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Facebook blocked posts by a militia group opposed to the Turkish government

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Re: Facebook blocked posts by a militia group opposed to the Turkish government

#61

Post by nyerp »

Facebook has been working on a clever solution to this kind of dispute: they have been installing a global network of indestructible monoliths with control panels which provide local governments complete authority to take down controversial content within a particular geographic location. Facebook no longer has to make a judgement call regarding whether a requester has a monopoly on violence within a particular region; control over the monolith implies genuine authority over the relevant area.

(jk... I think.)

Re: Facebook blocked posts by a militia group opposed to the Turkish government

#62

Post by boomboomsubban »

sdeframond wrote: post #49
postingawayonhn wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Freedom of speech/expression is a right of every individual on this planet. Any regime that does not support that should face pushback from its citizens, businesses, and other countries.

Respectful nitpick: maybe you mean "Freedom of speech/expression should be a right of every individual on this planet" Also, one thing is to wish for universal freedom of speech, another one is for a given community, or country, to impose its views on free speech (and limitations thereof) to another community. Edit: typo

>should be

No, "is" is correct. Everybody has the same intrinsic right to free speech at birth. You think that given communities should choose for themselves whether that right can be infringed.

This is basically the US' answer to the "divine right of monarchy." If you say that speech "should be" the right l of every individual, you are giving the government an automatic place of authority over the citizen,claiming they get to choose what rights people have.

Re: Facebook blocked posts by a militia group opposed to the Turkish government

#63

Post by sdeframond »

cblconfederate wrote: post #55
sdeframond wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Respectful nitpick: maybe you mean "Freedom of speech/expression should be a right of every individual on this planet" Also, one thing is to wish for universal freedom of speech, another one is for a given community, or country, to impose its views on free speech (and limitations thereof) to another community. Edit: typo

It is a Human Right according to the UN declaration. https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/ both Turkey and facebooks home, the US , have signed it

That's correct.

As an anecdote, I was pretty shocked when some foreigner friend told me "universal" human rights can actually be perceived as more of a "western imperialism" thing. While I still think human rights are a thing, I can understand that they have been used hypocritically many times through history.

Regarding TFA, I am unsure whether I'd rather FB to impose US's views on freespeech to Turkey or to respect whatever the local government is telling it to do.

Re: Facebook blocked posts by a militia group opposed to the Turkish government

#64

Post by hnarn »

discobot1 wrote: post #4

Facebook is following laws of countries it operates in, truly shocking

This is such a reductive argument. Are you saying that a private corporation is never responsible for its actions if they are compliant with a nations laws?

Is there no limit to what you consider OK for a corporation to do within a nations borders, as long as the action is sanctioned by the government? Do all corporations have literally zero responsibility to uphold any kind of moral that isn’t enforced in local law?

Re: Facebook blocked posts by a militia group opposed to the Turkish government

#65

Post by dalbasal »

throwaway316943 wrote: post #40
dalbasal wrote: post #13

There are no good solutions here. Should Facebook ignore Turkish law? Should they go by the US' terror organisation list instead? Should they maintain their own "terrorist list" alongside Turkey & the US'? Separate classifications of illegal or immoral content for in every jurisdiction? You think there are political biases in American FB or Twitter? ... Try FB in a language or political context that no FB executive e…

The only good solution is for social media to be a neutral service provider open to all. It would destroy Facebook’s business model but that’s a good thing.

Or put another way, the problem isn't what facebook (or twitter) chooses to do... it's what they are.

The problem is "neutral service provider" means something very different to nerds than it does to policy wonks that can actually do something about it.

To us, FB should be a protocol like email, rss or www. That means there is no FB, no $1trn market cap, no $90bn revenue stream. To them, it means something like "common carrier." That means keeping fb, but regulating it so they can't exclude anyone. The whole thing will be written with an eye to keeping revenue streams intact.

FB are already making the argument that such things will make it impossible for them to "compete with China." That already smells of too big to fail.

