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Facebook Said to Block Pages Critical of Muhammad to Avoid Shutdown in Turkey

85 points by panarky 12y ago

panarky 12y ago
How can Zuckerberg say "Je Suis Charlie", and then censor the very kind of content that Charlie Hebdo published? https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10101844454210771 https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10101844454210771 If you take the position that it's necessary to build censorship machinery into Facebook, then say that. But when you build tools that enable surveillance and repression, and when you collaborate with autocratic regimes to limit free expression, you can no longer claim "I am Charlie".
- nashashmi 12y ago
  Zuck does not use his medium to spread anti-Islamic content. Charlie Hebdo did. Here what Zuck did was uphold a nation's choice to block content in that country that did not conform to the views of that country. It has NOTHING to do with Charlie Hebdo.
  - cbd1984 12y ago
    > Here what Zuck did was uphold a nation's choice to block content in that country that did not conform to the views of that country. It isn't the nation's choice, it's the government's choice. It's a political decision to support the policies of the Turkish government.
    - nashashmi 12y ago
      If the government was chosen by the people (as is in the case of Turkey), it is the nation's choice. Otherwise, there is little indication that the people of the nation choose different. And it is not a political decision as the verdict came from the courts.
  - TelmoMenezes 12y ago
    If a "nation's choice" is over what individuals are allowed to see and read, isn't that just an euphemism for fascism? What possible ethical principle could lead someone to assume that the collective has the right to decide what an individual can read?
    - Squarel 12y ago
      I am not sure, what possible ethical principle leads people to censor words and pictures which they deem unsuitable in any nation?
    - kyleblarson 12y ago
      The 'organized ignorance' that is religion is exactly the principle you speak of.
- prawn 12y ago
  In the post you linked, he specifically says: "We follow the laws in each country, but we never let one country or group of people dictate what people can share across the world." And in the submitted link: "The company acted to comply with an order from a Turkish court..." They're blocking access to the material from users in Turkey.
  - jessaustin 12y ago
    No one is surprised when corporate reptiles act like corporate reptiles. The remarkable circumstance is that they act like themselves, but talk as if they are courageous paragons of the Enlightenment. The complaint is not that Zuck attempts to maximize revenue from the Turkish user base, but that he simultaneously highlights a conflicting "commitment" to free expression. The net impression is one of an odd, misplaced pride in a complete surrender of ethics to pragmatism.
    - pdabbadabba 12y ago
      I don't think it's right that only "corporate reptiles" should bother to comply with the laws of the countries in which they operate. Your position seems to be that the only moral thing to do in the face of an ethical commitment that conflicts with a legal commitment, is to either disregard the legal commitment or realign your business so you are not subject to it. But, when the conflict is sufficiently limited (see below), and dodging the legal obligation would also compromise your ethical commitment, what's wrong with, say, complying with the legal commitments while agitating to have it changed? Is it your view that the people of Turkey would be better off, from a free expression perspective, with no Facebook at all than with a Facebook that obeys domestic laws requiring it to remove a very limited amount of content? The situation might be different if we were talking about a government that required Facebook to drastically and systematically distort the discourse on its service (as in China, by many accounts). But here we're just talking about removing a few imagines deemed to be highly offensive to the dominant religion.
      - jessaustin 12y ago
        Zuck is the one claiming to value the dissemination of various images of Mohammed, by parroting that slogan. It isn't a stretch to find his simultaneous censoring of such images to contradict that claim. If all he cared to do was lament violence, he could have said something inoffensive like "why can't we all just get along?" That's not what he said. The "people of Turkey", like all people, would be better off if they valued free speech more than religious sensibilities. Eventually they will, but that's probably a few decades off, and at any rate it's unlikely to be the result of "agitation" by a rich Western asshole like Zuck, or the judgment of assholes like us on HN. In the meantime, I find public dishonesty unethical. If Zuck felt that way, perhaps he'd stop advocating this position while simultaneously working against it.
