11 ms·

Facebook is censoring some posts on Indian Kashmir

98 points by yunque 10y ago

ProAm 10y ago
Facebook is not a news site, they can censor whatever they want. They are in the advertising sales business they'll tweak their product to maximize the returns on their business.
- triplesec 10y ago
  True as this may be in legal and business terms, facebook is also by its monopoly position a de facto news source and filter and ought to be held accountable for such to public standards of transparency.
  - zzleeper 10y ago
    True, which means laws can be passed to enforce this. Same with tobacco antitrust, trains, water, power, etc. Of course the costs might not be really worth it..
  - debaserab2 10y ago
    what exactly is Facebook a monopoly of?
    - MisterBastahrd 10y ago
      Disseminating news to luddites too lazy to move beyond facebook.
    - int_19h 10y ago
      For many people, the source of information. Yes, it does not match the nominal definition of a "monopoly", in a sense that those people are free to look for information elsewhere. But they don't, and so whatever narrative FB chooses to feed to them is what they will believe. I guess you could call it a monopoly on attention.
- j0e1 10y ago
  I agree. But I truly wish there was an open forum that wasn't influenced by government actors and with the same reach as Facebook. Maybe if Wikipedia had discussion rooms which were just as fancy and used by just as many people, it could prove vital during such times.
  - themihai 10y ago
    well.. there are open forums but people want facebook not forums.
    - carapace 10y ago
      Yeah, exactly. The "open forum" is called the Internet. People choose Facebook. (I don't like it but it happens organically.)
  - sbuttgereit 10y ago
    I expect that such forums actually exist to some extent and simply aren't very widely known or thought of as what they are. Facebook has name recognition and the advantage as being front-of-mind as a gathering place for friends and family; a place for serious and non-serious discussion. Other, more open forums, are likely to be more topical and niche in terms of appeal. In fact, it's likely that because Facebook is a gathering place first for the non-serious friend/family sort of communication, that you get any diversity of opinion and viewpoint at all. Having said that, you are very unlikely to be able to avoid point of view constraints on what's allowed to be posted. That might be officially via administration or by the biases of the group. Even on Hacker News, certain points of view are favored over others and the up/down vote system enforces that outside of Hacker News policy or administration.
  - patrickmay 10y ago
    Usenet still exists. It has the same reach as Facebook in terms of availability, but obviously less in terms of participants. I'd love to see it make a resurgence.
  - zaidf 10y ago
    The open forums would be blocked. The choice for companies like fb is either censor or get banned completely. Both shitty choices.
- bitchypat 10y ago
  Yep. And the news sites should report on Facebook's censorship so its users can make informed decisions on how and why they continue to use it. Seems like everything is working appropriately.
  - dmix 10y ago
    Market based equalization provides a balancing force - showing not everything requires gov regulation to correct bad behaviour :) Their popularity and role in influencing people has resulted in them getting even get more scrutiny than NYTimes and other media outlets who heavily shape and editorialize their coverage. If FB starts losing money because of outrage brought via media and loss of advertisers, then they will be punished for negative behaviour and work to avoid it. Otherwise, they own their web properties and are allowed to control the content as they wish.
    - aylmao 10y ago
      I don't think there can be enough outcry all at once to even dent facebook's profits at this point tbh. Can hardly see it.
- seangrant 10y ago
  Point being this is exactly what people were afraid of when Facebook tried to become an pseudo-ISP for India.
- gshulegaard 10y ago
  This is interesting...and actually brings up interesting questions when viewed in the context of states that place protections on freedom of speech. Don't really want to start a long debate...but for me I am not sure I believe that (at least in America), Facebook "can censor whatever they want." Not that I object to this application of censorship...just I don't think Facebook has carte blanche when it comes to censorship.
  - ProAm 10y ago
    Why not, its a private site, freedom of speech does not pertain to Facebook.
    - gruez 10y ago
      Right, legally it's okay for facebook to censor stuff. But ethically/morally, some people do not think that's the case because they feel they're abusing their large marketshare.
      - amyjess 10y ago
        Morally, they have the right to decide who they want to associate with.
      - ProAm 10y ago
        Ethics and morals with Facebook? They have a long troubled history of dealing with both. It's a company, and companies want to make money, that's the bottom line. Of course it's censored in their best interests.
    - gshulegaard 10y ago
      Well the obvious example is conflict of interest cases. Take the hypothetical situation where someone writes a negative exposé on Facebook privacy policies and then plugs a competitor. Suppose in this contrived example that Facebook systematically removes all related content to this exposé and bans the creator. On one hand Facebook is a private company. On the other they are built around a communication platform and communication is a constitutionally protect right in America. Moreover, this type of practice could be considered anti-competitive and subject to anti-trust regulation (a bit unusual, but there is precedent). I am not trying to advocate one or another view on this issue...more of trying to frame what I think is an interesting question: Where is the line where private rights give way to public rights...if at all?
- lazzlazzlazz 10y ago
  As tempting as the "profit motive explains all behavior" argument is, their policy against promoting terrorism explains this adequately.
  - cardigan 10y ago
