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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.
If Facebook is considered a 'mainstay of democratic society' you know the news media is complete fucking disconnected from reality.
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.
I am no fan of Facebook and their communist leanings, but do people really think it's Zuckerberg sitting at his desk clicking a "nix" button on these things? It's some hipster making 15 bucks an hour reading through a word document that tells them how and what to do.
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.
You know, you post constantly, and I kind of want to put together a collection of your finest moments which makes me sure you're about 13 years old, but yes, Facebook is allowed to choose what they want to show the public, and everybody else is allowed to call them out on what they choose to do. Do you understand that's how freedom works? Yes, you're free to do what you want, and I'm free to criticize you for it. And if Facebook chooses to act this way, and enough people voice their criticism, they can either change their ways, or risk losing a customer base.
Is what I'm talking about too complicated for you? And I'm speaking down to you, because I do think it would be worth your time to go back and re-read most of your posts and see how they make you come across as a very immature individual.
No it isn't. Even Italy has declared that certain things are off limits when they involve children.
You could turn this around and say "Internet lech complains that picture of naked little girl taken off of Facebook."
This is about decorum and not ideology. So the the cries of censorship are a little less meaningful. Facebook censors for content on a regular basis and gets a free pass for it. If you want to whine about something, whine about that.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
If you want to shock children about the Vietnam war, there are plenty of other photos to choose from. The summary execution of the Viet Cong partisan is a very good example.
The more I think about this particular picture the more I view that picture as being less about Vietnam than it is our "think of the children" bias that tends to short circuit any sense or reason. That goes for the picture itself as well as the objections too it. The Vietnam angle is really far less relevant.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
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.
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.
Then it's even more tragic that apparently hipsters today don't know that iconic picture that was probably critical to the change in the public opinion on the Vietnam war. Not knowing this means not understanding how reporting in war zones works today.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
I am no fan of Facebook and their communist leanings, but do people really think it's Zuckerberg sitting at his desk clicking a "nix" button on these things?
According to my Jewish friends, Zuckerberg personally nixes all pro-Israel posts and approves all anti-Israel posts.
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.
This picture we're talking about is a piece of history. That picture shaped what people felt about a war and it had a huge impact on the war itself, how it was waged and how it was seen.
Are you one of those rednecks that consider Michelangelo's David porn 'cause it's "just a stone guy with his wang out"?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You're assuming they've even heard of the vietnam war.
A Facebook spokesperson has given a written statement saying that they stand by their decision to censor the image. It is not "someone working for Facebook" who has decided it, it is Facebook's decision as a company.
You would know all this if you read the article, but I do respect your strict adherence to the ban on reading the article.
the realization that you're right makes me profoundly sad...
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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
Yep, our wonderful school systems in action.
It also may have to do with millennial mind thought that "I don't have to learn anything, I can always Google it..."
So, there is no learned history would have put this photo into context, at least enough for them to look into it further.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
If you want to shock children about the Vietnam war, there are plenty of other photos to choose from. The summary execution of the Viet Cong partisan is a very good example.
Out of curiosity, why do you find that picture shocking? It was a very common occurrence that is authorized by the Geneva convention and the rules of war. He wasn't even a partisan, he was an NVA officer captured in civilian clothes near a mass grave and who admitted to carrying out the killings. Did you know the photographer that took the picture even regretted how the image was twisted into an anti-war icon because the photo didn't convey the circumstances surrounding the execution.
Personally, as someone with a history degree, and who as a child reread multiple times a (I believe Time) book set on Vietnam in their elementary school library, I found the image of the protesting monk burning himself to death to be much more shocking and powerful than the execution photo.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
“When I was making a World War II movie called ‘Fury,’ we did this boot camp for a week, and Logan Lerman, who was the youngest actor of the bunch — I think he was 21 — was given grunt detail. We gave him a watch and he had to keep track of how long it took us to eat and get in and out of our gear. One day he came to me and said the watch has stopped, and I said, ‘You’ve just got to wind it.’ He came back literally 15 minutes later and said, ‘Wait, how do you wind it?’"
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
This is about decorum and not ideology.
Ahhh, "decorum", another "go-to" excuse for censoring things that might be controversial or make someone feel bad, ashamed, or uneasy.
There's a place for decorum and then there are times it must be ignored in favor of the truth.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Indeed communist: Cultural hegemony is a Communist theory to manipulate the thoughts, culture and morality of the multi cultural society in order to make the parties (in this case it's Facebook) the only accepted world view among the public.
Having one single thing in common with certain theories held by certain communists definitely does not make one a communist. That's like saying Facebook is like my mum because she, too, has an internet connection.
Besides, you are misunderstanding the concept of cultural hegemony in Marxist and post-Marxist theory. It's mainly an observation of how things in fact work in society, which you could have known by skimming the first paragraph of your link. That some theorists also recognized that it may be turned around as a weapon was inevitable. Either notion is not particularly limited to communism and in time would have been recognized by any number of people of different political leanings, it just happens that Marx was quick to see it as with quite many other properties of modern capitalist societies.