- adamnemecek 12y ago
  > How can Zuckerberg say "Je Suis Charlie", and then censor the very kind of content that Charlie Hebdo published? Oh that's easy when you become a hypocrite.
- conradfr 12y ago
  > How can Zuckerberg say "Je Suis Charlie", and then censor the very kind of content that Charlie Hebdo published? Did you see which politicians and world leaders where at the Je Suis Charlie march ? Did you see what laws are currently passed in France in response to the killings ? It's just posture and hypocrisy.
  - nothrabannosir 12y ago
    Yes, that's why he's calling it out. What's your point? Should we not care about this case, because others are abusing it as well? Two wrongs don't make a right. Two hundred wrongs neither. It sounds trite, but you're changing the subject. And when every post like OP's has a reply of the tone "Pff why do you even bother naming and shaming one guy who did wrong; don't you know everybody's making a farce of Je Suis Charlie?", it conveys hopelessness. It's demoralizing and it's a conversation killer. We get it. Every politician is a hypocrite. Okay. Can we stop using it as a condescending dismissal of valid points, now, please? I, for one, would love to know more about the specific details of Zuckerberg's alleged hypocrisy, so I can judge for myself. Edit: ps: Upvoted you because I agree. I just want to highlight that your post should not be taken as a rebuttal against OP.
    - conradfr 12y ago
      I didn't want to call OP out, I was just surprised that he was himself surprised by the dichotomy between Zuckerberg public stance and Facebook actions. And yes I'm glad this kind of behavior is exposed but I also don't expect companies to be freedom warriors.
  - panarky 12y ago
    That's right. Leaders who impose draconian censorship on their own populations and throw journalists in jail are literally leading the parade for free expression. Leaders like Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. So add Zuckerberg to this ignominious list. He collaborates with these regimes to repress their citizens, then sanctimoniously shouts "I am Charlie" from the world's biggest megaphone. Makes me physically sick.
- opt1k 12y ago
  Not letting a country 'bully' or dictate a site like Facebook is one thing but a valid legal request that has been granted by a court in a given country is something completely different. People seem to think that Facebook is doing this just to bow to pressure from certain groups but in reality it is just that they have been legally instructed to do so, if they were to fail to do this then access to Facebook would likely be severed by the Turkish ISP's under another legal order.
  - nailer 12y ago
    I think we understand that FB access would be denied in Turkey if they didn't remove the posts. We simply disagree that this is reasonable justification for removing the posts.
  - 100timesthis 12y ago
    Facebook doesn't have phisical presence[1] on turkey, so why do they obey Turkeys laws? [1]https://www.facebook.com/careers#locations https://www.facebook.com/careers#locations
    - pdabbadabba 12y ago
      Because they provide a service in Turkey and would like to continue signing up Turkish users. The internet, as you have observed, certainly does present interesting legal and, in particular, jurisdictional conundrums. But, for better or worse, it is well established that you do not need a physical pretense in a country to be bound by their laws.
      - 100timesthis 12y ago
        as I am not in turkey and the content is not illegal in my country why do I have to receive the censorship as well? [EDIT] If facebook is advocating the freedom of speech I would expect that they would show the content at least to the users that are not under censorship.
        12y ago
- _almosnow 12y ago
  >How can Zuckerberg say "Je Suis Charlie", and then censor the very kind of content that Charlie Hebdo published? Because PR.
andrewmcnielson 12y ago
The debate on free speech is complicated because it is presented in different ways depending on the circumstance. For example, an video that could be considered anti-Semitic might be quietly removed for violations of terms of service, or blocked in some countries (e.g. "Jews Lead Gun Control Charge" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zy227hN5B0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zy227hN5B0) while a video that could be considered anti-Muslim is only blocked with loud protestations (e.g. Innocence of Muslims https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au6tbb9Zgkw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au6tbb9Zgkw). Which issues are cast as free speech issues is a highly political matter.
- Aqueous 12y ago