    It's promoting terrorism if you're politically aligned with India. If you're instead politically aligned with most people living in Kashmir, it's not promoting terrorism, you see it instead as showing solidarity with the cause of freedom. It may be hard to understand, but most of the hundreds of thousands of people protesting in Kashmir right now are not in favor of terrorism. Instead they are incensed by what they see as the decades of Indian oppression and aggression, and Burhan Wani is only used as a symbol of something like "a young son of Kashmir who was driven to madness and made the ultimate sacrifice for freedom". Facebook's removal of posts is perceived as political censorship by a lot of people politically aligned with Kashmiri independence who are disgusted by terrorism in the same way the US public is. The Facebook censorship team probably just doesn't have anyone from Kashmir working there, and does not have a good enough grasp of Kashmiri public opinion. It is really not in line with Facebook's mission of promoting openness to be censoring these posts, and especially to be banning accounts who are posting what they see as legitimate political opinion (when their beliefs and feelings about terrorism are in line with US public opinion)
    - selimthegrim 10y ago
      What was Burhan Wani doing partnering with Islamist groups who supported expulsion of Pandits among other things? Is it like as long as the group uses enough Arabic words there are no red lines on behavior?
      - cardigan 10y ago
        Sorry I don't understand your question. Obviously very few people living in Kashmir support those groups, see polls.
    - devdas 10y ago
- ajamesm 10y ago
  I don't think anyone's in dispute as to whether they have the right to "tweak their product" (tweak, censor, curate, take your pick). But is it a good move to tweak like that? Facebook IS a news site (see: news articles in the right-hand bar), and in fact they're just coming off of allegations that they tweaked news stories to fit their corporate political biases. If those users start to feel like The Man is out to shape their opinion, and they limit their sharing and participating in response, then Facebook's capability to monetize those users will diminish.
- smb06 10y ago
  Facebook is a company that carries out its business in a country where there is free speech. They can modify their business however they want but they will be held accountable for their actions that limit a constitutionally given right.
squozzer 10y ago
Makes you wonder how FB would have handled the American Revolution.
- freshhawk 10y ago
  Why wonder, "Our Community Standards prohibit content that praises or supports terrorists, terrorist organizations or terrorism, and we remove it as soon as we’re made aware of it".
- ryandrake 10y ago
  * One weird trick to reduce your tea consumption! King George hates it! * New law in the Colonies that targets carriage drivers. Find out what it is! * Molly Pitcher extreme makeover! Ye won't believe the new look!
itg 10y ago
>Kashmir Solidarity Network Bullshit, it's a bunch of terrorists crying they can't spread their propoganda.
- selimthegrim 10y ago
  This is really a way to make them feel like 'atoot ang', keep it up.
amyjess 10y ago
Facebook generally has a policy prohibiting the posting of gore. If pictures of dead bodies and/or graphic wounds are being posted, it's no surprise FB would remove it.
- rajathagasthya 10y ago
  That's not why it was removed though. “Our Community Standards prohibit content that praises or supports terrorists, terrorist organizations or terrorism, and we remove it as soon as we’re made aware of it,” said a Facebook spokesman in India. If you have a bunch of people praising a dead leader of a terrorist group, it should come as no surprise that Facebook or any platform will ban them.
  - Asooka 10y ago
    One person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter.
DixonSeider 10y ago
Interesting background on Kashmir: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kashmir#1947_and_1948 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kashmir#1947_and_1948 Seems a plebiscite was to have taken place but did not happen. I'm guessing the majority would have voted to be part of Pakistan and not part of India. (which would have, of course, irked "minority" populations).
- palmanis 10y ago
  Those "minority" populations were forced out of Kashmir by the "majority" : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_cleansing_of_Kashmiri_Hindus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_cleansing_of_Kashmiri_H...
  - selimthegrim 10y ago
    I have to admit that it's ironic that a minority tired of its rights not being respected a) lets that happen to another minority (the Pandits) and b) wants to join another country with no codified minority rights
- ignoramous 10y ago
  The plebiscite is an outdated demand. A lot of Hindus native to the region were displaced by the insurgency in the 1990s. And the Kashmir Valley which is apparently pro-Pakistan is a smaller region in the state of Jammu and Kashmir. A large part of the State is Buddhist and Hindu.
  - selimthegrim 10y ago
    Don't forget the Shias in Kargil.
- ambrood 10y ago
  "The resolution recommended that in order to ensure the impartiality of the plebiscite Pakistan withdraw all tribesmen and nationals who entered the region for the purpose of fighting and that India leave only the minimum number of troops needed to keep civil order." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Council_Resolution_47 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Counci... Given that the primary condition for the plebiscite was never met i.e. withdrawal of all the Pakistani forces, it was never going to happen. And while Article 370 has frozen the demographics of Indian J&K in 1947, Pakistani Kashmir is now majority non-Kashmiri. Plebiscite is hardly gonna happen now.
mmansoor78 10y ago
Its not "Indian Kashmir". Its "Disputed Kashmir"
- selimthegrim 10y ago
  Even in Pakistan they say "Indian-Administered Kashmir". Does that work?
pknerd 10y ago
Freedom of Speech is relative.
gb22 10y ago
For some color on the Burhan Wani case, the terrorists whose cause is being promoted by the banned groups: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farooq_Ahmed_Dar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farooq_Ahmed_Dar Read the last part.
zghst 10y ago
They're a great company, but I have a distaste for actions such as these

