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Norway's Largest Newspaper Accuses Mark Zuckerberg of Abusing Power After Facebook Deletes 'Napalm Girl' Post (theguardian.com)
An anonymous shares a report on The Guardian:Norway's largest newspaper has published a front-page open letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, lambasting the company's decision to censor a historic photograph of the Vietnam war and calling on Zuckerberg to recognize and live up to his role as "the world's most powerful editor." Espen Egil Hansen, the editor-in-chief and CEO of Aftenposten, accused Zuckerberg of thoughtlessly "abusing your power" over the social media site that has become a lynchpin of the distribution of news and information around the world, writing, "I am upset, disappointed -- well, in fact even afraid -- of what you are about to do to a mainstay of our democratic society. I am worried that the world's most important medium is limiting freedom instead of trying to extend it, and that this occasionally happens in an authoritarian way," he said. The controversy stems from Facebook's decision to delete a post by Norwegian writer Tom Egeland that featured The Terror of War, a Pulitzer prize-winning photograph by Nick Ut that showed children -- including the naked 9-year-old Kim Phuc -- running away from a napalm attack during the Vietnam war. Egeland's post discussed "seven photographs that changed the history of warfare" -- a group to which the "napalm girl" image certainly belongs.
So what? Every fucking newspaper has censored things throughout history. They pick and choose what they want to show the public. They write "opinions" instead of factual articles. Now it is biting them in the ass because they don't have control over what is published and they don't like it. Welcome my friend to the Machine.
If Facebook is considered a 'mainstay of democratic society' you know the news media is complete fucking disconnected from reality.
Some stupid millennial, who was never taught about Vietnam and who has never expressed interest in any kind of History, simply saw a picture of a naked girl and thought, "Child Porn!!!
Truly, the people employed at today's firms like Facebook and Google are fucking ignorant about History.
First, they are massively overstating Facebooks "power" and even more so Zuckerbergs. They can post the picture on their governments websites if they want to protest. I would recommend against it personally as it looks more like child porn than anything else.
Lastly, Facebooks site, Facebooks rules. They are welcome to ditch the internet ghettos if they want. Bitching that life in the ghetto sucks really accomplishes nothing.
you put down your phone, go outside and take a breath...
FB policies are pretty well known. To be outraged when a rule you know about is enforced is just idiotic. Don't post it on FB... sheesh.
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
Categorising one of the most important images of the 20th century with child pornography is a problem. A big one.
This has repercussions to the very roots of a free and informed society.
Welcome to the world. Our press has become ever more tightly concentrated over the past hundred years and highly censored during every war, including the world war we are in right now. Oh did you not notice we have troops fighting wars in at least 5 different countries right now? During the Bush years the press was all too eager to support going to war and then oppose the war, then hide the war for the last 7 years once it was supposedly over. We have a fickle press, but not a free one.
Sure the Internet was great for a while, but those looking to control society have learned how to manipulate it to a great extent. And now we are back to having very centralized control of the press.
..Facebook is Zuck's website.. he can do what he wants*, but Hansen is more than welcome to publish* the uncensored version in his own newspaper if he so wishes. The public can decide where they want to look.
* ) within regulation of sovereign laws.
whats that? not sure whats the fuss all about, just don't be part of the programing geek...
Facebook is a private company. Facebook can "censor" whatever they want. There is no free speech issue. There is no first amendment rights issue. There is no journalistic duty to do anything... Facebook isn't a news source, it's social media. As much as I think it's stupid that the post was removed, because this clearly isn't child porn, watching people scream "Waaaaah, facebook deleted my post" turns my stomach. Grow the fuck up.
It was worrying to hear that Zuckerberg deleted the image, but then I found out something that I think everyone else missed: He only deleted it from Facebook. So it's missing from (approximately; I'm just rounding to the nearest percentage) about 0% of the web, but there's still the other 100% where Zuckerberg didn't touch anything.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
Much as I dislike Mark Zuckerberg, the real problem is not him, nor Facebook, but the users who have made Facebook the " lynchpin of the distribution of news and information around the world..." I realize that Facebook is how a lot of people get their news, but the responsibility for that rests on the shoulders of the dumb shits who use it that way, not on Mark Zuckerberg. While Zuckerberg has made it clear that he would like for Facebook to become everyone's entire internet experience, that can't happen without the cooperation of the people using it.
