Slashdot Mirror
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.
Zuckerburg is a whore who doesn't want Turkey to ban Facebook.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
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.
My work here is dung.
To be fair to Zuckerberg and Facebook, the company must obey the law of any country in which it operates.
No it doesn't. Big companies don't obey laws unless it's cheaper to do so than not. Slashdot in particular can't stop fellating Uber over what is probably a largely illegal operation. Comcast, Verizon, Microsoft, and basically all of the rest routinely violate laws as they see fit, pay a fine and move on.
Zuck announced that Saudia Arabia has demanded that he cut his hand off for stealing the idea of Facebook. China wants him to shoot himself in the head and send them the price of the bullet for monopolizing their national social media. ISIS demanded that he cut his own head off, just because. Thailand is suing him for war crimes for letting their King be ridiculed on Facebook. Alabama is sending sheriff's deputies to arrest him because a state legislature saw the edge of a nipple on some random teenager's profile picture.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
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?
After hearing about the grilled cheese sandwich that looks like the virgin Mary I read this headline and the image that comes to mind is a roast turkey where the pattern of browning on the skin sort of looks like an image of the prophet Muhammad.
Then I think Facebook is being biased. If they allowed pictures of the virgin Mary grilled cheese then they shouldn't censor pictures of the Muhammad roast turkey.
Then I imagine extremists shouting "death to the turkey!"
(News can me so much more entertaining if you allow yourself to be creative.)
(((:~(>
The above emoticon is muhammed
Is that anything like Jebus on a bagel?
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
What constitutes an image of Muhammad? I mean, no one really knows what he looked like, right? And even if they did know, people have look-alikes...so it seems for something to be an "image of the Prophet" requires it to be labeled as such. But how far does that go? If I drew a stick figure, and wrote "Muhammad" under it, would that count? What if I drew a very detailed and accurate sketch of someone presently alive, let's say my friend Bill, but labelled it "the Prophet Muhammad," would that count? How are these things decided?
This idea that all speech must be viewed by all people is a little odd. When I go onto Facebook once in a blue boon to check on friends I used to work with in the Philippines, I am not bombarded by explicit sexual content. No, nobody in my group of friends are going to post about a rimjob, but given the random crap that does come up, I'm pretty sure there is a lot of energy at Facebook to keep the pr0n noise down.
There are Muslims who consider pictures of their prophet as offensive as a picture of bukkake. The vast majority of them are not crazy Islamists that like to blow things up and slaughter innocent people (which is good for the rest of us non-Muslims). Rather than centralized, blanket, censorship, though, I'd rather see something like this...
1. Facebook and other social networking services put their resources into tagging content (religiously offensive, sexually explicit, drug use and other types of content that users often find unpleasant)
When a user registers for these services, a default list of tagged content to block is set up, based upon their region, gender, religious affiliation, etc. which the user can modify
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.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Muhammad: Oh come on guys seriously?!? I've got this awesome post about peace and fairness and its totally legit theres even a sunrise picture i found that goes--
Facebook: Sorry. cant let you post that.
Muhammad: What about my timeline? the farmville stuff? I have a pizza review fr--
Facebook: look buddy its in the TOS. if you wanted to post content you shouldnt have been Muhammad.
Muhammad: So is this just me? or is it every cab driver in Queens? or what?
Facebook: Just for Istanbul's sake
Muhammad: Jesus christ i posted ONE bad review because my falafel was soggy and now i cant post?!!
Good people go to bed earlier.
--------------------> .
As seen from a very long distance.
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
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"?
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
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.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.