98 points by yunque 10y ago

ProAm 10y ago

Facebook is not a news site, they can censor whatever they want. They are in the advertising sales business they'll tweak their product to maximize the returns on their business.

triplesec 10y ago
True as this may be in legal and business terms, facebook is also by its monopoly position a de facto news source and filter and ought to be held accountable for such to public standards of transparency.
- zzleeper 10y ago
  True, which means laws can be passed to enforce this. Same with tobacco antitrust, trains, water, power, etc. Of course the costs might not be really worth it..
- debaserab2 10y ago
  what exactly is Facebook a monopoly of?
  - MisterBastahrd 10y ago
    Disseminating news to luddites too lazy to move beyond facebook.
  - int_19h 10y ago
    For many people, the source of information. Yes, it does not match the nominal definition of a "monopoly", in a sense that those people are free to look for information elsewhere. But they don't, and so whatever narrative FB chooses to feed to them is what they will believe. I guess you could call it a monopoly on attention.
j0e1 10y ago
I agree. But I truly wish there was an open forum that wasn't influenced by government actors and with the same reach as Facebook. Maybe if Wikipedia had discussion rooms which were just as fancy and used by just as many people, it could prove vital during such times.
- themihai 10y ago
  well.. there are open forums but people want facebook not forums.
  - carapace 10y ago
    Yeah, exactly. The "open forum" is called the Internet. People choose Facebook. (I don't like it but it happens organically.)
- sbuttgereit 10y ago
  I expect that such forums actually exist to some extent and simply aren't very widely known or thought of as what they are. Facebook has name recognition and the advantage as being front-of-mind as a gathering place for friends and family; a place for serious and non-serious discussion. Other, more open forums, are likely to be more topical and niche in terms of appeal. In fact, it's likely that because Facebook is a gathering place first for the non-serious friend/family sort of communication, that you get any diversity of opinion and viewpoint at all. Having said that, you are very unlikely to be able to avoid point of view constraints on what's allowed to be posted. That might be officially via administration or by the biases of the group. Even on Hacker News, certain points of view are favored over others and the up/down vote system enforces that outside of Hacker News policy or administration.
- patrickmay 10y ago
  Usenet still exists. It has the same reach as Facebook in terms of availability, but obviously less in terms of participants. I'd love to see it make a resurgence.
- zaidf 10y ago
  The open forums would be blocked. The choice for companies like fb is either censor or get banned completely. Both shitty choices.
bitchypat 10y ago
Yep. And the news sites should report on Facebook's censorship so its users can make informed decisions on how and why they continue to use it. Seems like everything is working appropriately.
- dmix 10y ago
  Market based equalization provides a balancing force - showing not everything requires gov regulation to correct bad behaviour :) Their popularity and role in influencing people has resulted in them getting even get more scrutiny than NYTimes and other media outlets who heavily shape and editorialize their coverage. If FB starts losing money because of outrage brought via media and loss of advertisers, then they will be punished for negative behaviour and work to avoid it. Otherwise, they own their web properties and are allowed to control the content as they wish.
  - aylmao 10y ago
    I don't think there can be enough outcry all at once to even dent facebook's profits at this point tbh. Can hardly see it.
seangrant 10y ago
Point being this is exactly what people were afraid of when Facebook tried to become an pseudo-ISP for India.
gshulegaard 10y ago
This is interesting...and actually brings up interesting questions when viewed in the context of states that place protections on freedom of speech. Don't really want to start a long debate...but for me I am not sure I believe that (at least in America), Facebook "can censor whatever they want." Not that I object to this application of censorship...just I don't think Facebook has carte blanche when it comes to censorship.
