
Facebook is imposing American censorship on the rest of the world - mudil
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2016/09/12/facebook-is-imposing-prissy-american-censorship-on-the-whole-res/
======
sp332
Aw, let's be fair now. After all they also ban religious material at the
request of the Pakistani government
[http://tribune.com.pk/story/855030/facebook-
censored-54-post...](http://tribune.com.pk/story/855030/facebook-
censored-54-posts-for-blasphemy-in-pakistan-in-second-half-of-2014/) and
political content for Hong Kong too!
[http://hk.apple.nextmedia.com/news/art/20100205/13699972](http://hk.apple.nextmedia.com/news/art/20100205/13699972)
(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=http%3A%2F%2Fhk.apple.nextmedia.com%2Fnews%2Fart%2F20100205%2F13699972&edit-
text=) )

~~~
r_smart
There's actually probably an interesting bigger point here. Why is this image
the content that sparked so much outrage? As you point out, they ban a lot of
things on behalf of other countries. There's been complaints of conservatives
getting censored (who knows how accurate those are). And of course, the hot
mic gaff of Zuckerberg talking with Angela Merkel about censoring migrant
crisis criticism on Facebook.

So is this just the event that caused sentiment to hit critical mass? Or did
it touch a deeper nerve that's got people stirred up?

~~~
sir_smurf
I would guess that censoring a head of state is what made most people react.

From my European perspective:

This is a case of an american corporation imposing censorship based on
american values (that almost no european care about) on an European head of
state, where the message being censored is of historical importance while
painting america in a negative light.

While other claims of censorship is easily shrugged of as unimportant this one
makes it blatantly clear that an american corporation is trying to interfere
in our democracy, something that is going to annoy a lot of people to the
degree where they are going to at-least complain loudly about it.

~~~
r_smart
Thanks for that, it's an interesting difference from my own opinion, and
totally understandable. I don't like it because it clearly (to me) is a
censorship of art, and famous art at that. It violates principles of free
speech as I understand it (from the US).

But the angle of it being an American company meddling in European politics is
also an important idea. For what it's worth, I doubt they care about the
picture's portrayal of America so much as the simple fact that it's a naked
child.

There seems to be a fine line between diplomacy and meddling that hasn't been
going too well lately.

~~~
sir_smurf
yes, I don't think that facebook cares so much about the america perspective
of the picture, nor do I think that it's the major point for most people
complaining about the censorship, but it is that little extra twist. Compared
to if they had censored the photo of the man in front of the tanks on tiamen
square in china; it would still technically be as bad, but I would guess that
fewer people would complain as it would _feel_ less politically motivated.

------
mgleason_3
Americans are so bought into the idea that "explicit" images are bad that they
can't see another viewpoint. Its become "natural". And, as the author pointed
out, Americans are so blind to it that you don't even see the problem with
censoring nipples but not beheadings.

We literally cant see that noone should be injured by seeing a womans breast,
but seeing a beheaded body - thats OK?

Its interesting to see this story come out so soon after the LA times story
about libel and the fight against court ordered take-down of posts critical of
companies (think Yelp, etc.).

Maybe the point is that censorship shouldn't be allowed?

~~~
r_smart
America has something like 330 million people in it. I assure you, there are a
lot of us who see the basic logic around this and think we should stop
worrying about the occasional nipple.

In this particular instance though, it's worse than your complaint. We're
talking about censoring an iconic image captured from an important time in our
history. I'd be willing to bet that even among the anti-nipple people, this
image gets a pass, hands down. Clearly there are some who object, but the vast
majority of people understand the message in this image isn't 'enjoy looking
at a naked young girl'.

*edit: spelling typo

~~~
fit2rule
>I assure you, there are a lot of us who see the basic logic around this and
think we should stop worrying about the occasional nipple.

I think the basic problem here is not that there aren't Americans who don't
have a problem with seeing a bit of nipple, but that a majority of Americans
don't seem to understand that if you censor this kind of thing from people, it
makes them a lot more reactive to it when they do in fact encounter it - that
is to say, by removing from society any acceptance of sex as a positive thing,
American society has become far more malleable and reactive to sex - and thus
can be sold more things using sex - than it should be.