  This conflation of "anti-Islam" and "criticizing Islam" is what's holding us up. Those in the West should reserve the right to criticize the tenets of Islam (of which there is plenty to criticize) without being slandered as anti-Islam. Similarly with Judaism. There is a distinction between 'criticizing Judaism' and being 'anti-Semitic.' Let's figure this out. In both cases we should be making these distinctions without resorting to slurs and violence.
  - nashashmi 12y ago
    Muslim hate speech is rampant across the media. But Muslims hardly ever raise a finger at such issues. However, when the issue is desecration of religion, Muslims go nuts. This contrasts with Judaism. Anti-judaism speech is ok. Anti-semitic speech is not. To me, it's more of a preference of identity. Either I identify me by faith, or I identify me by my people.
    - brandonmenc 12y ago
      It's not a perfect contrast because "Jewish" describes both a people and a religion whereas "Muslim" is only a religious designation. In the West - America, at least - religious bigotry seems more acceptable than racial bigotry. Bigotry against Muslims is not, then, the same thing as bigotry against, say, Arabs.
  - 12y ago
Aqueous 12y ago
This one was easy. Just drop Turkey on Facebook. The fact that they didn't was weak - Turkey does not represent a huge slice of their userbase, they could easily afford to lose it in support of free speech. At one point Google dropped China - a much larger potential market - because of China's demands for Google to become complicit in their censorship.
- capkutay 12y ago
  Isn't that pretty insensitive the large number of Turks (at least 20 million) who identify more with Western values than the conservative Islamic values being imposed on them by the current leadership? Not to mention, FB is very popular over there...especially amongst that demographic.
  - Aqueous 12y ago
    No - it would ideally cause that (still a minority) portion of Turks who would be most served by a protection of free speech to demand the restoration of Facebook services from their government. Perhaps the 20 million Turks who are more sympathetic to Western values should be engaged in active debate with the 54 million who apparently aren't.
    - capkutay 12y ago
      West-Aligned Turks are engaged in an active debate and protests [0]. But like you said, they're a minority (a large minority) so they cannot succeed in electing a political party that can restore their Western, Secular values 0: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013%E2%80%9314_protests_in_Turkey http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013%E2%80%9314_protests_in_Tur...
      - stickfigure 12y ago
        It is still an open question as to whether progressive interests would be better served by having Facebook blocked. Certainly some percentage of conservative Turks use Facebook; blocking Facebook is a decision to forego something they may value. Right now they get to have their pie and eat it too. I'm not sure that is healthy.
nether 12y ago
Just accommodate their "culture," yes. Just the beginning of west's thinly veiled appeasement of the "religion of peace."
logn 12y ago
https://facebook.com https://facebook.com is down for me (USA)
- eqwrqwrqwrqwrqw 12y ago
  +1 India
bsaul 12y ago
From google people saying " why do you want anonymity if you've got nothing to hide" to this, is really the confirmation that technologist are poorly equiped when it's about dealing with political or social issues. What facebook is doing is what some french corporations were doing during ww2. It's called collaboration with a fascist state. ( and no, clearly it's not of the same scale, of course). Let's not forget that those were cartoons making gentle fun of an IDEA. Just an idea, and nobody is forcing you to have a look at it. They're not making fun of people suffering, they're not trying to have people killed, or spreading hate and anger. First and foremost it's about learning to laugh a bit. But there's one way you can recognize fascists for sure, it's that they have no sense of humour. Now, even more preoccupyingly, turkey is putting journalists in jail. But they also have a very strong tradition of modernity, and they have a strong army, traditionnaly not aligned with islamist. Which means they could still revolt and massively vote against the ruling party, if they have the chance. What facebook is doing is saying that nothing outrageous is been done in the country. They're helping the government instead of calling him out.
- toyg 12y ago
  > Which means they could still revolt and massively vote against the ruling party Yeah, keep telling yourself that, if it makes you feel better about it. The fact is that they did revolt, and they were massively repressed. It happened just before Ukraine blew up; and nobody in the US establishment cared one little bit. Ataturk is long dead. The secular army and judiciary have been cut to size by de-facto dictator Erdoğan, who uses Islam in the way less-enlightened countries have done for decades now. The hard truth is that Turkey is now the new Saudi Arabia: a country NATO cannot live without, but ruled by people supporting interests and values very different from official "Western" ones. The view here in Europe is that we've basically given up on Turkey as a secular partner, and they will never be allowed to join the EU while Erdogan is around; but NATO can't do without them, and that's a big problem.