Proverbs 21:19
The real issue here is the wide spread usage of Facebook as a news distributor. Media houses should let Facebook handle selfies and chat between friends, not the what and who of distributing news.
Facebook can censor, suppress or hype any news story using "algorithms" that nobody outside of the company can inspect.
Forget about voting for the senile old bastard. What about going out and doing something. They want a free unicorn pony and whine about the state of the world but do squat about it. If they really want a European lifestyle, they could reduce their amount of living space and give most of their income to the charity of their choice.
THAT would make an immediate impact and would not require the intervention of the government, or leader, or savior. It would (oddly enough) be closer to the communist ideal too.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
If Facebook is considered a 'mainstay of democratic society' you know the news media is complete fucking disconnected from reality.
Free and uncensored communication is the mainstay of democratic society.
Facebook just happens to be the medium that a very large fraction of people are using to accomplish this, right at the moment.
We must accept that it's time for Western Civilization to take a back seat.
Make us. Before you try, remember that we still have biggest sticks.
Last I checked it's a social networking site, NOT a NEWS SOURCE.
Despite the millions of users, it's a private company, not a government news source, they can censor if they want to. If it bothers enough of their users, those users will quit Facebook. ITts their site, they have no responsibility to provide an utterly open platform, nor have they ever claimed to. They take down porn, hate pages, etc.
For all of you claiming this is the wrong way to attract attention to the problem, I disagree.
In good old Europe the best way to get any CEO or politician to do anything about any issue is to make a lot of noise, on national and international media.
This is exactly what our Norwegian friends are doing.
Zuckerberg can solve this easily by instructing his 15$/hour hipster drones to first check against a set of approved historical pics before scrapping articles/posts.
FB could also be smart enough to realise they can do only LINKING to pics, not hosting them, and be safe from all persecution if someone takes offence and goes to court. FB can, with very little effort, be a communication tool for good (TM) rather than trying to implement draconic and arbitrary rules.
Dissemination of information based upon the feelings and opinions of the users to decide what is and is not 'news' is NEVER uncensored communication.
It cannot ever BE MADE to be uncensored. It is filtered.
If you're basing what you view as 'free communication' off of what is 'trending' that's a problem, and a HUGE one. The fact that people think this is a good thing is (in only my opinion of course) a travesty.
Once their Ad revenue starts to crumble then he might see sense.
This image has appeared all over the world many times since 1973 and only in a very few places was it censored.
Zuck needs to learn about 'context'.
The nudity of the child is right in context with the story that was unfolding when the picture was taken.
IT is not pornographic in any way.
The gorl in the image even has the picture on her charity's website for heavens sake.
Fuck Zuck.
Censoring Napalm Girl is absolute BULLSHIT!
No it isn't. Even Italy has declared that certain things are off limits when they involve children.
Exactly. This is the problem when you have inflexible rules: a rule "no naked pictures of 9-year-old girls" sure sounds like a completely uncontroversial rule, one for which it's even reasonable to say "this rule has no exceptions; we just can't allow that kind of naked pictures on our site."
The difficulty is that the opposite, approach, which is to allow human judgement to make exceptions to the rules, is just as bad, and just as subject to abuse.
It's a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation for them. Making exceptions to rules on naked pictures of children is just as likely to give problems.
Who gives a shit what facebook lusers believe? They're apathetic and live their lives according to that website and app. While they were all exited about Bernie Sanders, did they go out and vote in the primaries and support him in public? No. The just jerked each other off online. If they got off their asses and actually did something, Sanders would be the Democratic candidate.
Your statement is nonsensical, and holds speculative opinion at best.
And now, they are all hate'in Clinton so they'll use that as an excuse to stay at home on facebook and bitch and moan when Trump wins. And continue their circle jerk on facebook during his presidency. Rinse repeat in '20.
This is just purely political banter, and has no real merit on the article at hand.
And as far as the rest of the World's lusers, it's just people who don't have a life and do nothing to better their communities. Today's couch potatoes.
It's "losers" not "lusers". Internet dictionaries are free.
And everyone of them gets spoon fed information and advertisements while their personal information is being pimped out.
Sadly in the age of social media this is the world we live in. Get used to it.
LOSERS! facebook is for LOSERS!
This is childish at best.
Is what I'm talking about too complicated for you?
No, the opposite: you're too simple for me.
