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Facebook Is Collaborating With The Israeli Government To Determine What Should Be Censored (go.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ABC News: The Israeli government and Facebook agreed to work together to determine how to tackle incitement on the social media network, a senior Israeli Cabinet minister said Monday. The announcement came after two government ministers met top Facebook officials to discuss the matter. The Facebook delegation is in Israel as the government pushes ahead with legislative steps meant to force social networks to rein in content that Israel says incites violence. Israel has argued that a wave of violence with the Palestinians over the past year has been fueled by incitement, much of it spread on social media sites. It has repeatedly said that Facebook should do more to monitor and control the content, raising a host of legal and ethical issues over whether the company is responsible for material posted by its users. Both Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan and Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked, two key figures in Israel's battle against the alleged online provocations, participated in Monday's meeting. Erdan's office said they agreed with Facebook representatives to create teams that would figure out how best to monitor and remove inflammatory content, but did not elaborate further. Erdan and Shaked have proposed legislation that seeks to force social networks to remove content that Israel considers to be incitement. An opposition lawmaker has also proposed a bill seeking to force social networks to self-monitor or face a fine. Facebook said in a statement "online extremism can only be tackled with a strong partnership between policymakers, civil society, academia and companies, and this is true in Israel and around the world." The company did also say that its community standards "make it clear there is non place for terrorists or content that promotes terrorism on Facebook." ABC News reports that "over the past four months Israel submitted 158 requests to Facebook to remove inciting content and another 13 requests to YouTube," according to Shaked. "She said Facebook granted some 95 percent of the requests and YouTube granted 80 percent." All of this adds to the censorship controversy that is currently surrounding Facebook. Last week, Norway's largest newspaper accused Mark Zuckerberg of abusing power after his company decided to censor a historic photograph of the Vietnamese "Napalm Girl," claiming it violated the company's ban on "child nudity."

20 of 232 comments (clear)

  1. How about.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    genocide. Yeah, let's censor genocide.

    1. Re:How about.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Jews, the eternal victims in their own eyes, joining together to victimize others, and censor any reports of that.
      More they use their much propagated 'victim' status to morally blackmail and cover-up their own well substantiated crimes (genocide, ethnic cleansing, land grabs, apartheid laws, rape, torture, deliberate child killings on a mass scale, spying, corruption and influence pending of western governments, etc., etc..) less credibility and sympathy there will be for their true past sufferings.

    2. Re:How about.... by Plus1Entropy · · Score: 2

      Do I think the actions of the Israeli government equate to genocide? No. But it's clear from many of their actions that the lives of Palestinian civilians are of little-to-no value. Netanyahu's quote barely hides the fact that he never lets civilians get in the way of bombing the ever-loving crap out of anywhere that he even remotely suspects a member of Hamas might be.

      In the 2014 Israeli-Gaza conflict, which lasted only 7 weeks, they killed 2,251 Palestinians, around 1,400 (65%) of whom were civilians according to the UN Human Rights Committee. Over the last 2 years, coalition air-strikes have killed 1,436 civilians in Iraq and Syria. Had the Gaza conflict lasted this long, at the same rate, Israel would have killed over 20,000 civilians by now. That's more than ISIS, who have killed around 15,000 civilians in that time. So in spite of what the second article you quoted implies, the Israeli military is actually pretty good at indiscriminately killing civilians, at least as good as ISIS is.

      I must say I'm particularly disturbed by the argument that article makes. What an incredibly glib way to dismiss the violence on both sides. Almost as if to say "We can kill as many of the other side as we want, as long as their population is growing! The faster it's growing, the more we can kill!" I don't care who you are, that should make you sick to your stomach. "Was 9/11 really that bad? I mean after all, the US population grew in 2001. If Al-Qaeda really wanted to kill Americans, wouldn't the population of the US be going down?" Holy shit what a fucked up way to think.

      --
      Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
    3. Re:How about.... by peppepz · · Score: 3, Informative
      To be fair, the term "Palestine" was already in use back in the ancient Egypt, it wasn't invented by the Romans. Also, the Romans never ethnically cleansed the region of the whole Jewish population: they banned them from residing in Jerusalem (which happened, to put things into context, after the Jews lost multiple wars, that themselves started, and that resulted in the killing of hundreds of thousands of Greek and Roman people living in the region). In fact, many Jews already lived outside of Judaea before the Bar Kochba revolt, and many continued living inside of Judaea after.

