume the host will find something you do or say a liability thus remove it as quickly as you post it. To say that Facebook shouldn't do this comes into conflict in protecting share holder value (which means also avoiding illegal content per local laws). So, you can't have it both ways. Either you have a corporate defend it's share holder value or you have it all nationalized and get NPR. I just wish people would realize that corporations aren't our friends, they're here to make a profit. And profit isn't always what's ethical. I think the better solution to the problem as it stands is to force people to start hosting their own content (which is why I support net neutrality and anti-metering laws). That way, you're in charge of your content and responsible for getting people to view it. We shouldn't have to return to the days of AOL (which we have largely done) to get eye balls. People still go to websites, so why depend on Facebook to distribute your content?

I&#x27;m torn.<p>Freedom of speech and freedom of expression mean that the government can&#x27;t put you in prison or punish you for saying or believing what you do. Facebook aren&#x27;t the government, they&#x27;re a private entity and don&#x27;t have to host anything they don&#x27;t like- including hosting photos that they don&#x27;t like. It&#x27;s a walled garden, and it&#x27;s their walled garden, and if you don&#x27;t like it you&#x27;re welcome to leave.<p>And on the other hand: it&#x27;s the only garden. If your friends are in that garden, they can&#x27;t share with you, interact with you, etc, without you also being inside. Facebook&#x27;s created a &#x27;with us or not with us&#x27; distinction that has a very sharp boundary. And it&#x27;s worked- they&#x27;ve won the social network wars. A billion people are on it.<p>The question is, as the social network champions does Facebook have to have to public&#x27;s interests in mind or just their own bottom line profit margin? As a public company, the shareholders will fire their leadership if they don&#x27;t choose the bottom line. As the major social network of the world, the public will denounce them for actions like this.

If you&#x27;re a Facebook user and you are unhappy with the way the company strongarms, censors and manipulates its audience, the most effective way for you to express this dissatisfaction is to close your account, block social media bugs and encourage your friends and family to do the same.<p>Facebook doesn&#x27;t care how you feel when you use their service; their bottom line simply depends on your contribution to the statistics they use to sell ads. Apathy, or even outrage, are perfectly acceptable provided you express it through channels they control and profit from.<p>As far as I&#x27;m concerned, as long as this conversation is couched in trying to appeal to Mark Zuckerberg&#x27;s imagined sense of ethical responsibility it will lead nowhere.

Any centralized social network is subject to moderation because if it&#x27;s centralized, it can be attacked, fined or shut down by a court. So facebook can&#x27;t escape that rule and must decide what is acceptable or not and have to anticipate any flak they can get.<p>In the end, moderation is a gruesome job and nobody really wants to do it, and it will be subject to how moderators anticipate public perception, so it&#x27;s a PR race.<p>So of course you will have those situations where facebook will make bad choices, but it doesn&#x27;t only depends on their moderation team, it also depends on political correctness. That&#x27;s why decentralized networks are better, because nobody is really responsible, and it can hardly be attacked.<p>You can decide to either have a politically correct website and get investments, or disagree with political correctness and be like 4chan.<p>It&#x27;s not great, I&#x27;m sure people realize that, and that the internet will go back to decentralized systems.

Was the Norwegian Prime Minister&#x27;s post removed because she posted the image again in that post ? This is a crucial question and not clear from the article. If Facebook censored only words then this is a much larger issue. If they censored the whole post (including photo) then while debatable this is Facebook&#x27;s policy i.e. a blanket ban on such imagery, irrespective of history.<p>Edit: I don&#x27;t find it clear journalism, but the fact is there:<p><i>Solberg was one of a string of Norwegian politicians who shared the iconic image after Facebook deleted a post from Tom Egeland</i><p>So the post was removed because it had the image, not because she had dared to criticize FB.

This iconic picture was not only a Pulitzer Prize winner, but was also on the cover of the New York Times. Surely this will help the anonymous &quot;Facebook spokeswoman&quot; determine on which side it lies of the thin red line of &quot;censor&quot; &#x2F; &quot;do not censor&quot;?

Why doesn&#x27;t fb just blur the content that users find disturbing like &quot;Viewer discretion.., flagged by our users&quot;. Then you can click to view or adjust the sensitivity in your account settings.

At Google certain images are considered EDSA (Educational, Documentary, Scientific or Artistic). I wonder if this would have been considered EDSA vs Facebook&#x27;s decision to say it&#x27;s against ToS.<p>That said, it totally makes sense that they have a consistent policy. Whether you find their overall abuse ToS objectionable should be the main consideration here. It&#x27;s OK to me that they seem to have decided that imagery containing nude children should be hard-banned. It&#x27;s a decision couched in the desire to protect children, not some heavy-handed censorship.

