Facebook's censoring policy

IN SEPTEMBER OF last year, we noted that Facebook representatives were meeting with the Israeli government to determine which Facebook accounts of Palestinians should be deleted on the ground that they constituted “incitement.” The meetings — called for and presided over by one of the most extremist and authoritarian Israeli officials, pro-settlement Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked — came after Israel threatened Facebook that its failure to voluntarily comply with Israeli deletion orders would result in the enactment of laws requiring Facebook to do so, upon pain of being severely fined or even blocked in the country.

  Glenn Greenwald

Considering that Mark Zuckerberg is a businessman, even if he weren't pro-Israel or right wing, of course he would cooperate under that threat. I can't imagine many businessmen wouldn't.

The submission to Israeli dictates is hard to overstate: As the New York Times put it in December of last year, “Israeli security agencies monitor Facebook and send the company posts they consider incitement. Facebook has responded by removing most of them.”

[...]

In the weeks following those Facebook-Israel meetings, reported The Independent, “the activist collective Palestinian Information Center reported that at least 10 of their administrators’ accounts for their Arabic and English Facebook pages — followed by more than 2 million people — have been suspended.

[...]

Last March, Facebook briefly shut down the Facebook page of the political party, Fatah, followed by millions, “because of an old photo posted of former leader Yasser Arafat holding a rifle.”

[...]

What makes this censorship particularly consequential is that “96 percent of Palestinians said their primary use of Facebook was for following news.” That means that Israeli officials have virtually unfettered control over a key communications forum of Palestinians.

That was the point, I'm sure.

Calls by Israelis for the killing of Palestinians are commonplace on Facebook, and largely remain undisturbed.

[...]

One study found that “122,000 users directly called for violence with words like ‘murder,’ ‘kill,’ or ‘burn.’ Arabs were the No. 1 recipients of hateful comments.” Yet there appears to be little effort by Facebook to censor any of that.

I have the same objection to Facebook censoring with Twitter censoring. Actually threatening murder and violence should probably get you censored at the least, but otherwise, I think even hateful and untruthful speech are guaranteed rights under our constitution, and for good reason.

This morning, following a Twitter thread, I had to click on a link that warned me the tweets I was about to reveal might be profane. That seemed like a fair exchange. The only issue was that I'd have to take Facebook's word for it.

Of course, hiding tweets behind a "protective" link may just be more tempting for people. I understand Twitter decided their similar attempts to label tweets as fake news just made people more likely to look at them. Still, I don't think that's necessarily a problem. People should probably know what's going around that isn't true. The problem I have is that someone hired by Facebook is making these decisions. Even at that, it's up to the reader to be discerning and check things out. You can neither legislate or dictate common sense - or truth. And if you're going to try to do that, then why is Fox News not censored?

Okay, rant over. For now.

Indeed, as Al Jazeera concisely put it, “Facebook hasn’t met Palestinian leaders to discuss their concern.”

And Palestinian leaders are no threat to Facebook's bank account.

FACEBOOK NOW SEEMS to be explicitly admitting that it also intends to follow the censorship orders of the U.S. government. Earlier this week, the company deleted the Facebook and Instagram accounts of Ramzan Kadyrov, the repressive, brutal, and authoritarian leader of the Chechen Republic.

[...]

A Facebook spokesperson told the New York Times that the company deleted these accounts not because Kadyrov is a mass murderer and tyrant, but that “Mr. Kadyrov’s accounts were deactivated because he had just been added to a United States sanctions list and that the company was legally obligated to act.”

[...]

As the Times notes, this rationale appears dubious or at least inconsistently applied: Others who are on the same sanctions list, such as Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, remain active on both Facebook and Instagram. But just consider the incredibly menacing implications of Facebook’s claims.

What this means is obvious: that the U.S. government — meaning, at the moment, the Trump administration — has the unilateral and unchecked power to force the removal of anyone it wants from Facebook and Instagram by simply including them on a sanctions list. Does anyone think this is a good outcome?

When this article appeared a few days ago, I passed it by for inclusion in a post (I didn't even read it), because who doesn't already know how much control the US wields over our communications? Finally, today, after seeing yet another post about how incredible and scary this development is, I decided to comment. Obviously, that last scary statement contradicts one just in the preceding paragraph. The government has the power to force the removal of any account by putting them on the sanctions list, but President Maduro, whose country is on the sanctions list, hasn't been removed. Come on, Glenn. I expect better from you.

What other countries might be on the sanctions list whose leader's account hasn't been removed?  All of them?  If there are others whose accounts have been removed, why aren't they mentioned in this article?  Too little information here.

Does Facebook’s policy of blocking people from its platform who are sanctioned apply to all governments? Obviously not. It goes without saying that if, say, Iran decided to impose sanctions on Chuck Schumer for his support of Trump’s policy of recognizing Jerusalem as the Israeli capital, Facebook would never delete the accounts of the Democratic Party Senate minority leader — just as Facebook would never delete the accounts of Israeli officials who incite violence against Palestinians or who are sanctioned by Palestinian officials.

Wow. I REALLY expect better than that. Glenn is one of the last holdouts from accusing Russia of working with the Trump campaign to get him elected, rightfully demanding actual proof and evidence (which I have finally come to believe has already been provided). And yet here he's deciding, free of evidence that Facebook would never delete accounts of Israeli or US reps. He may well be right, but he has no proof of that. No evidence. At least he's offering none.

Just last month, Russia announced retaliatory sanctions against various Canadian officials and executives, but needless to say, Facebook took no action to censor them or block their accounts.

Nor, as far as we know, has Russia threatened to block Facebook in that country if they don't.

I have very rarely taken issue with Glenn Greenwald, but this is one instance where I have to.

As is always true of censorship, there is one, and only one, principle driving all of this: power. Facebook will submit to and obey the censorship demands of governments and officials who actually wield power over it, while ignoring those who do not.

Now THAT's something that "goes without saying." And it's certainly not just true of Facebook.

Calls for state censorship may often be well-intentioned — a desire to protect marginalized groups from damaging “hate speech” — yet, predictably, they are far more often used against marginalized groups: to censor them rather than protect them. One need merely look at how hate speech laws are used in Europe, or on U.S. college campuses, to see that the censorship victims are often critics of European wars, or activists against Israeli occupation, or advocates for minority rights.

Indeed. Now we're back on the same track.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

I think that's a mistake.  Clarke is a beligerent blowhard and routinely says ignorant and ugly shit.  But now, he'll have a case for claiming that he's being unfairly treated, and he'll get even more attention.