Facebook Censoring Images of the Prophet Muhammad In Turkey

An anonymous reader writes: Immediately following the Charlie Hebdo attack, Mark Zuckerberg said, "... this is what we all need to reject — a group of extremists trying to silence the voices and opinions of everyone else around the world. I won't let that happen on Facebook. I'm committed to building a service where you can speak freely without fear of violence." Now, Facebook has begun censoring images of the prophet Muhammad in Turkey. According to the Washington post, "It's an illustration, perhaps, of how extremely complicated and nuanced issues of online speech really are. It's also conclusive proof of what many tech critics said of Zuckerberg's free-speech declaration at the time: Sweeping promises are all well and good, but Facebook's record doesn't entirely back it up." To be fair to Zuckerberg and Facebook, the company must obey the law of any country in which it operates. But it stands in stark contrast to the principles espoused by its founder.

Comments

Simple

[sycodon]

Zuckerburg is a whore who doesn't want Turkey to ban Facebook.

Re:Simple

[jellomizer]

There is nothing simple about ethics with international business.
Things that ethically right in one culture can be a huge issue in an other.
Many European countries have laws about Hate speech.
The US has against with Pedophilia.
In some countries bribes are just part of doing business. In others it is quite illegal.
Countries will tax you for things that other countries would consider as overstepping bounds.
Some countries lets things go by without legal controls that others find monstrous.

If you are going to be doing international business, you need to be sensitive to your own ideals, as well as the ideals of your new customer base.
Our American Ideals of nearly full freedom of speech, vs. Turkey ideals of limited speech. Are clashing. So if Zuckerberg just said no. They will not operate in Turkey, and the users will be loss of a medium to spread the areas of free speech that they do enjoy. If Zuckerberg agrees then Facebook stays operational, and while taking heat from the culture who doesn't like to see any speech censored, is allowing the culture to have better tools to share the free speech that they are entitled too.

Re:Simple

[Anonymous Coward]

That's funny about the hate speech and pedophilia you mention. Those are just two of the things that prophet dude did. I don't know enough to know if he did the other things you mention such as bribes, but I wouldn't doubt it.

Re:Simple

[circletimessquare]

it's not that simple

if he doesn't follow the laws turkey bans facebook. a facebook clone in turkey pops up instead. now all those connections to the outside world are greatly diminished. turkey becomes a social silo that stagnates

and so all the valuable positive subtle free speech influences that aren't live wire topics like muhammad's face are lost

by following turkey's authoritarian freedom crushing instructions that would otherwise get facebook banned, facebook remains influential in turkey in a positive way, in more subtle ways

you can't think of these nuanced complex issues in such blockheaded black-or-white "my way or the highway" rigid ways. that makes you something like turkey's authoritarianism actually

Re:Simple

[circletimessquare]

hard to tell if joking or not

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...

if you're joking, thanks for the laugh

if not, well... you need help

you don't defeat authoritarianism or totalitarianism with the same sort of simplistic black-or-white ideological rigidity

Re:Simple

[JohnFen]

There is nothing simple about ethics with international business.
Things that ethically right in one culture can be a huge issue in an other.

I don't see how that makes the ethics complex. It's very simple: ethics are personal. If a company has a certain set of ethics, they'll adhere to them regardless of what nation they're operating in. If the law prevents that, then they'll avoid doing business there.

Simple.

If a company is willing to do something in any nation, that is an expression of the company's ethics. In this case, Facebook has declared loud and clear that they have no problem with political censorship.

So if Zuckerberg just said no. They will not operate in Turkey, and the users will be loss of a medium to spread the areas of free speech that they do enjoy.

This is the exact line of reasoning by which so many companies justify supporting child labor, sweatshops, political repression, and so on. It's a bullshit argument.

No.

[eldavojohn]

To be fair to Zuckerberg and Facebook, the company must obey the law of any country in which it operates.

No. He came out in support of a universal maxim and then went back to his board who showed him X dollars of income they get by operating in Turkey. Just like the revenue lost when Google left mainland China. Instead of sacrificing that revenue to some other social network in Turkey run by cowards, he became a coward himself in the name of money. It is an affront to the deaths and memory of the Charlie Hebdo editors. His refusal could have worked as leverage for social change in Turkey but now it will not.

So no, your statement isn't fair to Zuckerberg and his company and the platinum backscratcher he gets to keep with "TURKEY" inscribed on it. Fuck that greedy bastard and his petty meaningless lip service.

Re:Censorship should not be tolerated.

[hort_wort]

Censorship should not be tolerated. Under any circumstances

If you went with your child into a rough neighborhood and that child started shouting racial slurs at everyone you passed, would you tell your kid to hush or would you just let him keep going on?