  - IndianAstronaut 12y ago
    >The view here in Europe is that we've basically given up on Turkey as a secular partner, The EU long ago snubbed Turkey, well before the autocratic tendencies of Erdogan appeared. If the EU reached out then and put Turkey officialy on a path to membership, it may have helped turn the course. Erdogan saw that he got a better reception aligning towards the Muslim middle east than secular Europe.
halov 12y ago
The original news title says "Turkish court to block Facebook pages insulting Prophet Muhammad" http://www.trt.net.tr/english/turkey/2015/01/26/turkish-court-to-block-facebook-pages-insulting-prophet-muhammad-152446 http://www.trt.net.tr/english/turkey/2015/01/26/turkish-cour... "Insulting" and "critical" are not the same thing, so the truth is quite twisted in the NY Times article title.
- yummybear 12y ago
  I think most religious people are going to claim that being critical is the same as being insulting. Can you claim that (for example) being critical about Jesus' deeds is not the same as insulting him?
- blueskin_ 12y ago
  Both muslims and their western apologists have such huge issues over it, that anything critical at all including the most highly legitimate comments or use of any form of parody at all is immediately decried as 'racist' (even though a religion is not a race) or 'islamophobic', their favourite snarl word.
- ggreer 12y ago
  We all draw a line between "critical" and "insulting", but everyone's line is different. What you consider insulting, I might not, and vice-versa. From your link, it sounds like the banned content was the cover of the latest Charlie Hebdo[1]. Personally, I don't find that insulting or critical of Muhammad. Others may think differently, and they have every right to. But more importantly: Government-enforced censorship bothers me, even when it's of content I find insulting or offensive. I don't like the state deciding what I'm allowed to see or hear. I'm mature enough to make those decisions for myself. 1. https://thenypost.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/charlie-hebdo-cover.jpg https://thenypost.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/charlie-hebdo-...
  - halov 12y ago
    If we want any kind of constructive interaction, insults must be avoided. Unlike criticism, insult is always malicious, hostile and harmful.
blueskin_ 12y ago
Bowing to tyranny makes you a part of that same tyranny. Still, it's facebook, so I'm not exactly surprised.
ayi 12y ago
I'm from Turkey and this situation is just pathetic. It's just "if visitor.country = 'turkey' then post.visibility = false". Every person in the world except people from Turkey can see everyting. We are putting our head in the sand and screaming "trolololo we can't hear you". A whistleblower account on twitter? disable it to users from turkey. A youtube video with phone call transcripts about corruption between prime minister and some corporation offical? disable it to users from turkey. Same conversation uploaded to soundcloud? meh, just disable it to users from turkey. What about a paper about some government corruption? disable slideshare. Everyone knows what a corrupt country we are. except us.
- bsaul 12y ago
  You should revolt, period. It may mean risking your life, but if people like you don't and instead choose to run away, then your country is going to fall for an unknown period into a medieval age. Read everything you can about the french resistance, start creating networks, go underground, and organize ties with foreign countries ready to help you. But don't run away.
  - draugadrotten 12y ago
    > You should revolt, period. It may mean risking your life, but if people like you don't and instead choose to run away, then your country is going to fall for an unknown period into a medieval age. Such an arrogant view of the world. The chosen route of Turkey is to preserve the serenity and innocence of it's population, by prohibiting pictures of the prophet much like wardrobe malfunctions are prohibited in the USA. This is not medieval at all , but rather a more refined approach to civilisation than your american upbringing has taught you to appreciate.
    - LunaSea 12y ago
      Limiting freedom of expression is never refined.
      - draugadrotten 12y ago
curiously 12y ago
Unbelievable. Might as well hand over data of user so they can be tortured and confined by certain countries intelligence/security bodies if it means keeping the user page views up.
jnbiche 12y ago
Ah, Facebook. Just when I'm starting to feel some sympathy thanks to your considerable open source work. I mean, Google drops China to avoid collaborating with their censorship demands, but Facebook can't afford to drop Turkey?

