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Facebook Tells India It Won't Help Censor the Web
An anonymous reader writes "Indian Communications and IT minister Kapil Sibal yesterday announced a proposal to have technology companies like Microsoft, Facebook, Google, and Twitter pre-screen user generated content so that community sentiments are not hurt. Social media platforms are being asked to censor whatever politicians deem objectionable and too offensive for the Internet. Sibal called a news conference when the story broke, and following it, Facebook responded to say that it can't help in the effort."
Of course not, censorship would hurt their business model. People need to share their dirt to sell it!
To offset political mods, replace Flamebait with Insightful.
Facebook doesn't want to censor: they want free flow of as much information as possible. The more that's out there, the more data they have to mine and sell.
It's in Facebook's best interest to say no anyway (since censoring comments would only make people want to leave and thus would reduce revenue at the additional cost of developer time), and by doing so they appear to be heroic. This was perhaps the easiest press release ever.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
I think it's interesting to see India asking for IT help.
If you want to filter something, block his campaign ads when it's time for re-election.
...Facebook...doing something....good? Does not Compute.
Well, I suppose this makes a nice press release, but make no mistake about Facebook's motivations. This is a decision solely based on cost/revenue. Facebook does not care about its users.
They won't help censor the web because that would interfere with them spying on their users.
would like to be in control of ALL the information you have available. the internet is a thorn in government's sides, right now the benefits of the internet outweighs the liabilities and when that changes you can bet the US Gov will pull the plugs (like shutting down ICANN's root servers) among other things it wont kill it completely but it will kill most of it and joe and jane sixpack wont be going to infowars.com or whatever flavor of underground news and tinfoil hattery they like...
war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Didn't Mr. Sibal suggest that they will use humans to screen the contents?
Here's my suggestion: tie him down to a chair and pry open his eyelids clockwatch orange style, and then have him screen youtube comments for 8 hours.
Wow, everyone's really quick to jump on them and claim it's because they have profit motive in having more data. I won't deny that, but there are other factors that are possibly more important.
Human-scanning every single message would be nearly impossible. Even if they managed to handle the staffing problem, they couldn't afford it. And even if they could afford it, there's the ethical issues it presents.
There are plenty of other reasons for them to decline.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Mr. Sibal, it's not just the world, the rest of India is laughing at you too.
Censor this!
Y'know what "hurts community sentiment" more than all the trolls in the world, no matter how socially malformed, photoshop adept, and equipped with free time equal only to their misanthropy?
Your own bloody, medieval, sectarian clusterfucks...
How about you work on the "brutal violence in response to hurt feelings about whose invisible friend is better" problem and then worry about scary things on the internet?
First, it's additional work... but more importantly, it's additional liability since you are now responsible for what gets posted...
This would create a lot of jobs, which to some people are more important than trolling the Inet with Photoshopped pictures of leaders and religious figures.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
... but....
Good on Facebook.
ouch.
Check your premises.
Good for Facebook, censorship is just plain wrong.
Why should Facebook get to decide what to do with objectionable content? India is a democracy and if the Indian people feel it would be appropriate to block some kinds of undesirable content, ISTM Facebook should simply comply.
"Taiwan's intelligence agency on Tuesday flatly rejected allegations that it had launched "electromagnetic wave" attacks against the running mate of an opposition presidential candidate.
"The National Security Bureau has not owned the alleged technologies, nor have we used equipment to harass the alleged targeted person," the bureau said in a statement.
Lin Ruey-shiung, the running mate of independent candidate James Soong, surprised the public last week when he claimed to have been subjected to "electromagnetic wave" attacks by the bureau on September 20 outside his home and over the following three days.
"If I hadn't quickly moved out (of my home), I would have lost my mind," he told reporters."
- http://ca.news.yahoo.com/taiwan-running-mate-claims-magnetic-attack-003709546.html
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They'll indvertantly have accumunated a lot of private info on Indian politicos and the State and accidently exposed it all through a defect in code, which will redirect all Indian FB users to pages of it, but for one day only, until they find the bug and fix it.
So there :P
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Isn't FB self censoring, since you can choose your friends?
And he also wants to monitor Facebook posts, Imagine reading that drivel all day. I'd almost prefer youtube comments
So when will facebook stop censoring the web in the US? For example, links to strikes and other labor rights activities are regularly blocked.
Sibal is asking companies to help him filter the Internet because the country has several religions and faiths. He argues what might seem humorous to someone can be really offensive to another and he wants to avoid further incidents of communities taking to the streets and vandalizing public property.
Bear with me, I have a solution to propose for this, from the Bible, from a time when another large country in Asia faced a problem with the presence of several faiths and ethnicities and some were getting ready to take to the streets in violence.
the king granted the Jews who were in each and every city the right to assemble and to defend their lives, to destroy, to kill, and to annihilate the entire army of any people or province which might attack them, including children and women, and to plunder their spoil. (Esther 8:11)
It worked. When the Jews were granted the legal right to defend themselves, only idiots got violent against them, and they received a rough justice as a result, with little cost to the government.
Just a suggestion. It's a lot better than taking away civil rights.
Speech doesn't commit violence. Governments do.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
Or that AT&T have employees listen in on all telephone conversations.