I think censoring the PM&#x27;s complaint is a bad move by Facebook. Regarding censorship of the photo, I think it should be left to Norwegians to decide whether it&#x27;s appropriate or not - I think different people might have different views on this.

I feel like this is a good argument for taking another look at projects like Diaspora and Friendica Red

The article makes a reference about an open letter from the editor-in-chief - Espen Egil Hansen, the link return an internal error, you can read the open letter in the web.archive website <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20160909061907&#x2F;http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.aftenposten.no&#x2F;meninger&#x2F;kommentar&#x2F;Dear-Mark-I-am-writing-this-to-inform-you-that-I-shall-not-comply-with-your-requirement-to-remove-this-picture-604156b.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20160909061907&#x2F;http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.aftenp...</a>

I suspect a large part of this isn&#x27;t so much an attempt by facebook to impose US cultural norms to the rest of the world, as much as an attempt to avoid financial burden by simply applying the ban stick as bluntly as possible. After all, being multicultural, providing good editing suitable for several countries acceptable norms, while trying to advance&#x2F;modify them... Well that might be viewed as admirable work or cultural imperialism. The point is it&#x27;s not work that they want to do, nor do I think is it work that they feel they can get paid for.

It is kind of scary to see how countries are powerless when it comes to Facebook. I know that this article and the whole discussion here is not about that but I get a eery feeling reading about it.

If you want something from FB: its reach, you need to play by its rules, however arbitrary they may be. If you wish to change the laws of physics, go and get yourself your own planet. It is much easier in this case: just choose a different forum.<p>Having said that, this incident should teach Norwegians (and the countrymen of any country) a thing or two about where they stand on the totem pole of power.<p>Facebook &gt; Every other country on the planet<p>Facebook is a country because it is acts as an independent sovereign state which is not answerable to anyone at this point. Apparently, it already makes up its own taxation laws[1]. I expect them to release their own flag, maybe a national anthem?<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.forbes.com&#x2F;sites&#x2F;kellyphillipserb&#x2F;2016&#x2F;07&#x2F;29&#x2F;facebook-ignores-another-irs-summons-reveals-it-could-owe-billions-in-taxes&#x2F;#71ea3ae30bfc" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.forbes.com&#x2F;sites&#x2F;kellyphillipserb&#x2F;2016&#x2F;07&#x2F;29&#x2F;face...</a><p>But of the many truly troubling things I see with FB&#x27;s policies - their alarming intrusiveness and ruthless exploitation of our need for being social, choosing its own censorship policy is not one of them, especially if it is consistent. I would rather see them made answerable to privacy violations.

Maybe the censorship team was too young know the significance of the picture. I am guessing average Facebook employee is under 30. Probably younger than that. Vietnam war is over 40 years old, most American students learned about it and knew that picture, but I don&#x27;t know how much Vietnam war is taught in other countries. It might have been a combination of age and where the person grew up that contributed to deleting the picture?

I always find it interesting that no level of violence is deemed inappropriate in the US but nudity has to be avoided at any cost.

Let&#x27;s create a walled garden that embraces facebook&#x27;s walled garden. A new social network that displays your facebook timeline and other items.<p>BTW. I&#x27;m Norwegian.

Facebook has reversed its stance and is reinstating posts featuring 1972&#x27;s &quot;The Terror of War&quot; picture, according to<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theverge.com&#x2F;2016&#x2F;9&#x2F;9&#x2F;12865670&#x2F;facebook-censorship-napalm-girl-aftenposten-reversal" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theverge.com&#x2F;2016&#x2F;9&#x2F;9&#x2F;12865670&#x2F;facebook-censorshi...</a><p>&quot;Because of its status as an iconic image of historical importance, the value of permitting sharing outweighs the value of protecting the community by removal, so we have decided to reinstate the image on Facebook where we are aware it has been removed&quot;

That moment when government officials start realising their biggest publishers are American companies.

This is a place where I do not agree with Facebook&#x27;s decision but I agree they have a right to decide who and what can be on their platform. Freedom of speech does not give me the right to come into your home and say whatever I like without being asked to leave. I&#x27;m free to do so in the public park across the street though. Your property rights trump my free speech.

It&#x27;s particularly troubling because facebook is primarily about communicating with your own friends and acquaintances. Censoring public content is troubling, but removing content that is private and only available to people who took the step to friend you on Facebook is really really crappy.