85 points by panarky 12y ago

How can Zuckerberg say "Je Suis Charlie", and then censor the very kind of content that Charlie Hebdo published? https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10101844454210771 https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10101844454210771 If you take the position that it's necessary to build censorship machinery into Facebook, then say that. But when you build tools that enable surveillance and repression, and when you collaborate with autocratic regimes to limit free expression, you can no longer claim "I am Charlie".

nashashmi 12y ago
Zuck does not use his medium to spread anti-Islamic content. Charlie Hebdo did. Here what Zuck did was uphold a nation's choice to block content in that country that did not conform to the views of that country. It has NOTHING to do with Charlie Hebdo.
- cbd1984 12y ago
  > Here what Zuck did was uphold a nation's choice to block content in that country that did not conform to the views of that country. It isn't the nation's choice, it's the government's choice. It's a political decision to support the policies of the Turkish government.
  - nashashmi 12y ago
    If the government was chosen by the people (as is in the case of Turkey), it is the nation's choice. Otherwise, there is little indication that the people of the nation choose different. And it is not a political decision as the verdict came from the courts.
- TelmoMenezes 12y ago
  If a "nation's choice" is over what individuals are allowed to see and read, isn't that just an euphemism for fascism? What possible ethical principle could lead someone to assume that the collective has the right to decide what an individual can read?
  - Squarel 12y ago
    I am not sure, what possible ethical principle leads people to censor words and pictures which they deem unsuitable in any nation?
  - kyleblarson 12y ago
    The 'organized ignorance' that is religion is exactly the principle you speak of.
prawn 12y ago
In the post you linked, he specifically says: "We follow the laws in each country, but we never let one country or group of people dictate what people can share across the world." And in the submitted link: "The company acted to comply with an order from a Turkish court..." They're blocking access to the material from users in Turkey.
- jessaustin 12y ago
  No one is surprised when corporate reptiles act like corporate reptiles. The remarkable circumstance is that they act like themselves, but talk as if they are courageous paragons of the Enlightenment. The complaint is not that Zuck attempts to maximize revenue from the Turkish user base, but that he simultaneously highlights a conflicting "commitment" to free expression. The net impression is one of an odd, misplaced pride in a complete surrender of ethics to pragmatism.
  - pdabbadabba 12y ago
    I don't think it's right that only "corporate reptiles" should bother to comply with the laws of the countries in which they operate. Your position seems to be that the only moral thing to do in the face of an ethical commitment that conflicts with a legal commitment, is to either disregard the legal commitment or realign your business so you are not subject to it. But, when the conflict is sufficiently limited (see below), and dodging the legal obligation would also compromise your ethical commitment, what's wrong with, say, complying with the legal commitments while agitating to have it changed? Is it your view that the people of Turkey would be better off, from a free expression perspective, with no Facebook at all than with a Facebook that obeys domestic laws requiring it to remove a very limited amount of content? The situation might be different if we were talking about a government that required Facebook to drastically and systematically distort the discourse on its service (as in China, by many accounts). But here we're just talking about removing a few imagines deemed to be highly offensive to the dominant religion.
    - jessaustin 12y ago
