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."

Comments

Facebook's position

[Aladrin]

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.