      (I'm not saying this to deny the facts that the Jews have a history of continued persecution and that the state of Israel has a right to exist and to defend itself.)

    4. Re:How about.... by peppepz · · Score: 2

      No population of today has much to do with the same population of the 5th century BC, anywhere, but especially so in an area, ranging from Turkey to India, where many country borders were pretty much drawn by colonial forces as recently as some decades ago. Therefore I think that using the narration of ancient history, either accurate or conveniently spun, to deny legitimation for a whole modern population, is silly. This holds true for both the Israeli and the Palestinians. There are two communities living there, today, and I suspect that most of them barely know who their grandparents are, let alone care about where their ancestors were living before Christ, and just want to live a peaceful life in the place where they were born; unfortunately I'm the least qualified person on Earth to suggest them a way to reach this goal.

  2. Bold claims by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The company did also say that its community standards "make it clear there is non place for terrorists or content that promotes terrorism on Facebook."

    Even when the terror is being incited by a major state like the US or China? Or Israel? Somehow I doubt they're going to stick by this.

  3. The death of unpopular thought by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And there it is boys and girls, the sanitation of unapproved thoughts. Brought to you by Facebook.

  4. Why? by amiga3D · · Score: 2

    So pointless. Censorship so seldom works, all it does is make you lose credibility.

  5. Re:Incitement in Hebrew by harrkev · · Score: 2, Interesting

    You can bet a Jewish-founded and Jewish-funded site is going to do zero in regards to Hebrew language incitement against the Palestinians or Iranians or anyone else out of favor there.

    I hate replying to an AC, but can you show me some Jewish incitement?

    The Palestinians actually had a hate-based children's show called Tomorrow's Pioneers. Yes, this was a show aimed at small children, and tried to teach them that killing Jews is a good thing. Show me ANYTHING comparable that the Jews have done.

    There is also a "holiday" called Quds day this is sort of a Muslim "we hate the Jews" celebration. Once again, show me an Israeli holiday focused on killing Muslims.

    --
    "-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
  6. The Invisible Hand expected in 3... 2... 1... by Ungrounded+Lightning · · Score: 3, Interesting

    "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it" - John Gilmore

    And in a competitive marketplace, failure to provide a desired service doesn't permanently suppress the service. Instead it provides a market opportunity for competition.

    So Facebook and YouTube start censoring certain viewpoints? Suddenly there's a customer base for their (current or potential) competition: people with those viewpoints, people who want to see those viewpoints, and people who want to be able to post or view without censorship and/or distortion from its built-in biases.

    Institutional and/or governmental suppression just creates a "forbidden fruit" attraction - especially for adolescents in the "Young Warrior" age group, THE primary target for anti-establishment military recruitment.

    Alcohol prohibition created a generation of drunks and organized crime to supply them, drug prohibition (and the "drug war") has done the same for at least THREE generations of drug users, McCarthyist anti-Communism created a backlash that has become institutionalized. I could go on - at least as far back as Rome and the Christians.

    These all show that attempts to directly suppress ideas and social movements tend to be counter-productive. Why should a Facebook / Israel government attempt to suppress Palestinians, ISIS, or other groups they dislike be any more effective?

    --
    Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
  7. Re:On the plus side by Opportunist · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Thoughts are not crimes, unless you have no problem with introducing thoughtcrime.

    Acting upon those thoughts can be a crime, though, but that's like saying we should outlaw chemistry because it can be used to know how to build bombs.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  8. Re:I feel an irregular verb coming on by another_twilight · · Score: 2

    or doesn't commending 9/11 with a call to complete it by hitting the White House and Capitol Hill strike you as unacceptable?

    I disagree with both the commendation and the call to further violence, but it is only when we disagree with what someone is saying that we are tested on our commitment to the principle of the free exchange of information and ideas. To be clear, I do not wish to see statements, such as above, censored or blocked (to paraphrase Hall wrt Voltaire).

