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Facebook Is Deleting Accounts at the Direction of the US and Israeli Governments

theintercept.com

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Re: Facebook Is Deleting Accounts at the Direction of the US and Israeli Governments

#31

Post by nradov »

saas_co_de wrote: post #5

There is no way Facebook can satisfy the competing demands of different political factions and their own users so the more they capitulate to political demands the more users they will drive away and the more radical the demands on them will become. Hopefully this intensifies their downward spiral into irrelevance.

There's no technical reason why Facebook can't present different views and filters on the same underlying data depending on which country an HTTP request comes from. Personally I find that kind of collaboration with censorship disturbing, but they clearly have the engineering talent and financial motivation to make it work.

I doubt this will drive many users away. Most people just don't care. And most users' friends are in the same country so they'll still have consistent experiences.

Re: Facebook Is Deleting Accounts at the Direction of the US and Israeli Governments

#32

Post by musage »

doggydogs94 wrote: post #12
Barrin92 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes, the average Palestinian without any capital or internet access will just go into his garage and start a new facebook. What a facetious and despicable comment. As the article points out that Facebook is one of the most important news sources for Palestinians. This is effectively shutting them out of the modern communication system and a civil rights catastrophy.

In that case, you can help them secure the capital.

Or anything else, except speaking up, as demonstrated here. I mean, someone made a comment implying FB only removes really nasty, criminal things, but they don't get told that "it's Facebook's business" (even though it would apply just as much, but never is applied, to supportive comments), instead the response that adds some grounding in reality does. This is a discussion site, and the correct response to GP is to respond to GP, not do something else elsewhere.

Re: Facebook Is Deleting Accounts at the Direction of the US and Israeli Governments

#33

Post by superioritycplx »

yakitori wrote: post #23
saas_co_de wrote: post #5

There is no way Facebook can satisfy the competing demands of different political factions and their own users so the more they capitulate to political demands the more users they will drive away and the more radical the demands on them will become. Hopefully this intensifies their downward spiral into irrelevance.

> There is no way Facebook can satisfy the competing demands of different political factions and their own users so the more they capitulate to political demands the more users they will drive away and the more radical the demands on them will become. Yep. This is why FB, GOOGL, etc needed to be "neutral". The day they caved in is the day their "promise" ended. The demands of censorship will continue. FB is deluding…

GOOGL caved in when Eric Schmidt joined Hillary's camp.

http://www.businessinsider.com/wikileaks-emails-google-eric-...

Re: Facebook Is Deleting Accounts at the Direction of the US and Israeli Governments

#35

Post by pjc50 »

saas_co_de wrote: post #5

There is no way Facebook can satisfy the competing demands of different political factions and their own users so the more they capitulate to political demands the more users they will drive away and the more radical the demands on them will become. Hopefully this intensifies their downward spiral into irrelevance.

There may be no way to satisfy the demands, and countries will ban companies that don't comply. It's not a new problem; here's a 2003 article about Microsoft having trouble due to shipping a timezone map.

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20030822-00/?p=...

Re: Facebook Is Deleting Accounts at the Direction of the US and Israeli Governments

#36

Post by forapurpose »

Protostome wrote: post #30

Where is the proof that the Israeli officials are directly involved in closing these accounts? Couldn't find any in the article.

I don't know what you mean by proof, but it's filled with information that supports the claim. For example,

Israeli Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked said Tel Aviv had submitted 158 requests to the social media giant over the previous four months asking it to remove content it deemed “incitement.” She said Facebook had granted 95 percent of the requests.

Re: Facebook Is Deleting Accounts at the Direction of the US and Israeli Governments

#37

Post by prove_np »

pwaai wrote: post #27
prove_np wrote: post #17

It sad to see such an article in the top posts at HW... I wouldn't even bother to reply if not for good people getting the wrong picture on what's going on. Yes, Facebook does delete posts (Nothing new so far), though only ones which violate Facebook's rules. I live in Israel and not once I've been shown some horrible video of Palestinians attacking locals. I'm not here to blame, nor generalize. I'm saying that this…

> I live in Israel and not once I've been shown some horrible video of Palestinians attacking locals. Well, if you bury your head in the sand on a hot summer afternoon and proceed to claim its night, it's hard to take further claims seriously. I will agree that there is extremists on both ends that just furthers their own political/economic interests and muddies the water. ...but my analysis of the conflict over ther…

I encourage you to come over and see how things actually go by. People are getting killed by terrorists who happen to be 16 years old kid brain-washed by the same news you and I are having an argument over. My point was that we've never demonstrated the same approach to the so-called beef. We do not go out to the streets, gun blazing, and start killing. I'm sure some of you will hop and go say "Right, you prefer to do it in the fields, with soldiers bullying and taking lands they don't own." For fuck sake, give me a break. For all I care, my neighbor could be Arab and we can be BFFs as long as the killing-spree stops. I'm not against Palesintians, nor any Arabs. I care for my family and friends being slaughtered in our fucking streets and we have nothing to do about it.

Re: Facebook Is Deleting Accounts at the Direction of the US and Israeli Governments

#38

Post by jpalomaki »

yakitori wrote: post #23
saas_co_de wrote: post #5

There is no way Facebook can satisfy the competing demands of different political factions and their own users so the more they capitulate to political demands the more users they will drive away and the more radical the demands on them will become. Hopefully this intensifies their downward spiral into irrelevance.

> There is no way Facebook can satisfy the competing demands of different political factions and their own users so the more they capitulate to political demands the more users they will drive away and the more radical the demands on them will become. Yep. This is why FB, GOOGL, etc needed to be "neutral". The day they caved in is the day their "promise" ended. The demands of censorship will continue. FB is deluding…

Is it possible to be "neutral" and yet keep sensible limits for what is allowed and what is not?

Enforcing the rules is not straightforward and different parties tend to view things differently. Somebody sees hate speech, someone else valid criticism.

Re: Facebook Is Deleting Accounts at the Direction of the US and Israeli Governments

#39

Post by [deleted] »

Barrin92 wrote: post #14
doggydogs94 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In that case, you can help them secure the capital.

The problem isn't just capital in the sense of fiat currency, the problem is that they have no state and no rule of law, no incorporation into the global economy either formally or factually. There is no real way to even operate a global or local industry without the basic requirements, they are excluded from the rest of the world. There isn't a single serious facebook competitor in the entire United States. Please d…

[deleted]

Re: Facebook Is Deleting Accounts at the Direction of the US and Israeli Governments

#40

Post by this2shallPass »

forapurpose wrote: post #36
Protostome wrote: post #30

Where is the proof that the Israeli officials are directly involved in closing these accounts? Couldn't find any in the article.

I don't know what you mean by proof, but it's filled with information that supports the claim. For example, Israeli Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked said Tel Aviv had submitted 158 requests to the social media giant over the previous four months asking it to remove content it deemed “incitement.” She said Facebook had granted 95 percent of the requests.

This information does support the claim that the Israeli government submitted requests to Facebook. I wonder if Facebook publishes information on how many requests each government makes.

Aside: It's funny the article says Tel Aviv submitted the requests, when the office is in Jerusalem http://www.justice.gov.il/ContactUs/Pages/default.aspx. Subtle.

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