Slashdot Mirror
Pakistan Lifts Ban After Facebook Deletes Offending Page
crimeandpunishment writes "Facebook is back in Pakistan today. A day after Bangladesh banned the social networking site, the Pakistani government lifted its ban after officials from Facebook apologized for the 'Everybody Draw Mohammed Day' page and removed it from the site. The page caused outrage and protests among Pakistan's Muslim population, and led to the ban two weeks ago. A spokesman for Pakistan's office of information technology said Facebook assured the government 'nothing of this sort will happen in the future.'"
There were a lot of submissions, and Muhammad had taken an unimaginable amount of forms. Although, quite a few took the oppurtunity to show their hatred towards muslims in general (nukes at the Kaba etc.), which made the impact of the images sort of embarrasing after a while. Another trend also occured, namely death threats. They seemed to flourish, judging by the amount of print screens that were posted. I think they actually ended up making a seperate death threat gallery. In my oppionion that just makes this caving even worse. Yet another victory for the unevolved.
When in hell, pray for rain
Not even something like this? and that's just with a 10 second search.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
So as soon as the furor has died down, and the controversy is no longer driving as much traffic to Facebook as Pakistan's ban reduced it, Facebook decides to "do the right thing". The right thing, that is, to make the numbers.
Yes, Facebook sure has done all they can to eliminate the group.
I rather enjoyed deluding myself that Facebook was standing up for free expression, denouncing idiotic religious extremism, etc., but I now realize the folly of that thinking.
That was pretty silly given that Facebook's founder thinks his users are idiots.
Thank you, Facebook, for restoring my faith in the utterly amoral nature of American business.
Maybe Zuckerberg thinks it's holy to make money.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
In the U.S. the laws of Man far outrank the laws of Religion. The U.S. Constitution, Article VI states:
This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwith-standing.
In simple terms, this means in the U.S. the Constitution outranks the Bible, Koran, Vedas, Egyptian Book of the Dead and any other religious law or rule. And, in the U.S., Freedom of Speech includes the right to offend and blasphemy. It may be rude, but it is there to prevent the slippery slope of censorship, lesse majesty and, essentially, newspeek. Being occasionally offended is a small price to pay to not having to worry about being thrown in jail for calling the President/King/Mullah an dick, and the government a corrupt bunch of money-grubbing assholes.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Facebook is a company, not the government. So whatever the constitution says about free speech is irrelevant.
Well, except on May 24th the creators of the "Everybody Draw Mohammad" page deleted it themselves. Note that although the Slashdot summary says Facebook deleted it, the actual article only quotes FB as saying "The page has been removed" without ever declaring that they did so themselves. The stated reason is it became a 24/7 job to delete the endless flood of people calling for genocide against the muslims, and people posting gay porn of Obama and Muhammad (roughly 90% of the image submissions), or posting Muslims being disemboweled by assorted Aryan Americans. (I'm sure they were also tired of doing the converse). Naturally, pulling the page caused those same people to turn their hatred on the creators, calling them secret Muslim terrorists, and expressing murderous outrage that they ever dared to censor in the first place.
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
Oops, I didn't get the whole link copied.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Everyone-Draw-Mohammed-day-May-20/112498195453416?ref=search&sid=rZX7KTtpVe7NtecVn9xYWQ.1122781147..1
Now you can click the functional link and see the page (instead of going to Facebook and searching "Everyone Draw" and have it pop up as first result.)
I'd never been to the group page before today.
There's a spot in User Info for World of Warcraft account names? Really?
I was a member of the group, and I hadn't looked at it a week or so. Last I saw though, the admins were saying they were going to voluntarily take the site down because they had made their point and that it was too time consuming to keep up with cleaning up the posts/links/porn people were posting to the page. Some folks offered to take over admin so that the page wouldn't be destroyed. I never checked back to see what happened.
Personally, I'd like to see the apology to Pakistan from facebook, because it sounds a little too good to be true.
P.S. The first time the page was removed was May 20th, 2010. Here's the wall quotes from a group admin from May 22th, 2010:
"This page was removed two days ago, after one of our moderators had his email and skype hacked. His personal data was revealed. He then got scared and deleted the page, the blog and the emails. The rest of us, are now back without him after he backed out. This is another scare tactic from the Islamic extremists. We won't fall. Pictures you were unable to post on the 20th? Check the forums for interviews." "A great big thank you to the facebook-gang for restoring the page. A great big thank you to all freedom lovers out there. Now we have new persons to handle the media and we will soon release some info about the past few days. And to all of you: One can never beat freedom of speech, opinion and idividuality, because they are all basic human rights."