Sex wouldn't be a billion-dollar industry if nobody was bothered by seeing it
now and then.

The same position, by the way, can be taken with regard to the way Americans
view their wars. The average American has no clue what it actually means to
let their military-industrial complex run rampant across the globe - because
they don't see the images, the video, the very real facts of the matter, on
the ground. And thus, those who profit from such acts, profit.

~~~
new_hackers
Agree. And at the same time Americans have been inundated with "war" and the
pro-Nationalist message that we should always, ALWAYS, 1) support our troops
no matter what and 2) never forget.

The fear-mongering is rampant and relentless. And everyone is afraid to
question it.

~~~
MichaelGG
Nothing wrong with supporting the troops. Marion Le Pen was questioned on his
regarding French military action a long time ago. Her correct response was to
point out that the French soldiers did their job, did what they were supposed
to. If apologies and shame are appropriate, it needs to be aimed at the
leadership.

The attitude towards Vietnam vets was disgusting, right? Drafted people forced
into a pointless war. Support the people not the leaders...

~~~
joesmo
"Nothing wrong with supporting the troops."

That depends on what you mean by "supporting the troops." I actually have no
definition or even a clear idea of what this means and I'm certain no one else
does either. It's just a generic motto used for brainwashing. Does it mean
that I support the individuals not dying? Because if so, then yes, I support
the troops very much and I hope none of them die. Does it mean that I support
what they do? Fuck no! It's atrocious and criminal. They are murdering and
raping people. I would never support that. And of course, it also could mean
every single nuance in between. So it's a meaningless saying that seems to
exist for the solve purpose of controlling the people who refuse to question
basic things. The mere fact that it _can_ mean that I support the troops'
actions (murder, rape, and even wasting trillions of dollars of our money) is
reason enough for anyone to not "support the troops," and is certainly why I
would never utter such an ambiguous and clearly manipulative phrase.

~~~
new_hackers
Exactly, and exactly why it works so well.

If you question "the troops" including why they were sent there to begin with,
then you are easily labeled "unpatriotic" and your ideas are immediately
dismissed.

It is a very easy way to implement self-culling behavior among the masses. The
"powers" do not have to black bag the dissidents, if they are never able to
achieve any viable mind-share.

~~~
fapjacks
Nah, just go ahead and criticize. You are going to be fighting an uphill
battle, but as someone who spent over a decade criticizing the military while
in the military, I can tell you that the bark has no bite, as is often the
case with things like this. You'll actually find a lot of people that agree
with you, even though they won't add their voice to yours.

------
merraksh
_Facebook ploughed on – before performing an embarrassing 360 and claiming
that it was imposing this policy out of concern for victims._

A 360 would be embarrassing as it places you back to the same road. Perhaps it
was an "embarrassing 180" instead.

~~~
rm999
It's actually is one of the rare instances I've seen "do a 360" used
appropriately. Facebook revamped their policy around the issue while ending up
at exactly the same place: you have to use your real name.

~~~
calvins
But doing a 360 doesn't mean doing a 180, and then sometime much later, doing
another 180.

~~~
kbenson
I think it's a matter of context and time-frame. If the end up pointing the
same way they started, that's 360 degrees. That might entail two 180 flips at
different points, and if talking about one of those specifically, it would be
appropriate to say they did a 180 when referring to that specific situation.

------
equalarrow
I don't get why this is such an issue. I understand the sheer numbers of
people that use fb and get their 'news' from it, but it amazes me that people
are shocked that fb censors the content.

Facebook never claimed to be a news organization nor part of the 5th estate
(which, pretty much doesn't exist). So that being the case, I would never
expect fb to be a partner for democracy.

Just because some recent revolutions were helped by fb and twitter doesn't
mean that these for profit corporations are for freedom of expression and 1st
amendment rights.