Facebook is not new to censorship

[msobkow]

Look at how they censor pictures of breasts from the whole site to pander to American "morals", when most of the world has no problem with nudity.

Re:Really?

[msobkow]

Only you ignorant Americans think your laws apply to the whole world. The rest of the world just demands that foreign companies obey local laws while doing business there.

And if you think local laws don't apply because you're an American, you're just a fucking retard.

About 'whoring'

[Anonymous Coward]

Zuckerburg and his facebook are far from the only guilty party on 'whoring'

Take that 'do not evil' company, Google, for example ... publicly they seemed to champion the users' rights by fighting against the Chinese communist, but then they 'whore' themselves to the NSA --- and recent revelations that Google disclosing emails and all the other details of 3 people who work for Wikileaks to the Obama fascist league isn't a comforting news either

Take Microsoft, they 'whore' themselves to the NSA to the extend that they allow NSA to put backdoors into many of their softwares

Take Apple, one would think the late Steve Jobs, a legendary 'counter culture' kinda guy, don't do no 'whoring' but that couldn't be any further from the truth --- Apple's products all have backdoors pre-installed

Let's not forget Cisco, IBM, and a slew other US corporations ... it would be very hard to find any well known US corporation that don't 'whore' themselves to the authority

This is by no mean trying to excuse Zuckerburg's pathetic 'whoring' to Recep Tayyip Erdogan, an ardent supporter of Islamic terrorism

This is to remind all that no American companies (and many European companies as well) can be trusted

They do not care about the rights of the users. All they wanna do to find the best way to suck Uncle Sam's fucking little rotten dick

Captha: consent

Re:About 'whoring'

[Anonymous Coward]

Because they're chinese, and want to slam all US companies. The use of "softwares" instead of "software" was a dead giveaway.

First they came for...

[fyngyrz]

When Facebook's TOS disallows gays from being members in places where fundamentalist Islam is dominant, will you continue to defend them? How about women? If women are forbidden to post and/or become members, is that ok?

Where should we draw the line between "we should keep some channels open for the privileged" and "we'll not be enabling that kind of repression"?

if you're not Muslim, then...

[dAzED1]

If you're not Muslim, why the fark are you saying "the Prophet" Muhammad? Why would you grant that honorific if you don't yourself believe it? How would that be different than saying "Jesus the Messiah" while not Christian? And hey, if you do believe it "soulskill" then hey, why not, but I've been seeing this become more and more common among journalist at (theoretically) real - and thus, presumably impartial - news agencies. You know, ones that wouldn't say "Jesus the Messiah" and "Buddha the Enlightened One"

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

"The rest of the world just demands that foreign companies obey local laws while doing business there."

If you really believe that, you might need to consider flipping your expletive around. Many in the world scream "Death to America/France/Netherlands/etc" when there is a bad depiction of Mohammed (or any depiction). Is that "just demanding that foreign companies obey local laws while doing business there"? No, that is stating that you ... way over there and not in my town/city/country/region ... need to obey my beliefs.

So apparently Americans don't have a patent on trying to force their laws and beliefs onto the rest of the world. It's just popular to say so.

Re:Really?

[NixieBunny]

The same argument can be made against the Muslims who think that their religion applies to people outside of it. I am not Muslim, so I am not going to hell for displaying a mockery of their prophet. After all, would the Muslims want to be held accountable to the rules of every other religion in the world?

This is the real problem, and it's on all religious people to behave as if every other religion (and every form of non-belief) is as valid as theirs is. Oh, and Thou Shalt Not Kill.

Who says it serves no purpose?

[fyngyrz]

What offends you may not offend me. And vice-versa. What serves no purpose for you, may serve a purpose for me. Be it intended offense, or otherwise, or both at once.

No one in the USA has the "right to not be offended." Being offended is subjective. It has everything to do with you as an individual, or as part of a particular group; it varies due to your moral conditioning, your religious beliefs, your upbringing, your education; what offends one person or group (of any size) may not offend another, nor a person of another grouping; and in the final analysis, it requires one person to attempt to read the mind of other persons they do not know in order to anticipate whether a specific action will cause offense in the mind of another.

And no, codifying an action in law is not in any way sufficient... it is well established that not even lawyers can know the law well enough to anticipate what is legal, and what is not -- any more than you can guess what is offensive to me, or not.

Sane law relies on the basic idea that we try not to risk or cause harm to the bodies, finances and reputations of others without them consenting and being aware of the risks. It does not rely on the idea that we "must not cause offense."

Law that bans something based upon the idea that some individual or group simply finds the behavior objectionable is the very worst kind of law, utterly devoid of consideration or others, while absolutely permeated in self-indulgence.