The absurd thing here is that FB's service is not scarce at all. No matter what happens with fb, there will be no shortages of social media. FB can exist. It can be a $5trn company. It can cease to exist. It can shrink 1000X. The quantity and quality of online social media is not more or less because of those things.

All those books about "abundance" 10-15 years ago were (in typical internet fashion) 10-15 years too early. FB is the real life example of abundance economics at work.

Re: Facebook blocked posts by a militia group opposed to the Turkish government

#66

Post by aranelsurion »

DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #22
komahirrimbuke wrote: post #12

I'll leave this here in case anyone wants to argue YPG is not PKK. YPG is a literal terrorist organization. Imagine ISIS had a Facebook page. "Senior US general explains rebranding YPG away from terror group PKK" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHpaIO-Pj10

depends on the pov. What's a terrorist to one side is a freedom fighter to the other. from this month: > ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Monday his ruling AK Party and its nationalist allies may start work on drafting a new constitution, less than four years after overhauling the previous constitution to grant his office sweeping powers. the coup was justified and it's a tragedy Erdogan ha…

While I agree with the view that Erdogan/AKP might be the worst thing that happened to Turkey, the people behind the coup in 2016 wouldn't make things any better.

The group behind the coup had a perfectly happy marriage with AKP until around 2013, and both of them being islamic groups together they destroyed whatever they could from the previously mostly-secular state. [1] Whatever you see as a problem in Turkey today (say, non-existent separation of powers, human rights abuses, journalists in jail, collapsed legal system, government censorship, economic troubles... and a long list of other things) had their beginnings in this period.

Most of the power they amassed in Turkey was the direct result of this alliance with AKP, and their people filled the government posts while AKP replaced the old guard. After 2013, as a result of internal power struggles this alliance broke up, and in 2016 this organization attempted the coup you mentioned. If they had their way, power would be shifted from one islamic political organization (AKP) to another ("Cemaat"/The Service/FETO or whatever people call them nowadays) who has even less legitimacy.

Anyways, sorry for the wall of text on this comparatively trivial matter, it's just that I find it unfortunate that those guys are now being seen/depicted as some kind of failed saviours in the western media, while in reality they are anything but.

[1] which was maintained under the shadow of the army and wasn't nowhere near perfect either. Though I'd personally take that one over this one any day.

Re: Facebook blocked posts by a militia group opposed to the Turkish government

#67

Post by sdeframond »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #62
sdeframond wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Respectful nitpick: maybe you mean "Freedom of speech/expression should be a right of every individual on this planet" Also, one thing is to wish for universal freedom of speech, another one is for a given community, or country, to impose its views on free speech (and limitations thereof) to another community. Edit: typo

>should be No, "is" is correct. Everybody has the same intrinsic right to free speech at birth. You think that given communities should choose for themselves whether that right can be infringed. This is basically the US' answer to the "divine right of monarchy." If you say that speech "should be" the right l of every individual, you are giving the government an automatic place of authority over the citizen,claiming t…

Yes it is correct, in theory at least ;)

Re: Facebook blocked posts by a militia group opposed to the Turkish government

#68

Post by kristianc »

wyattpeak wrote: post #53
kristianc wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is simply tu quoque - clearly there are limits to free speech in every country but where possible the right to free expression should outweigh the the state’s desire to silence political opposition. Twitter was a pretty good example of this actually - protecting people’s right to hear from the President (despite him saying and doing many things that would have got regular users banned) right up until the point w…

> This is simply tu quoque Not the original poster, but I don't think it is. The problem is that, since all countries acknowledge that there should be limits on speech, it's inappropriate for one country (or company, for that matter) to decide what should be the limit in another country. If it were black and white, there'd be a much stronger case. But this is a company saying "our shade of grey is preferable to yours…

The issue is that once you go down that road, you preclude discussion of any issues by one country / company if that country also imposes limitations.

You need to pick a principle somewhere - and I’m not sure ‘we’ll simply block access to any material the host government finds objectionable’ is going to be one that’s going to lead us toward a better world.

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