      Zuck is the one claiming to value the dissemination of various images of Mohammed, by parroting that slogan. It isn't a stretch to find his simultaneous censoring of such images to contradict that claim. If all he cared to do was lament violence, he could have said something inoffensive like "why can't we all just get along?" That's not what he said. The "people of Turkey", like all people, would be better off if they valued free speech more than religious sensibilities. Eventually they will, but that's probably a few decades off, and at any rate it's unlikely to be the result of "agitation" by a rich Western asshole like Zuck, or the judgment of assholes like us on HN. In the meantime, I find public dishonesty unethical. If Zuck felt that way, perhaps he'd stop advocating this position while simultaneously working against it.
adamnemecek 12y ago
> How can Zuckerberg say "Je Suis Charlie", and then censor the very kind of content that Charlie Hebdo published? Oh that's easy when you become a hypocrite.
conradfr 12y ago
> How can Zuckerberg say "Je Suis Charlie", and then censor the very kind of content that Charlie Hebdo published? Did you see which politicians and world leaders where at the Je Suis Charlie march ? Did you see what laws are currently passed in France in response to the killings ? It's just posture and hypocrisy.
- nothrabannosir 12y ago
  Yes, that's why he's calling it out. What's your point? Should we not care about this case, because others are abusing it as well? Two wrongs don't make a right. Two hundred wrongs neither. It sounds trite, but you're changing the subject. And when every post like OP's has a reply of the tone "Pff why do you even bother naming and shaming one guy who did wrong; don't you know everybody's making a farce of Je Suis Charlie?", it conveys hopelessness. It's demoralizing and it's a conversation killer. We get it. Every politician is a hypocrite. Okay. Can we stop using it as a condescending dismissal of valid points, now, please? I, for one, would love to know more about the specific details of Zuckerberg's alleged hypocrisy, so I can judge for myself. Edit: ps: Upvoted you because I agree. I just want to highlight that your post should not be taken as a rebuttal against OP.
  - conradfr 12y ago
    I didn't want to call OP out, I was just surprised that he was himself surprised by the dichotomy between Zuckerberg public stance and Facebook actions. And yes I'm glad this kind of behavior is exposed but I also don't expect companies to be freedom warriors.
- panarky 12y ago
  That's right. Leaders who impose draconian censorship on their own populations and throw journalists in jail are literally leading the parade for free expression. Leaders like Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. So add Zuckerberg to this ignominious list. He collaborates with these regimes to repress their citizens, then sanctimoniously shouts "I am Charlie" from the world's biggest megaphone. Makes me physically sick.
opt1k 12y ago
Not letting a country 'bully' or dictate a site like Facebook is one thing but a valid legal request that has been granted by a court in a given country is something completely different. People seem to think that Facebook is doing this just to bow to pressure from certain groups but in reality it is just that they have been legally instructed to do so, if they were to fail to do this then access to Facebook would likely be severed by the Turkish ISP's under another legal order.
- nailer 12y ago
  I think we understand that FB access would be denied in Turkey if they didn't remove the posts. We simply disagree that this is reasonable justification for removing the posts.
- 100timesthis 12y ago
  Facebook doesn't have phisical presence[1] on turkey, so why do they obey Turkeys laws? [1]https://www.facebook.com/careers#locations https://www.facebook.com/careers#locations
  - pdabbadabba 12y ago
    Because they provide a service in Turkey and would like to continue signing up Turkish users. The internet, as you have observed, certainly does present interesting legal and, in particular, jurisdictional conundrums. But, for better or worse, it is well established that you do not need a physical pretense in a country to be bound by their laws.
    - 100timesthis 12y ago
      as I am not in turkey and the content is not illegal in my country why do I have to receive the censorship as well? [EDIT] If facebook is advocating the freedom of speech I would expect that they would show the content at least to the users that are not under censorship.
      - 12y ago
_almosnow 12y ago
>How can Zuckerberg say "Je Suis Charlie", and then censor the very kind of content that Charlie Hebdo published? Because PR.

