

Facebook shuts down swedish pro kurdish page - heymd
http://www.rojavakommitteerna.com/uncategorized/uttalande-fran-rojavakommitteerna-1-aug-2015-kl-14-00/

======
csvan
I suspect this is due to the algorithms handling reports - not an actual human
action. Atheist Republic - a massive community for atheists and skeptics on FB
- was also taken down after being report-bombed by malicious users, this
despite the fact that it was not in serious violation of any FB rules.

~~~
Trombone12
That would explain another incident recently, where a blog post about leaving
a certain political party in Sweden was blocked, while a FB group with the
name "legalize rape" was deemed appropriate.

Move fast and break things indeed.

~~~
briandear
I am not sure I understand the Facebook need to curate anyway. The phone
company doesn't censor phone calls.

~~~
gbl08ma
The phone company doesn't place adverts on your calls, nor suggests products
based on the subject of your calls, does it?

Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc. all need to curate so that their platforms
stay family-safe, in order to please advertisers and the general public
(imagine how bad it would be for e.g. Facebook if the general media started
portraying them as supporting e.g. "terrorism").

~~~
icebraining
_The phone company doesn 't place adverts on your calls, (...) does it?_

Actually, mine does, if you have a certain mobile plan, people who call you
get an ad for the plan when its ringing.

------
kmfrk
Cache with translation:
[https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&pr...](https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwebcache.googleusercontent.com%2Fsearch%3Fhl%3Den%26q%3Dcache%253Ahttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.rojavakommitteerna.com%252Funcategorized%252Futtalande-
fran-rojavakommitteerna-1-aug-2015-kl-14-00%252F&edit-text=&act=url).

~~~
Radle
Thanks.

------
Taek
This worries me. It has become acceptable for companies to shut down
controvertial communities/forums. The precedent has been set that if you have
an offensive community on your service, the appropriate action is to remove
it.

The line between acceptable and unacceptable content is not clearly drawn,
there is no trial or court system, and if a government was doing the same
thing there would be strong freedom of speech concerns. If this continues,
more and more controversial communities are going to be shut out of greater
and greater portions of the web.

Communities like these are often important for challenging the status quo.
It's not too hard to imagine that 50 years ago communities supporting
homosexuality would be straddling some line of controversy. For example,
Grindr would have almost certainly been illegal.

There are many reasons why it is important to protect the speech rights of
people you disagree with. Important progressive ideas very often come from
outside the realm of what is considered acceptable to the rest of society. The
more we stamp out controversial and distasteful communities, the more at risk
we become of supporting and perpetuating regressive ideas _without even
realizing it_. People 50 years ago opposed homosexuality, and 350 years ago
any religion outside of Catholicism was not tolerated. We don't have a good
way today of knowing what things we do today that will seem horribly
regressive 100 years from now, and we won't have a way of figuring it out if
we don't allow controversial ideas to exist in our primary thought spaces.

~~~
DanAndersen
The unsettling thing is how many people are willing to accept this sort of
behavior, just because "it's a private company and can host what they want!"
In a future where more and more of human communication is transmitted through
more monopolized private channels, the people's ability to express themselves
easily is curtailed.

------
bymafmaf
Gate between Kobane and Suruc has been open for years in order to support
Kurdish forces and also injured people have been brought to Turkish State
Hospital. I think they simply lie because at the same time a terrorist Kurdish
group PKK -declared as terrorist by UN for years- is attacking from another
border and unofficially they have links with this group. You know, politics
always suck.

~~~
g7635629
That "terrorist" Kurdish group PKK has been in negotiations with the Turkish
state for more than 10 years aiming for peace before their newly formed
Kurdish political party HDP prevented Erdogan's AKP to become the sole ruler
party in the last elections a few months ago meanwhile AKP decided to suddenly
finish negotiations before the upcoming possible early elections excusing the
Suruc bombing 2 weeks ago in which meaningfully 32 Kurdish socialists aligned
with PKK have died trying to cross the border and join the resistance forces
in Kobane fighting against ISIS which by the way is speculated to be backed up
by AKP government itself for years and this move of breaking the negotiations
is already adviced against by NATO which as you said is listing PKK as a
terrorist group for years.

I know, politics always suck. That is not an excuse to get rid of free speech
though.