That's what AT&T bought the NSA for, silly! ;-)
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2010/08/24/facebook-banned-marijuana-leaf-of-libertarian-party-too/
Palm trees and 8
It is utterly impractical to think that you could pre-screen user-generated content. Facebook has, what, 800 million users. How many millions of screeners would you need to sift through all the potential content out there - even if were solely restricted to India? How do you keep all those screeners from going braindead reading through all that stuff? How do you keep them from gouging their eyes out with the inane horror of it all. And, most importantly, how do you decide what gets censored, and enforce that it gets kept out?
Article says won't but summary says can't.
There is a world of difference between those two words.
We don't live in Shouldland.
An increasing number of households, smart phones, and even newer model cars have WiFi transmission capabilities, so why can't we create ad-hoc mesh networks as a backup to the internet the government can control via backbones? As long as houses, phones, and cars have power there will always be a free internet. Confiscating all those is logistically impossible.
Seems to me, that with the un-constitutional reactionary laws the 1% is trying to push through right now that we need to make this happen swiftly.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
http://xkcd.com/865/ [xkcd.com]
How about community moderation. Let the people censor themselves. It works great at bannination.com.
Just like you never censored Draw Muhammed Day groups?
All in the name of "hate speech" was it?
Yeah that hate speech that isn't hate speech unless you put your dictionary in an industrial stretching machine and stretch it to the width of a planet.
That's just one example of countless many things they have censored.
Whatever makes them look like heroes is all good for them, standing up for peoples rights and taking down the big bad government.
Fuck Facebook, they are hypocrites.
That's very interesting....
An evil thing Facebook won't do.
Or is that just what they want us to think...?
Conspiracy theorists, start your foiling!
"fuck the pakis" certainly would not be on India's list of banned sentiments.
This is very pointy-headed boss.
I imagine that Microsoft may be cooking some stew in the back ground which would help India. What a better way for them to gain market share in an area that they have struggled with!
When you look at how Microsoft already filters content for users, is it that much of a leap?
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
He showed company executives derogatory images of the Prophet Mohammed as well as altered pictures of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress Party chief Sonia Gandhi that appeared on their platforms. He argued these images would offend “any reasonable person.”
Grow up is all I have to say. If you can't take a joke and little harsh humour then go find a rock and live under it, the rest of us will have a great time and party all night. The fact is to many people take offence to what aren't offensive situations. Just because you haven't grown up and matured to know the difference between what you think is offensive and what is actually offensive isn't my problem and it shouldn't be Facebook's, Google's or Microsoft's.
A reasonable person will understand this and just avoid these places on there own, if there really offended by it then why would they go looking in places they think will offend them? How is that reasonable?
Fuck you corrupted politicians.
editing / censoring part makes them responsible for all the content. They lose their legal status
I wish I could be smug just laugh at India and its stupid corrupt politicians.
Unfortunately this kind of hare brained ideas aren't limited to the third world.
In Australia the filtering plan seems to be on hold for now, but you don't even need a slippery slope argument to know how batshit insane and scary the idea of a secret internet censorship blacklist is: http://nocleanfeed.com/
Or have we already forgotten the UK plan to censor social media during times of social unrest: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/blog/2011/aug/11/uk-riots-day-five-aftermath-live#block-33
Think of how easily that could be used in the style of the Arab governments to cripple organised protests against the government.
Or we can mock India for wanting to intercept and read Blackberry messages, and ignore the implications of legislation like the Patriot Act: http://politics.slashdot.org/story/11/12/02/1923207/patriot-act-clouds-picture-for-tech
Or have we forgotten the domain seizures to try to block pirated content with no due legal process: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/07/domain-seizures-defended/
Even extending to attempts to block a Firefox add on: http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20060636-281.html
Blocking sports streams when they still cannot find a way of offering pay per view streaming of major sports events over the internet, where your only way of viewing a couple of hours of sports content a week is to sign up for an expensive cable package that gives lots of stuff you will never watch and THEN purchase an extra expensive add on for the sports content. And the US government is protecting that business model by seizing domains with no legal notice or court enforced legal process.
I would love to be able to just mock India, if we could afford to be that complacent...
He knows what he is talking about. He is the Minister of Communications and Information Technology and also held the two ministries Ministry of Science and Technology and Ministry of Earth Sciences earlier. You know nothing.
But what about the annoying little ticker twitter feed in US fb? Can we get a little censorship there maybe? As much as I love people knowing how often I "like" cheese and other highly fascinating things...
This is a research account for studying online commenting so we can create tools to improve moderation.
I agree. He knows a lot more about censorship than I do. So did every dictator and totalitarian scum. That's how they managed to keep their jobs.
The internet is FOR inappropriate content. Like Porn. The internet is for porn. If you want it. I'm just sayin. -k
A commity setup by the govt to solve the problems in South India (Sree Krishna Comm) gave a report ( closed report) which tells how the govt need to control the media to change the view. When they can do that with 40 million peoples wish they think they can do the same with Free Internet. LMAO
pre-screen user generated content so that community sentiments are not heard. fixed.
Don't waste resources protecting people from "offending content". If people seek out stuff that offends them, they asked for it. If they get offended by regular newsfeeds, go complain to the provider, not the government. And stop reading newsfeeds that contain what they consider offending content.
Under no circumstances does it make any sense that the government should impose censorship to protect the populace from "offending content". They might protect against subversive content but that doesn't seem to be the case here. It seems to be a case of plain censorship, nothing more, nothing less.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
Anti-Pakistan is a cheap tool/trick used by Forward caste to promote/protect their hegemony over BC/SC/ST/Minority communities in India.
http://goo.gl/u0QNW