Your point is basically that censorship is bad when it's done by a government, but anybody else can do it, no problem. The real world is somewhat more complicated. If one particular channel for information is the dominant channel for information exchange, yes, it does matter if they are picking and choosing what opinions they allow to be communicated over their channel.
You may like to shout "freedom, freedom, corporations need to have freedom!" all you like, but in fact, what Facebook is doing, in censoring their information flow, is to take away freedom from their users.
With that said, I think that in this particular case, Facebook has a real reason for their actions. But the belief "it doesn't matter when they restrict our freedoms because we only care about it when the government restricts freedoms" is a poor argument.
+1 "Interesting"? Sorry that's +3 Funny!
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
the belief "it doesn't matter when they restrict our freedoms because we only care about it when the government restricts freedoms" is a poor argument.
So, to coin a phrase: "All freedoms matter."
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
The Norwegians give out Nobel Peace prizes to whoever follows their political agenda. Looks like Zuckerberg won't be getting one now.
Lay a nice helping of blame on the traditional media who have spent more time fighting the internet than adapting to it. Why aren't they, with decades of in-house experience, creating better systems than Silicon Valley?
Nope, no sig
I remember seeing that picture in a reader's digest. IIRC it is b&w or at least faded so it's not all that apparent initially that it's a girl on fire (and not in the Hunger Games way).
The picture want worth nearly as much to me as the article, which stated the pilot was told with certainty that the area was full of enemy combatants - not civilians - and when he found out the reality of quad he'd done he had to live with that guilt.
Pretty sure that - regardless of the picture's impact - there hasn't been much of a lesson learned there as such "mistakes" continue to happen. Hell, in Afghanistan the USA bombed a regiment of Canadians.
It's "losers" not "lusers". Internet dictionaries are free.
You mean, like the Hacker's Dictionary? "Luser" is in there. Even with that spelling.
"Luser" is ancient late-70s/early 80s computer jargon, an insulting word for the computer users, a portmanteau of loser and user. (Not acknowledged in the jargon files, but it originally stems from an anti-drug ad from the late '70s that got played ad nauseum as a public-service announcement on the radio, with the refrain "users are losers and losers are users.")
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
I will agree, restrictions are restrictions... and I find them icky. However, my point was that there's nothing illegal about it.
I don't recall anybody suggesting that it was illegal. Undesirable, possibly-- but not illegal.
It's about the effect, not the intent. It *IS* a news source, even if it was never intended to be [and that quite frankly, simply isn't true as it absolutely is their intent now].
I thought the PSA was "Only losers use drugs" which was quickly corrupted to "Only users lose drugs"
Enigma
Yeah. Getting napalm dropped on you tends to have this effect too.
In the USA it is still considered "Child Pornography" It doesn't matter if it is art. In Modern day PC America, nudity is a big taboo. I re-posted the article on my page, lets see how long until it gets pulled.
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too bad you can give a +1 Troll modifier, that's some quality trolling.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
'fraid so, sarcasm truly is dead.. killed by political correctness. Can't run this on the TV anymore, in fact youtube pulled it on "copyright" grounds. These are dark times.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
If you don't like Facebook's rules, don't use Facebook!
I honestly saw this and thought it odd as I figured Facebook was becoming irrelevant. Most of my peers and my kids and their peers no longer even use the site or the apps. Surprised to see the outcry.
The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
Dissemination of information based upon the feelings and opinions of the users to decide what is and is not 'news' is NEVER uncensored communication. It cannot ever BE MADE to be uncensored. It is filtered. If you're basing what you view as 'free communication' off of what is 'trending' that's a problem, and a HUGE one. The fact that people think this is a good thing is (in only my opinion of course) a travesty.
Voting as metadata saying you approve or disapprove of a post is an expression of free speech, even if you don't seem to like it. Actual filtering of negatively rated posts to the point where you can't read them anymore is censorship. People post a lot of drivel, there is no right that I should spend equal time on an insightful and informative +5 comment and a -1 GNAA troll, particularly if one side is just trying to flood the discussion with copy-pasta, crazy rants, meaningless drivel or blatant propaganda. If you don't do it by votes you do it by other forms of popularity like how many bother to read your blog or follow you on Twitter, just because you think your thoughts are so important the world needs to know the world doesn't have to agree. Journalists also do their selection and write from their perspective and bias and editors choose what's the top story, the true neutral and objective news source doesn't exist.