People need to remember this whenever they post something on these sites.
Especially since they outright claim to own the content (last time I checked).

~~~
anexprogrammer
That seems, to me, to miss the point.

No one is surprised a private company censors content, it's the cultural
homogenisation on a global service that can grate, _even though it 's no
surprise._ A global service that tries very hard to be the global platform for
everything, including news publication (that may have been unsuccessful). No
surprise after many years of this most people's networks are on Facebook.

No doubt to an American some of the things I, as a Brit, think and do will be
plain weird yet Brits are quite close compared to some nations. For all us
outsiders, FB (and other US sites) and US attitudes to nudity and violence
are, well, interesting. Usually just amusing, sometimes it can be annoying
like in the case of this globally famous photo. Don't forget none of us
foreigners _have_ a first amendment or rights under it - so that's not even
relevant to us.

It wouldn't be that hard to have regional appropriate guidelines for
censorship, acceptable behaviour and what have you. Then Americans could have
American mores, Norwegians theirs, and we can be confused, amused or
fascinated when something goes viral enough to overlap.

I'd like to preserve more of the global differences - it's what makes the
world interesting. We might find others do some things better.

~~~
RevHaze
You say it wouldn't be that hard to have regional guidelines, but that seems
like an incredibly difficult thing to do.

Even within a country you can have strongly divided opinions on what's
appropriate or inappropriate to be hosted on social media, now not only do you
need some way to document these (including refining them as norms change), but
you also need to implement a system that can "know it when it sees it" so to
speak and filter on the fly. That's either going to be a large number of
humans filtering the content more-or-less by hand (already got FB into trouble
when the humans filtered stories they didn't agree with) or build an automatic
screening process that can make the appropriate decisions on the edge cases,
which would be difficult to say the least.

Additionally, you run into the problem that many social groups overlap. How
many German users need to be friends with a French user before they're covered
in the same filter? What about an American vs Iranian? Ultimately you need
some way to decide how to break ties and at the moment they're all breaking on
the side of the US because that's where FB is based. Unless that changes, I
don't see a shift to fragment what's considered acceptable on the platform.

------
mark_l_watson
The FSF has a lot of good material to read on why we don't want centralized
control of our data. Applies to Facebook, Google, etc. As a card carrying FSF
member (and supporter of EFF, ACLU, Software Conservancy) it embarrases me a
little that I probably spend 30 minutes a day using Facebook, Google +, and
Twitter; but I enjoy them, I keep the material I produce largely on my own
infrastructure, and I work to prevent these actors from tracking me except for
when I am actually using their services.

I use GNU Social a lot, but there is not as much interesting material to read
there.

Last week I wished that Facebook screened violent pictures better: someone I
know posted a picture of someone receiving 200 lashes, in way too much detail.
That picture still disturbs me, just remembering it.

~~~
throwanem
FSF has a lot of problems, too, like an unresolved contradiction in its
rhetoric between claimed populism ("everyone can be free!") and evident
elitism ("but if you don't choose to act in exactly the way we promote, to
hell with you!") I thought hard about joining, but I'm not comfortable with
endorsing such a contradictory and self-defeating stance.

I don't see why you should be embarrassed to use Facebook et cetera. As I've
discovered to my personal cost, there can easily be very real social
consequences for opting out of these services, Facebook especially. I think
you'd have to be Richard Stallman to blame someone for choosing not to suffer
those consequences over a point of principle. And I don't think very highly of
him for so doing, given the nomadic and largely asocial sort of life he's
chosen. That such a life suits him is clear, and he's welcome to it, of
course. But his judgment of those who find it not so easy to make the same
choice is harshly contemptuous and utterly lacking in nuance, and I find that
impossible to respect.