- ProAm 10y ago
  Why not, its a private site, freedom of speech does not pertain to Facebook.
  - gruez 10y ago
    Right, legally it's okay for facebook to censor stuff. But ethically/morally, some people do not think that's the case because they feel they're abusing their large marketshare.
    - amyjess 10y ago
      Morally, they have the right to decide who they want to associate with.
    - ProAm 10y ago
      Ethics and morals with Facebook? They have a long troubled history of dealing with both. It's a company, and companies want to make money, that's the bottom line. Of course it's censored in their best interests.
  - gshulegaard 10y ago
    Well the obvious example is conflict of interest cases. Take the hypothetical situation where someone writes a negative exposé on Facebook privacy policies and then plugs a competitor. Suppose in this contrived example that Facebook systematically removes all related content to this exposé and bans the creator. On one hand Facebook is a private company. On the other they are built around a communication platform and communication is a constitutionally protect right in America. Moreover, this type of practice could be considered anti-competitive and subject to anti-trust regulation (a bit unusual, but there is precedent). I am not trying to advocate one or another view on this issue...more of trying to frame what I think is an interesting question: Where is the line where private rights give way to public rights...if at all?
lazzlazzlazz 10y ago
As tempting as the "profit motive explains all behavior" argument is, their policy against promoting terrorism explains this adequately.
- cardigan 10y ago
  It's promoting terrorism if you're politically aligned with India. If you're instead politically aligned with most people living in Kashmir, it's not promoting terrorism, you see it instead as showing solidarity with the cause of freedom. It may be hard to understand, but most of the hundreds of thousands of people protesting in Kashmir right now are not in favor of terrorism. Instead they are incensed by what they see as the decades of Indian oppression and aggression, and Burhan Wani is only used as a symbol of something like "a young son of Kashmir who was driven to madness and made the ultimate sacrifice for freedom". Facebook's removal of posts is perceived as political censorship by a lot of people politically aligned with Kashmiri independence who are disgusted by terrorism in the same way the US public is. The Facebook censorship team probably just doesn't have anyone from Kashmir working there, and does not have a good enough grasp of Kashmiri public opinion. It is really not in line with Facebook's mission of promoting openness to be censoring these posts, and especially to be banning accounts who are posting what they see as legitimate political opinion (when their beliefs and feelings about terrorism are in line with US public opinion)
  - selimthegrim 10y ago
    What was Burhan Wani doing partnering with Islamist groups who supported expulsion of Pandits among other things? Is it like as long as the group uses enough Arabic words there are no red lines on behavior?
    - cardigan 10y ago
      Sorry I don't understand your question. Obviously very few people living in Kashmir support those groups, see polls.
  - devdas 10y ago
ajamesm 10y ago
I don't think anyone's in dispute as to whether they have the right to "tweak their product" (tweak, censor, curate, take your pick). But is it a good move to tweak like that? Facebook IS a news site (see: news articles in the right-hand bar), and in fact they're just coming off of allegations that they tweaked news stories to fit their corporate political biases. If those users start to feel like The Man is out to shape their opinion, and they limit their sharing and participating in response, then Facebook's capability to monetize those users will diminish.
smb06 10y ago
Facebook is a company that carries out its business in a country where there is free speech. They can modify their business however they want but they will be held accountable for their actions that limit a constitutionally given right.