Idea have to fight for survival, if you send me a link I might bother to read it or I might not - depending on what you usually send. I might share it further - or not - depending on what I think of it. And if you keep sending crap, I might block you completely. And I got the right to enlist the help of others in deciding whether or not you're worth listening to, it's not censorship to ask other people's opinion of you. I have the right to not listen to them and make up my own opinion, but you don't have the right to demand that I do. Anything else would lead to absurd results, not least of which that there are 7-8 billion opinions in the world. This is mine, you don't have to listen to it and even if it got voted to -1 it's still just an unpopular opinion, not a censored one. Not that the moderation system is really supposed to be a popularity contest anyway.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
'fraid so, sarcasm truly is dead.. killed by political correctness.
Demonstrably untrue. Else I'd be getting deliriously drunk at your funeral.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
It is interesting to see this argument to be coming up again but reverse from the previous generation. During the 80s it was hard fought on the left in America (at least in print and film) that nudity could be presented acceptably, even in underage girls, if the content was asexual objectively. The right argued against it for ethical reasons and were accused of slippery slope beliefs and moralizing. I dont know Zuckerberg's real politics but he is considered left of center socially. If this was banned as part of a no exceptions policy on underage nudity he would basically be taking the rights position from the mid 80s (Jerry Falwell!) It seems the argument against is the historical importance of the photo, and current modern propaganda (without making a moral judgement either way) against war in general and specific tactics and weaponry. It begs the question however, why is facebook a necessary medium. Facebook is neither a journalistic outlet, a historical medium, or an advocacy group. In fact, to facilitate its goals, it makes sense that facebook would want to avoid becoming an outlet of gruesome war photos, films or images of murders, surgical or autopsy images and the like. If allowing this image, facebook also decided postings of aborted fetuses were also allowed to appear in your timelines, how many would still be on board. All of those would be equally controversial, but also as subjectively valuable to various advocacy proponents.
News for Nerds daily FB is not the news story.
...corporations in collusion with Google and click-based advertising are turning news into banal clickbait.
Facebook is not fascist--it is a software tool that can and does empower personal expressions of fascism through easy-to-use filters that reinforce and promote one's personal echo chamber. It can also do the opposite and tear down all the walls of the echo chamber, and turn into a panopticon that provides the viewer with as vast a display of the various facets of humanity as possible. The latter is how I've constructed my FB feed and it's akin to a Charles Stross novel (after he's gone and jacked himself up on coffee). It's exhilarating and mind opening--and guarantees I won't ever be trapped by my own biases.
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
They've since reinstated the photo.
I think that's why it was removed. Vietnam is one of many gruesome, murderous, and horrific spots of shame belonging to the U.S, and they want to erase that and give the illusion of the squeeky clean image. Futile.
> The difficulty is that the opposite,
You're begging the question.
For the majority of people ...
Exactly. The majority.
Maybe even the overwhelming majority of people.
The difficulty is, a minority of people can be a big, big problem.
It's not good enough to have rules that merely work for the "majority" of people in the "majority" of cases. It's not good enough to have rules that assume people are "smart enough to understand the _context_", rules that work except "only a complete idiot would--", or rules that work well except for "the insecurity / immature of people, and mis-use of the picture." People aren't all "smart enough", some people are "complete idiots", people are "insecure", people are "immature", and people "mis-use pictures".
And, worse, you know what? Those people point to you as the one who "isn't smart enough", is "a complete idiot", and "insecure", "immature", and probably "mis-use pictures".
oof! You're gonna die waitin'
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Keep telling yourself that, old timer.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
Don't have to. My Tarot reading said so
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
If you think you can read an online news article at Aftenposten and comment on it, you should know that this newspaper will deny you commenting on important news. Allowing the possibility of negative sentiments to show in important national or international news is something that this newspaper will prohibit.
Aftenposten also bans anonymous comments, and who knows how terrible their system of moderation really is.
Also, In my experience, Aftenposten lied in reporting about Ban Ki Moon's speech at UN some time ago. Instead of translating one English word straight over to Norwegian in one word, Aftenposten instead wrote a sentence effectively demonizing the particular subject in question in Moon's speech. When confronted by this over email, and despite several emails back and forth, the journalist pretended to not even understand how a particular quote from the speech would be understood as fraudulent when adding what apparently was false statement into the quoted speech.
this why facebook basics not allowed apple better look out if they try to ban any news app.