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
I think, generally speaking, you're right, AC. Each generation is often ignorant of the events of the previous generation, while mocking the next generation for not knowing their history.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
You're assuming they've even heard of Vietnam.
Yep, our wonderful school systems in action.
You mean like here in Texas, where the state school board requires text books to refer to African American slaves as "workers", not to mention a long list of other Republican revisionist bullshit. Yeah, just like that. I'm pretty sure that next year, the books will conclude that we lost the Vietnam War because of "hippies".
If you want to shock children about the Vietnam war, there are plenty of other photos to choose from. The summary execution of the Viet Cong partisan is a very good example.
Out of curiosity, why do you find that picture shocking? It was a very common occurrence that is authorized by the Geneva convention and the rules of war.
No it isn't.
The Geneva convension is rather big on the rights of prisoners of war, you could in fact say it is the largest part of it, because it is. I am amazed you could get yourself to even believe that.
Commissioned officers captured in civilian clothing are considered spies and unlawful combatants and therefore not entitled to prisoner of war status. As an unlawful combatant as defined by the Geneva convention, they are eligible for but not guaranteed the rights and protections of a POW. If the status of the combatant is in doubt a "competent tribunal" is required to determine the status, but as the prisoner had already confessed to the act, been found in proximity to evidence of the act (the mass grave), and there were witnesses to the act his status was not in doubt and therefore a trial was not necessary. And summary executions of spies (during open conflict) and other unlawful combatants has been accepted practice for centuries.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Then it's even more tragic that apparently hipsters today don't know that iconic picture that was probably critical to the change in the public opinion on the Vietnam war. Not knowing this means not understanding how reporting in war zones works today.
I doubt that the picture made any difference in anyone's opinion for a couple of reasons.
One is that it took place in June 1972. The USA's withdrawal was nearly complete (down to around 25,000 troops from 500K).
The other is at that time everyone I knew was pretty solid on their opinions. Those who favored the USA's involvement were in an awkward position of supporting a war that the USA had plainly announced they were ending. Those who were against were having their way.
As for people who were on the fence, those tended to be looking at the rather complex Vietnam war situation from a point of view of both local and global events, and were already well aware that people suffer horrible injuries during war. Keep in mind that our (WWII and baby boomer) generation grew up on a steady stream WWII carnage and Nazi death camp pictures.
The press had already been keeping us well-supplied with pictures of dead children for some time and the alternative press showed even more graphic photos than the mainstream.
IMHO, what made the photo of Kim Phuc interesting was that she was naked and alive. There had been many pictures of naked and dead adults and children published before with the My Lai massacre of 1968 being among the most notable.
Here's another one from back then that I remember that I found far more unsettling than the Kim Phuc photo.
http://www.vets-helping-vets.c...
Think min-wage workers in the Philippines
https://www.wired.com/2014/10/...
Facebook is a private company. Facebook can "censor" whatever they want. There is no free speech issue.
Of course there is a free speech issue. Speech is being censored.
I agree there is no law being broken, and no legal challenge to bring against facebook. It's their site and their rules.
However, perhaps it should be illegal. Perhaps if a 'social media' site reaches a certain critical mass then it should assume some additional responsibilities to protect free speech. If lots of people are using facebook as their primary means of communication, then private entity or not, common carrier or not, it starts to matter.
Your 'its a private company' argument is simplistic at best. What happens to society if enough of the world is privatized? Does that mean we should just lay down and accept censorship.
Imagine a world where the phone company and the postal service have died out, replaced solely by private couriers, and social media companies. Are you willing to completely cede the ability to have a political discussion with anyone outside the room simply because socialmedia company won't let you post, courier company won't carry your letters.
If HP, Xerox, and Brother etc start producing smart printers that won't print 'offensive' content. Will you defend them as private companies and if you don't like it don't buy the printers!? Will you point out, that you can still use a paper and pencil so everything is fine.
That's just silly. You sit there in your little box claiming that since the law isn't being broken everything is fine. But everything is not fine, the world is changing, norms of communication are changing... the law needs to change with it.
Essentially... if we agree that facebook has become an important 'space' for society to discuss news, share opinions, and generally communicate with eachother -- then it stands to reason that we should protect freedom of speech on that hub, whether it is a private company or not, for the good of the society.
Just as a dictionary does not define words, but instead reflects how they are used; so it is with the law. The law does not DEFINE what is right and wrong -- it is written to serve the needs of society. And in the 21st century, it is arguable that society needs freedom of speech legal protections baked into their use of major social media sites.
There is no journalistic duty to do anything... Facebook isn't a news source, it's social media.
