Facebook Allows Turkish Government To Set the Censorship Rules

New submitter feylikurds writes: Facebook has been blocking and banning users for posting Kurdish or anti-Turkish material. Many screenshots exists of Facebook notifying people for such. You can insult any single historical figure that you like on Facebook except one: Turkey's founder Mustafa Kemal 'Ataturk'. However, he should not receive special treatment and be protected from criticism, but rather should be treated and examined like everyone else. In order to be accessible within Turkey, Facebook has allowed the repressive Turkish government to set the censorship rules for billions of their users all around the globe. Facebook censors Kurds on behalf of Turkey. To show the world how unjust this policy is, this group discusses Facebook's censorship policy as it relates to Kurds (Facebook account required) and how to get Facebook to change its unfair and discriminatory policy. Makes re-reading Hossein Derakhshan's piece worth the time.

Comments

Slippery slope...

[QuietLagoon]

Once the infrastructure is in place for censorship, that infrastructure will be used.

Remember when the Internet was uncontrolled?

[Shakrai]

When USENET, IRC, and other mediums that were hard to censor were the rule rather than the exception? Now the "go to" places are all for profit enterprises, Facebook, Twitter, Google, et. al. They may profess to follow Western ideals, they may even actually believe in them, but when push comes to shove they'll always do what's necessary to enrich the bottom line.

As an aside, I wonder why the EU is hesitant to consider admitting Turkey? Or why the United States insists on advocating in favor of such a course of action.

Re:Remember when the Internet was uncontrolled?

[Shakrai]

The EU isn't a defensive alliance; that's what NATO is for and Turkey is already a NATO member. One that's keeping us from forming a coherent policy against ISIS, incidentally, since our natural allies in the region and only proven effective anti-ISIS force happen to be Turkey's sworn enemy.

Re:Remember when the Internet was uncontrolled?

[Shakrai]

I was actually thinking about their "complex" (understatement) relationship with the Kurds.

Re:Remember when the Internet was uncontrolled?

[Shakrai]

remember, Facebook != Internet

It is to many people, particularly those that came of age after the internet went mainstream, as well as those that are older and less technically adept.

Like it or hate it, Facebook is the Internet to a lot of people. Try having a brick and mortar business these days without a presence on Facebook. There are countless people that will go looking for something on Facebook long before they think of a simple Google search. Why do you think Google has invested so much effort into social media despite their many failures? They're terrified of people like this.

At the rate things are going the "dark web" isn't going to be warez, criminals, and black hats; it's going to be anything that's not on Facebook and Twitter.

Are they sure?

[IamTheRealMike]

I didn't actually see any evidence of Facebook censoring content because it's insulting to Ataturk on the linked page. The "evidence" appears to be a document that doesn't mention Facebook anywhere, but, let's take it as read that this really is a list of Facebook content abuse standards.

Even with that assumption, things related to Turkey are not listed as always banned. They are under a section labelled "escalate", meaning, if it gets hot, send it to management.

It may well be that Facebook has decided to enforce Turkish laws about this in order to get themselves unbanned there. But it may also be that upper management just wants more precise control over this hot potato. Once I see a clear message from Facebook saying a group was suspended for violating Turkish censorship laws, then I'll agree.

Facebook will do what is best for its stock price.

[Snufu]

Period.

Re:Facebook will do what is best for its stock pri

[gstoddart]

Honestly, there is not article to read here ... a link to a previous article on Slashdot, and a group on Facebook.

Is the claim that if I post something on Facebook critical of Ataturk that I will get censored?

Because if Facebook is going to censor the whole world for a single country, then that would pretty much be the worst thing they can do for their stock price.

Tragically

[loonycyborg]

I didn't read the link because it requires a facebook account which I don't have and never will have. Maybe it's mirrored in free access somewhere?

Re:Tragically

[darniil]

I'll help out.

Here's the group description:

If you have been blocked or banned from FB for posting Kurdish or anti-Turkish material, please screenshot the image that FB sent when notifying you and post it here (you can black out your name if you want).

This group is solely for material dealing with how FB censors Kurds on behalf of Turkey and to show the world how unjust this policy is. Posts are also welcome that discuss FB censorship policy as it relates to Kurds, and discussions on how to get FB to change this unfair and discriminatory policy.

The most recent post after that is someone saying, "My submission is on the frontpage of one of the largest sites on the Internet!", followed by a link to this /. story.

It seems like slightly more than half of the posts in that group are people complaining about what's alleged in this article, and slightly less than half are people actually posting screenshots of FB moderation.