No, he's saying you would be an intelligent, well educated individual if you didn't make broad generalizations like "they" want to take away your freedoms.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
"If you've got a really good reason to draw a picture of the prophet, other than something along the lines of "I have a misguided idea of what free speech means, and I want to be offensive for a laugh" then I'd love to hear it. "
Like: "I want to show support for those who receive death threats over trivial matters"? Free speech also means that you have to live with something you don't like. Deal with it.
I'd be more in favour of the US Government blocking those who do not understand what their right to free speech is, so that we are not bothered with the thoughts of those who haven't a clue.
Right to free speech in the United States is as protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. This says that the government cannot limit freedom of expression. Facebook is not the government. Facebook can decide what it will permit people to say on its website and what it will not. The right to free speech does not extend to obliging others to promote your opinions. There is no free speech violation here.
Do you have a reference that FB had no role in yanking the page? This article says:
Pakistan lifted a ban on Facebook on Monday after officials from the social networking site apologized for a page deemed offensive to Muslims and removed its contents, a top information technology official said.
Further in, it continues:
Facebook assured the Pakistani government that "nothing of this sort will happen in the future," Malik said.
Officials from the website could not immediately be reached for comment. They said earlier the contents of the "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day!" page did not violate Facebook's terms.
Maybe Malik got his facts wrong or he's outright lying but given FB's recent mendacity about what is and isn't private, it's hard to know who is telling the truth.
I agree with you on that but it's during these times that Muslims least want to be identified as such. Muslims watch the same news you do and we have a pretty good idea what's going through the average person's mind. And it's not your fault either, that's the admission: if I was not a Muslim I'd be pretty mad at Muslims too (in fact even as a Muslim I'm fairly annoyed).
And so the moderates are kind of, I feel from personal experience, in limbo. Now is the worst possible time I can imagine to have to admit being even remotely associated with people I deeply disagree with and, in fact, have very little in common with.
It's really a weird spot to be in. They're a half a world away, I disagree with them (and honestly kind of dislike them), but somehow I need to dissociate myself from them.
It's an unenviable position to be in for any reasonable person, Muslim or not. All reasonable dialogue is drowned out by shouts of exclusion from both sides. The best time to talk is usually after the full-throated yelling has ended, and is best demonstrated by actions rather than words.
These things really set back that long term, grassroots dialogue back. Depressing.
Youre right that its offensive, and youre right that we arent really loosing rights... but NOT for the reason you gave. We havent lost a right because Facebook is a private enterprise and we are free to not use it if this offends us. You seem to be implying that, for example, it would be OK to have a law mandating the death penalty for being offensive; I disagree.
Im not sure you are aware of this, but burning a US flag is protected speech. If you were lynched in your example, there would be a murder investigation; it is certainly NOT ok to lynch people for what you described.
Asking for some respect doesn't make you radical.
Saying "Respect us or we'll kill you!" makes you radical. And the "moderate" Muslims so rarely have anything to say about it. Moderate Christians aren't quite as bad.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
You do not accept conditional surrenders from someone who has repeatedly attacked you without provocation. Should we have accepted a conditional surrender from Hitler when we got to the German border? Left him or the Nazis in power? Let the holocaust continue? Let him continue to develop the V2? Why should Hirohito and the Big 6 be left in power in Japan?
The US, Great Britain, and the Soviets all agreed to accept nothing but unconditional surrender. Accepting a conditional surrender was not an option for the US, and at the time very few citizens of the US would have accepted a conditional surrender from Japan. The Japanese were only starting talks with the Soviets about a conditional surrender, which the Soviets rejected and built up forces on the Manchuko border. There was no conditional surrender on the table when the bomb was dropped, they had been warned at Potsdam on July 26th by the 3 powers to unconditionally surrender or face prompt and utter destruction. Even after the second bomb was dropped, it took the emperor another 5 days to formally declare surrender. None of this is consistent with the bullshit theory that the US rejected an offer to surrender when the bomb was dropped.
Read the actual histories, not revisionist crap with cherry picked quotes, to get the actual information.
This sentence no verb.