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Facebook shuts down swedish pro kurdish page

rojavakommitteerna.com

21–23 of 23 posts

Re: Facebook shuts down swedish pro kurdish page

#21
This worries me. It has become acceptable for companies to shut down controvertial communities/forums. The precedent has been set that if you have an offensive community on your service, the appropriate action is to remove it.

The line between acceptable and unacceptable content is not clearly drawn, there is no trial or court system, and if a government was doing the same thing there would be strong freedom of speech concerns. If this continues, more and more controversial communities are going to be shut out of greater and greater portions of the web.

Communities like these are often important for challenging the status quo. It's not too hard to imagine that 50 years ago communities supporting homosexuality would be straddling some line of controversy. For example, Grindr would have almost certainly been illegal.

There are many reasons why it is important to protect the speech rights of people you disagree with. Important progressive ideas very often come from outside the realm of what is considered acceptable to the rest of society. The more we stamp out controversial and distasteful communities, the more at risk we become of supporting and perpetuating regressive ideas without even realizing it. People 50 years ago opposed homosexuality, and 350 years ago any religion outside of Catholicism was not tolerated. We don't have a good way today of knowing what things we do today that will seem horribly regressive 100 years from now, and we won't have a way of figuring it out if we don't allow controversial ideas to exist in our primary thought spaces.

Re: Facebook shuts down swedish pro kurdish page

#22
post #21

This worries me. It has become acceptable for companies to shut down controvertial communities/forums. The precedent has been set that if you have an offensive community on your service, the appropriate action is to remove it. The line between acceptable and unacceptable content is not clearly drawn, there is no trial or court system, and if a government was doing the same thing there would be strong freedom of speec…

The unsettling thing is how many people are willing to accept this sort of behavior, just because "it's a private company and can host what they want!" In a future where more and more of human communication is transmitted through more monopolized private channels, the people's ability to express themselves easily is curtailed.

Re: Facebook shuts down swedish pro kurdish page

#23

Gate between Kobane and Suruc has been open for years in order to support Kurdish forces and also injured people have been brought to Turkish State Hospital. I think they simply lie because at the same time a terrorist Kurdish group PKK -declared as terrorist by UN for years- is attacking from another border and unofficially they have links with this group. You know, politics always suck.

We came to Suruc from Stockholm 5 days ago and have since been trying to help the people of Kobane from here. Since the bombing at the Amara Centre the border has been made almost impossible to cross. If you try you will be shot on sight by the Turkish military. We heard heavy calibre shots ten minutes ago from that direction.

Even basic aid like water and medecins are difficult to get across. We stopped by the depot for shipments and saw at keast 6 trucks full of water. They were kept there for 4 days before let through. No reason given. There are other worse examples.

The point though is that the blocking of our page occured at the same time as when 65 pro-kurdish websites were closed down by Turkish authorities. It's not unlikely this ban is related. It's not difficult to organise a number of Facfbook accounts to mass report pages. Facebook should at least reconsider.

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