~~~
renaudg
GNU legacy aside, I see RMS as a sort of extreme moral compass whose views and
principles are an important contribution to a number of conversations, but
anyone would be insane to actually try and live by them.

~~~
throwanem
I find I feel rather the opposite - that while Dr. Stallman's technical
accomplishments are meritorious in the extreme (especially to a longtime Emacs
user like me!), his principles are so uncompromising and lacking in subtlety
that they do more to polarize a discussion than the converse. Such, at least,
has been my experience.

------
soufron
1\. This won't last as people will want their own cultural and legal rules to
apply on Facebook.

2\. Facebook is not just a private company anymore. It's cool to have success,
but that comes with bigger public scrutiny, and possibly a lot more
obligations than a normal startup who would have only a few users.

3\. Don't think this is minor. Facebook will need to evolve, even in the US.
This is a matter of Free Speech and Freedom of Thought.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
_Facebook is not just a private company anymore._

In what sense? Legally they are, they act like one so I am not sure in
practice what makes that distinct.

Perhaps you mean that user expectations makes them not "just a private
company." In which case I see no reason why that doesn't also extend to pretty
much any other much smaller platform in which users complain about moderation
or opaque governance (reddit, twitter, linkedin, tumblr etc...). There are
numerous examples of change.org petitions asking for kickstarter or some other
platform to change how they do business.

~~~
khedoros
> In what sense? Legally they are, they act like one so I am not sure in
> practice what makes that distinct.

Facebook, Inc. is a publicly traded company. An example of a private company
would be Dell Technologies.

~~~
iThrowA1
Step 1) become facebooks majority shareholder. Step 2) do whatever you want
with their censorship policy. Publicly traded companies are still private in
the sense of ownership, their publicly traded because anyone can buy that
private ownership, but until you do (and a lot of it) Facebook doesn't have
any obligation to put what you want or don't want on their site. I still agree
that their censorship policy is ridiculous, but they get to decide what kind
of forum they are. I suggest you find a better forum cause imho fb just sucks
in general

~~~
khedoros
> I suggest you find a better forum cause imho fb just sucks in general

"Better", for what I use Facebook for, is equivalent to "has more people that
I know". I don't expect much from it, and I get what I expect.

------
kinkdr
Lots and lots of people seem to forget: Facebook is an American COMPANY.

It is not a utility, it is not a non-profit organization. People choose to use
it, and hence they have to put up with their rules.

If they don't like it, they should stop using it and start using the open
alternatives.

~~~
BlackFly
Much like the dichotomy between violence and obscenity which is the subject of
the article, the public and private distinction on the ethics of censorship is
extremely American.

Consider, a "privately" owned company that opens its doors to the public is
absolutely not allowed to refuse to serve someone on the basis of their skin
color.

The fact is that when you open your service to the general public then you are
no longer strictly speaking a "private" organization: you open yourself up to
be regulated by the governments of those people you invite into your service.
When you operate what can be argued is very close to a natural monopoly, you
have even more duties.

~~~
kinkdr
Regulation is one solution with a lot of problems.

A much better solution is switching to an open alternative.

~~~
pessimizer
No, a better solution is regulation. A personal solution that can be put into
action immediately is switching to an open alternative.

~~~
RaleyField
Unless it's a bad regulation and you a left without a choice because everyone
is regulated.

------
antirez
The United States are a great country, but in the topic of censorship,
balanced politically correctness and easy to speak about all the topics, I
believe that the old Europe has very interesting things to say, so I'm also a
bit worried that the technological leadership of US may have an effect on what
is believed to be sensible to discuss / post in Europe too. I hope is the
other way, that is, we european can in some way mitigate certain extreme
positions I see in the US regarding what is appropriate or not.

~~~
dmix
France in the 18-19th century had many smart people who spoke against this
type of stuff (everyone loves to quote Voltaire). But modern France has become
the absolute counter-point for wishing to have less censorship and centralized
social control. So this problem isn't limited to the United States.

This is an issue in all modern liberal societies. Big government and
centralized control has exploded over the last century, nation-states have
become bigger than they've been in any time in history. The first half of the
book "Fourth Revolution" has a really great history of how the state has
massively grown, largely starting after WW2, to the point it becomes embedded
in every parts of our lives (whether it's explicit or not). This type of thing
always happens through small slivers and cuts, largely promoted via community
complaints calling for government to solve issues - much like what Facebook
has experienced.

This is the side-effect of a society where the hair-trigger response to every
small problem is to look to government to solve it - not just economic but
social issues too. Instead of resolving them internally or via community, or
just moving on because the solution is sometimes worse than the problem (see:
terrorism).

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Fourth-Revolution-Global-Reinvent-
Sta...](https://www.amazon.com/Fourth-Revolution-Global-Reinvent-
State/dp/0143127608/)