andrewmcnielson 12y ago

The debate on free speech is complicated because it is presented in different ways depending on the circumstance. For example, an video that could be considered anti-Semitic might be quietly removed for violations of terms of service, or blocked in some countries (e.g. "Jews Lead Gun Control Charge" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zy227hN5B0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zy227hN5B0) while a video that could be considered anti-Muslim is only blocked with loud protestations (e.g. Innocence of Muslims https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au6tbb9Zgkw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au6tbb9Zgkw). Which issues are cast as free speech issues is a highly political matter.

Aqueous 12y ago
This conflation of "anti-Islam" and "criticizing Islam" is what's holding us up. Those in the West should reserve the right to criticize the tenets of Islam (of which there is plenty to criticize) without being slandered as anti-Islam. Similarly with Judaism. There is a distinction between 'criticizing Judaism' and being 'anti-Semitic.' Let's figure this out. In both cases we should be making these distinctions without resorting to slurs and violence.
- nashashmi 12y ago
  Muslim hate speech is rampant across the media. But Muslims hardly ever raise a finger at such issues. However, when the issue is desecration of religion, Muslims go nuts. This contrasts with Judaism. Anti-judaism speech is ok. Anti-semitic speech is not. To me, it's more of a preference of identity. Either I identify me by faith, or I identify me by my people.
  - brandonmenc 12y ago
    It's not a perfect contrast because "Jewish" describes both a people and a religion whereas "Muslim" is only a religious designation. In the West - America, at least - religious bigotry seems more acceptable than racial bigotry. Bigotry against Muslims is not, then, the same thing as bigotry against, say, Arabs.
- 12y ago

Aqueous 12y ago

This one was easy. Just drop Turkey on Facebook. The fact that they didn't was weak - Turkey does not represent a huge slice of their userbase, they could easily afford to lose it in support of free speech. At one point Google dropped China - a much larger potential market - because of China's demands for Google to become complicit in their censorship.

capkutay 12y ago
Isn't that pretty insensitive the large number of Turks (at least 20 million) who identify more with Western values than the conservative Islamic values being imposed on them by the current leadership? Not to mention, FB is very popular over there...especially amongst that demographic.
- Aqueous 12y ago
  No - it would ideally cause that (still a minority) portion of Turks who would be most served by a protection of free speech to demand the restoration of Facebook services from their government. Perhaps the 20 million Turks who are more sympathetic to Western values should be engaged in active debate with the 54 million who apparently aren't.
  - capkutay 12y ago
    West-Aligned Turks are engaged in an active debate and protests [0]. But like you said, they're a minority (a large minority) so they cannot succeed in electing a political party that can restore their Western, Secular values 0: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013%E2%80%9314_protests_in_Turkey http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013%E2%80%9314_protests_in_Tur...
    - stickfigure 12y ago
      It is still an open question as to whether progressive interests would be better served by having Facebook blocked. Certainly some percentage of conservative Turks use Facebook; blocking Facebook is a decision to forego something they may value. Right now they get to have their pie and eat it too. I'm not sure that is healthy.

nether 12y ago

Just accommodate their "culture," yes. Just the beginning of west's thinly veiled appeasement of the "religion of peace."

logn 12y ago

https://facebook.com https://facebook.com is down for me (USA)

eqwrqwrqwrqwrqw 12y ago
+1 India

bsaul 12y ago

From google people saying " why do you want anonymity if you've got nothing to hide" to this, is really the confirmation that technologist are poorly equiped when it's about dealing with political or social issues. What facebook is doing is what some french corporations were doing during ww2. It's called collaboration with a fascist state. ( and no, clearly it's not of the same scale, of course). Let's not forget that those were cartoons making gentle fun of an IDEA. Just an idea, and nobody is forcing you to have a look at it. They're not making fun of people suffering, they're not trying to have people killed, or spreading hate and anger. First and foremost it's about learning to laugh a bit. But there's one way you can recognize fascists for sure, it's that they have no sense of humour. Now, even more preoccupyingly, turkey is putting journalists in jail. But they also have a very strong tradition of modernity, and they have a strong army, traditionnaly not aligned with islamist. Which means they could still revolt and massively vote against the ruling party, if they have the chance. What facebook is doing is saying that nothing outrageous is been done in the country. They're helping the government instead of calling him out.

toyg 12y ago
> Which means they could still revolt and massively vote against the ruling party Yeah, keep telling yourself that, if it makes you feel better about it. The fact is that they did revolt, and they were massively repressed. It happened just before Ukraine blew up; and nobody in the US establishment cared one little bit. Ataturk is long dead. The secular army and judiciary have been cut to size by de-facto dictator Erdoğan, who uses Islam in the way less-enlightened countries have done for decades now. The hard truth is that Turkey is now the new Saudi Arabia: a country NATO cannot live without, but ruled by people supporting interests and values very different from official "Western" ones. The view here in Europe is that we've basically given up on Turkey as a secular partner, and they will never be allowed to join the EU while Erdogan is around; but NATO can't do without them, and that's a big problem.
- IndianAstronaut 12y ago
  >The view here in Europe is that we've basically given up on Turkey as a secular partner, The EU long ago snubbed Turkey, well before the autocratic tendencies of Erdogan appeared. If the EU reached out then and put Turkey officialy on a path to membership, it may have helped turn the course. Erdogan saw that he got a better reception aligning towards the Muslim middle east than secular Europe.