squozzer 10y ago

Makes you wonder how FB would have handled the American Revolution.

freshhawk 10y ago
Why wonder, "Our Community Standards prohibit content that praises or supports terrorists, terrorist organizations or terrorism, and we remove it as soon as we’re made aware of it".
ryandrake 10y ago
* One weird trick to reduce your tea consumption! King George hates it! * New law in the Colonies that targets carriage drivers. Find out what it is! * Molly Pitcher extreme makeover! Ye won't believe the new look!

itg 10y ago

>Kashmir Solidarity Network Bullshit, it's a bunch of terrorists crying they can't spread their propoganda.

selimthegrim 10y ago
This is really a way to make them feel like 'atoot ang', keep it up.

amyjess 10y ago

Facebook generally has a policy prohibiting the posting of gore. If pictures of dead bodies and/or graphic wounds are being posted, it's no surprise FB would remove it.

rajathagasthya 10y ago
That's not why it was removed though. “Our Community Standards prohibit content that praises or supports terrorists, terrorist organizations or terrorism, and we remove it as soon as we’re made aware of it,” said a Facebook spokesman in India. If you have a bunch of people praising a dead leader of a terrorist group, it should come as no surprise that Facebook or any platform will ban them.
- Asooka 10y ago
  One person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter.

DixonSeider 10y ago

Interesting background on Kashmir: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kashmir#1947_and_1948 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kashmir#1947_and_1948 Seems a plebiscite was to have taken place but did not happen. I'm guessing the majority would have voted to be part of Pakistan and not part of India. (which would have, of course, irked "minority" populations).

palmanis 10y ago
Those "minority" populations were forced out of Kashmir by the "majority" : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_cleansing_of_Kashmiri_Hindus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_cleansing_of_Kashmiri_H...
- selimthegrim 10y ago
  I have to admit that it's ironic that a minority tired of its rights not being respected a) lets that happen to another minority (the Pandits) and b) wants to join another country with no codified minority rights
ignoramous 10y ago
The plebiscite is an outdated demand. A lot of Hindus native to the region were displaced by the insurgency in the 1990s. And the Kashmir Valley which is apparently pro-Pakistan is a smaller region in the state of Jammu and Kashmir. A large part of the State is Buddhist and Hindu.
- selimthegrim 10y ago
  Don't forget the Shias in Kargil.
ambrood 10y ago
"The resolution recommended that in order to ensure the impartiality of the plebiscite Pakistan withdraw all tribesmen and nationals who entered the region for the purpose of fighting and that India leave only the minimum number of troops needed to keep civil order." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Council_Resolution_47 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Counci... Given that the primary condition for the plebiscite was never met i.e. withdrawal of all the Pakistani forces, it was never going to happen. And while Article 370 has frozen the demographics of Indian J&K in 1947, Pakistani Kashmir is now majority non-Kashmiri. Plebiscite is hardly gonna happen now.

mmansoor78 10y ago

Its not "Indian Kashmir". Its "Disputed Kashmir"

selimthegrim 10y ago
Even in Pakistan they say "Indian-Administered Kashmir". Does that work?

pknerd 10y ago

Freedom of Speech is relative.

gb22 10y ago

For some color on the Burhan Wani case, the terrorists whose cause is being promoted by the banned groups: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farooq_Ahmed_Dar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farooq_Ahmed_Dar Read the last part.

zghst 10y ago

They're a great company, but I have a distaste for actions such as these