    Let them speak. If the idea has no merit, it will have as much impact as any other rant or rave of the fringe lunatics. If, on the other hand, there is some group of people who might be swayed by the ideas, then the problem doesn't lie with the message but with the circumstances that have created such a group or allowed them to arise. Treat the cause, not the symptoms.

  9. God's chosen people by frovingslosh · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Yup. Nothing like letting a group of people who claim that God has a deal with them that he will always side with them over others decide what is and isn't acceptable for others to say.

    --
    I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
    1. Re:God's chosen people by silanea · · Score: 2

      [...] the modern, diverse, multi-racial, secular, civil rights based, gay rights embracing, parliamentary democracy known as Israel [...]

      There are two Israels down there? Interesting. The one I always read about in the news is run by a racist militant government violating international law. Oh, sorry, but saying so apparently makes me an anti-semite.

      --
      Rudolf Hess edited Mein Kampf. He was the very first grammar nazi.
  10. Re:I feel an irregular verb coming on by smooth+wombat · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Given the flow of low level attacks against civilian targets in Israel over the years,

    You mean low level attacks against civilians in Palestine by Israelis over the years. It is well known and well documented that Jews who go on to Palestinian land and destroy their crops are for all intents and purposes, never caught and those who might be implicated are never punished.

    As we saw when a Jewish terrorist burned alive a Palestinian mother and her child, punishment against Jews are laughable at best and non-existent on the whole. No Jew has ever had their house destroyed when they commit a terrorist act and never, to my knowledge, has a Jew ever been put in solitary confinement for whatever terrorist act they have committed.

    So spare us how it's acceptable to ban one form of speech when the Israeli government not only condones such acts but helps them when it uses the power of its military to force Palestinians off the land and out of the homes they have lived in before Israel even existed.

    --
    We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
  11. Re: Incitement in Hebrew by Nidi62 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How about demolishing the houses of the families of Palestinians accused of attacking Israelis? Or continuously building heavily fortified settlements in Palestinian territory against international law? Do either of those things count as incitement? I swear, sometimes Israel is like a little kid that keeps poking a beehive with a stick then comes crying when they get stung.

    --
    The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
  12. Re:Incitement in Hebrew by Rockoon · · Score: 2

    That's only a problem if you're trapped with criminals.

    Thats exactly what the people doing it would say.

    --
    "His name was James Damore."
  13. Re: Incitement in Hebrew by cunina · · Score: 2

    You have some "much needed" money in your wallet, please hand it over immediately.

  14. Pot Kettle Black by Sir+Holo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    FTA: Israel has argued that a wave of violence with the Palestinians over the past year has been fueled by incitement, much of it spread on social media sites.

    Yeah, those 40-foot-high walls that Israel is plopping down through the middle of Palestinian cities has absolutely nothing to do with the anger of Palestinians at Israel's illegal seizure of their land, or the destruction of the (200+ yr-old) olive orchards at-will. Or further their making even a modicum of a 'normal life' impossible for the refugees of former Palestinian territory – stolen by expansionist Israeli governing parties from Palestinians.

    Any and all "agreed-upon" borders have been violated by Israel. Palestinian children throw stones to voice their anger – and Israeli helicopter gunships fire missiles into Palestinian homeland territories.

    This "story" of placing blame for censorship on private companies like FaceBook is a complete diversion from the actual reality of what is going on in that territory.

  15. Re:Incitement in Hebrew by Rockoon · · Score: 4, Insightful

    What do you mean prison? They're free to leave and settle in Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia or Turkey any time they want.

    Lebanon sticks them in camps and wont give them citizenship (for 68 years now.)
    Egypt? The home of the Arab League, whose member States are barred from granting citizenship to Palestinians.
    Saudi Arabia? Member of the Arab League, whose member States are barred from granting citizenship to Palestinians.
    Turkey? Until 2 years ago they didnt even allow Palestinians to work or go to school is the country, and since then they still arent allowed to even apply for citizenship.
    Syria? Fucking lol you fucking ignorant fuck.

    Let me translate what you just fucking said: The Palestinians are free to go somewhere else where they wont be a citizen either.

    STFU you fucking racist.

    --
    "His name was James Damore."