halov 12y ago

The original news title says "Turkish court to block Facebook pages insulting Prophet Muhammad" http://www.trt.net.tr/english/turkey/2015/01/26/turkish-court-to-block-facebook-pages-insulting-prophet-muhammad-152446 http://www.trt.net.tr/english/turkey/2015/01/26/turkish-cour... "Insulting" and "critical" are not the same thing, so the truth is quite twisted in the NY Times article title.

yummybear 12y ago
I think most religious people are going to claim that being critical is the same as being insulting. Can you claim that (for example) being critical about Jesus' deeds is not the same as insulting him?
blueskin_ 12y ago
Both muslims and their western apologists have such huge issues over it, that anything critical at all including the most highly legitimate comments or use of any form of parody at all is immediately decried as 'racist' (even though a religion is not a race) or 'islamophobic', their favourite snarl word.
ggreer 12y ago
We all draw a line between "critical" and "insulting", but everyone's line is different. What you consider insulting, I might not, and vice-versa. From your link, it sounds like the banned content was the cover of the latest Charlie Hebdo[1]. Personally, I don't find that insulting or critical of Muhammad. Others may think differently, and they have every right to. But more importantly: Government-enforced censorship bothers me, even when it's of content I find insulting or offensive. I don't like the state deciding what I'm allowed to see or hear. I'm mature enough to make those decisions for myself. 1. https://thenypost.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/charlie-hebdo-cover.jpg https://thenypost.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/charlie-hebdo-...
- halov 12y ago
  If we want any kind of constructive interaction, insults must be avoided. Unlike criticism, insult is always malicious, hostile and harmful.

blueskin_ 12y ago

Bowing to tyranny makes you a part of that same tyranny. Still, it's facebook, so I'm not exactly surprised.

ayi 12y ago

I'm from Turkey and this situation is just pathetic. It's just "if visitor.country = 'turkey' then post.visibility = false". Every person in the world except people from Turkey can see everyting. We are putting our head in the sand and screaming "trolololo we can't hear you". A whistleblower account on twitter? disable it to users from turkey. A youtube video with phone call transcripts about corruption between prime minister and some corporation offical? disable it to users from turkey. Same conversation uploaded to soundcloud? meh, just disable it to users from turkey. What about a paper about some government corruption? disable slideshare. Everyone knows what a corrupt country we are. except us.

bsaul 12y ago
You should revolt, period. It may mean risking your life, but if people like you don't and instead choose to run away, then your country is going to fall for an unknown period into a medieval age. Read everything you can about the french resistance, start creating networks, go underground, and organize ties with foreign countries ready to help you. But don't run away.
- draugadrotten 12y ago
  > You should revolt, period. It may mean risking your life, but if people like you don't and instead choose to run away, then your country is going to fall for an unknown period into a medieval age. Such an arrogant view of the world. The chosen route of Turkey is to preserve the serenity and innocence of it's population, by prohibiting pictures of the prophet much like wardrobe malfunctions are prohibited in the USA. This is not medieval at all , but rather a more refined approach to civilisation than your american upbringing has taught you to appreciate.
  - LunaSea 12y ago
    Limiting freedom of expression is never refined.
    - draugadrotten 12y ago

curiously 12y ago

Unbelievable. Might as well hand over data of user so they can be tortured and confined by certain countries intelligence/security bodies if it means keeping the user page views up.

jnbiche 12y ago

Ah, Facebook. Just when I'm starting to feel some sympathy thanks to your considerable open source work. I mean, Google drops China to avoid collaborating with their censorship demands, but Facebook can't afford to drop Turkey?