"Facebook News Feed - Welcome To The Stories That Matter
The objective of News Feed is to show you the stories that matter the most to you, every time. "
newsfeed.fb.com
Why can't it be *both* ? It's certainly trying very hard to get you use facebook as news source. So why exactly shouldn't it be considered one?
Probably not. Of the top of my head you would likely see napalm girl, the burning monk, the Afghan girl with green eyes, Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald, Tienanmen Square, Iwo Jima, Marylin Monroe on the subway grate, the V-J day kiss, and probably a few other common ones, also from those brief descriptions you probably know exactly what picture I am talking about. So while having 50 people generate a list of 20 important images will end up having more that 20 unique pictures it won't be anywhere close to 1000 unique pictures. You would probably end up with 100-150 pictures most of which would likely belong on the list.
Time to offend someone
Yeah, and *describing* how this works does not make cultural hegemony a "Communist theory to manipulate the thoughts" as the AC wrote to who I replied.
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
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.
No, it isn't. You have no "right" to post on Facebook. You speech isn't being censored, you're free to post it elsewhere..
You are arguing for what IS. Not necessarily what should be.
When the telephone was invented it too was established as private businesses. It wasn't a utility. It wasn't a common carrier. The FCC didn't even exist.
If Mr. Bell and whoever else owned the exchanges wanted to listen to your calls, or censor them, and they could have figured out how to record the calls, or censor them... they could have done so legally. It wasn't the government listening it. It wouldn't be the government censoring the calls. Indeed operators originally could listen in on calls, even interrupt calls to connect a priority call... it was company policy not to listen in or repeat things that they heard, but they could do it and it wasn't illegal. And if you didn't like the possibility of a Bell operator listening in or repeating it, you could write a letter instead.
Look how regulated telecom is now. For better and for worse. But on the for better side we absolutely have all kinds of rights surrounding the terms of use of the service, protection from warrantless wiretaps, privacy expectations against the phone company listening in with legal force behind them, as well as protections to access -- for example the telephone company must provide you service pretty much as long as you pay your bill and don't absue the connection itself. You can talk shit about them all you want and they can't cut your service... etc.
And this is -gasp- a private company! What about Mr. Bell, and his successors and their actual rights to decide what is and isn't allowed on their platforms?!!
Turns out the needs of society and the benefits to society of telecom regulation FAR outweigh any benefit to society from the usual rules for private enterprises.
You see where I'm going with this right?
I don't like it... it appears you don't like it, but that's our opinion on the matter. Our opinions don't get to override other's actual rights.
Major "Social media platforms" are just the next interation of communications. And as they gain traction and replace the phone networks and so forth; society has every right and even a duty to shape the terms of use and place obligations on thier operators for the benefit of society. Too many people too easily lose sight of this necessity.
Just as privately owned restaurants have to accommodate handicapped individuals with ramps and wider bathrooms and they have to submit to inspections from the health inspector who sets all kinds of rules on temperatures, storage, and food handling procedures that they have to follow if they want to serve food to the public... the requirements override the 'actual rights' of the owner to do whatever he wants with his restaurant.
So too can social media giants be regulated to accommodate freedom of speech, if we collectively decide it would be beneficial to the public as whole to do so.
I'm well over 60. I'm speaking as what would have been a liberal small-town southerner pseudo-hippie who moved to the big city, but I mostly felt the war was necessary. I would like to pretend I was otherwise, but that's the way it was.
Much of what you say is true, but ....
However I do not believe the photo was that big a deal at the time. We already had plenty.
And it certainly had no effect on the USA's role in the war because we had already withdrawn almost all our troops when the photo was taken.
At that time, 1972, the USA had about 25,000 troops in-country compared to the NVA and ARVN armies of well over a million each.
This picture, and some others of a similar nature, tore down this world view of the just, clean war, where only the bad guys kill women and children, and no US bomb ever hurts anyone but the baddies that want to establish a Commie dictatorship everywhere on the planet.
Well, no. That's just not true.
The vast majority of people simply did not have any version of that opinion by 1972. I personally had not met anyone that ignorant back then, but I have to grant that such a person may have existed. Do you really think that generation was that stupid? Where do you think the millions of protesters came from?
For example, the My Lai massacre had already happened four years before. That was in 1968 although it didn't get in the news until the next year. It was widely and continually reported. Everyone knew. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
It is an excellent photo for historical purposes because it does show how war so strongly impacts the civilian population in a way that piles of corpses cannot.
However it is usually presented in a way that implies this was done by the USA, but the soldiers in the background are Vietnamese, and the pilot that dropped the napalm was Vietnamese, and the photographer was Vietnamese. At some point the Vietnamese people should get some blame for that war.
Also, I had many friends who did go to Vietnam and many of those went into combat.
Almost all of them were fine with the war other than the fact that being in combat is an unpleasant experience. It seems like they thought fighting communism is a good cause even if the leadership was screwing it up. I dunno about other areas of the country but in the south the soldiers were generally well respected.