Facebook is very arbitrary in its censoring and account deactivation decisions. Many cases I have read about are instances where Facebook is in the wrong and does not provide users a way to get things resolved (perhaps these instances surface online more often or more prominently).<p>Every time I read about Facebook&#x27;s decisions, I feel extremely frustrated and downright angry. Humans need an alternative to Facebook that&#x27;s not as evil and can get better traction (no, this does not mean everyone closing their FB accounts and switching to email or text messaging). I&#x27;m waiting for that to happen.

Posters may find it informative to review Tom Egeland&#x27;s response (in Norwegian, so a translation site may be helpful).<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.facebook.com&#x2F;permalink.php?story_fbid=1203560296352340&amp;id=185679154807131" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.facebook.com&#x2F;permalink.php?story_fbid=1203560296...</a><p>Is the collection of the other 6 or 7 photos still available? - my google-fu has not found them.

It would be neat to have a decentralized social network simply to avoid the editorial demands of the walled garden. I think we&#x27;d have a lot more unsavory content making its way to people&#x27;s eyes though. There&#x27;d need to be more sophisticated ways of filtering information than just &quot;unfriend&quot;, I suppose. And people would need to have tougher skins for it to work.

I can accept why they need to draw a line on naked child images and be done with it. Like most silicon valley companies they want everything automating with as little human customer service as possible.<p>However if they aren&#x27;t going to do that job of editorial then they need to stop trying to be a news source while abdicating any responsibility that entails by saying they are a tech company.

Ironically, Facebook is not censoring the news articles covering this story. The unedited photo is now shown all over Facebook.

On the subject of whether speech protections apply to the government only: it&#x27;s all well and good to apply a <i>legal</i> analysis to free speech issues, but if you&#x27;re looking to the law to tell you what&#x27;s <i>right and wrong,</i> you&#x27;re trying to buy milk at a hardware store.

Facebook needs to be broken up like Ma Bell was. It&#x27;s too big to manage well and network effects are preventing alternatives from gaining ground. The world needs more diversity in policy than it has with this mediated communications juggernaut.

The bigger problem is that the new media is US controlled,and youre going to have some culture conflicts. Maybe legislative action could force facebook to federate the users content

The prime minister&#x27;s original post: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;snpy.in&#x2F;5Nv92c" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;snpy.in&#x2F;5Nv92c</a>

This outrage is ridiculous. Of course, the Guardian is pimping it, they are outrage professionals.

I&#x27;m not on fb. I read in the comment from the spokeswoman that the distinction cannot be made by their robotic rules. So I believe this illustrates a limitation of their AI. And they don&#x27;t care so much about the people than their algorithms. Just an opinion.

We really need a real public safe space on the Internet.

facebook is really an infrastructural service.

What was the PM&#x27;s motivation to make the post in the first place?

I honestly think it was an algorithm that flagged it.

A picture of a naked child was removed from FB because of the law. No story there.<p>Are we going to allow child porn on FB because it is artistic ?

Why are we thinking of FB as some monolithic entity? Isn&#x27;t the most likely explanation that some low-wage contractor in the Philippines saw a picture of a naked girl and flagged it? That contractor may not even know the historical significance of the picture.<p>You&#x27;re in a low-wage job and have to look at horrifying shit all day, every day. Are you going to let the one image through that maybe will cost you the job that you really need?

Guardian is pretty trashy for tossing that picture up <i>twice</i> in one article. The article isn&#x27;t even about napalm or the war, the picture is being used as snuff shock. Show some respect for human dignity.

She should simply publish it somewhere else, such as her own blog or some other website. When she signed up to Facebook.com she ticked a box agreeing to their terms.<p>I never signed up so couldn&#x27;t care less, but aren&#x27;t most people on Facebook talking about what they had for breakfast and how awesome stuff is? I&#x27;m not sure where Napalm girl fits in with that culture except maybe &quot;awesome war photography - thumbs up!!&quot;.

Wait, Facebook censors pictures of naked children because they are afraid that some pedophile might get off on then?<p>That&#x27;s kind of twisted, isn&#x27;t it?

Dear Norway,<p>The US governments make us legally complicit in child pornography if we don&#x27;t have automated processes to take this stuff down. People keep blaming corporations for censorship of porn-like (but not porn) content, song lyrics that get mistaken for terrorist threats, and overly zealous take downs of anything that might infringe on IP. Do you think we want our users to get angry at us over this shit? Look at the US child porn laws, the numerous governments spying under the banner of the war on terror, and laws like the DMCA. Our hands are tied and you are blaming the wrong people.<p>- Facebook

Why should the PM be treated differently than anyone else? Just because she&#x27;s the PM?<p>FB has any right to remove whatever they want from their private property.