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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/1010184445

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.

by panarky 12y ago

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.