~~~
nvarsj
It's absurd to think governments grew because of "community complaints". The
rise of nation states happened precisely to benefit the megacorps that now
exist - to support massive, centrally planned economies and subsidize
megacorps that now rule the planet. The gov (or rather, the public, us) have
every right to demand certain basic guarantees from these companies that
benefit so much from public investment.

~~~
dmix
So megacorps regulation = always bad, community-backed regulation = always
good?

I agree with you that large companies can have a significant influence of
policy and legislation. And yes they definately contributed to the problem.
But considering the standard approach to everything (including your own
comment here) is that 'more centralized control is the solution' it's not
surprising that corporations are playing the exact same game to their
advantage.

I'm questioning the value of using that approach as a default solution. With
the exception of it being the very last resort rather than the go-to solution
to every problem. Because the state is good at a few things but it many cases
it's heavy handed, expensive, time consuming, and very slow to adapt to
change.

Regulation, policy, and agencies should only be used carefully and there
should be a culture of constantly re-evaluating the necessity of
programs/agencies/policies - which doesn't seem to happen. Once it's set up it
stays, scope and legislation only grows in size, government employees are
incredibly hard to fire, etc, etc, and that's how a nation-state grows into a
massive unwieldly beast.

It's a complicated problem no doubt with many sources. But the status quo of
the modern nation-state is very dysfunctional. It's sad that people so
passionitely defend it blindly on ideological grounds. Questioning the value
of government as the solution to all things brings out people who defend it
like a religion. Which is how it ends up functioning in places where it often
doesn't belong or worse ends up contributing to societal problems.

This same ideology is the reason why Facebook gets blamed every time there is
something posted that makes people uncomfortable. Instead of the person who
posts the content.

------
joshuaheard
Maybe it's time to consider Facebook, Twitter, et al, as common carriers,
which, under the new net neutrality law, would disallow them from censoring
content.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_carrier#Telecommunicati...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_carrier#Telecommunications)

~~~
mrweasel
While I often disagree with the censorship on Facebook I also think it's
required to some extend. Imagine an uncensored Facebook: how quickly would it
degenerate into 4Chan?

If Facebook allowed nudity it would become a massive porn site over night. I
actually understand their nudity censorship, just censor anything with naked
people, to avoid complaints about differential treatment.

Facebook would go out of business if anyone could post anything. It wouldn't
be a place most average people could enjoy or feel safe in.

~~~
dgudkov
>just censor anything with naked people It's a simple solution for a complex
problem. Countries that follow this way end up covering up ancient statues -
just in case, you know.

------
shiftpgdn
If you don't like Facebook's actions then don't use it. Having open speech on
Facebook's platform is not an inalienable right.

I don't agree with Facebook's privacy policies and thus have deleted my
account and use other platforms. This isn't difficult. This article is
tantamount to saying "Woe is me, NYT won't publish my op-ed." and expecting
anyone to take you seriously.

~~~
sp332
I don't think this is a given. When Facebook is many people's main
communications platform and source of news, censoring Facebook is,
effectively, censoring communication and news. Since they have such power to
affect our societies, they should have some obligations.

~~~
jimmytidey
I completely agree with the above. The idea that society should accept that it
has no control over the design of a major artery of communication is not
sensible.

With print media, TV, phone and post, all developed countries have special
regulations that ensure these (often privately run) services align with values
of democracy (with varying effectiveness).

I think the ideal solution would be to compel Facebook to make its
architecture more open. For it to have real APIs, which, among other things,
would allow other companies to transition users from Facebook effectively and
seamlessly.

This is analogous to the reasoning that says that banks cannot make it
unreasonably difficult to switch to another bank by creating admin around
direct debits and the like (rules currently being implemented in the UK).

Facebook can engage in whatever kind of censorship it likes as long as the
barriers to leaving it are sufficiently low that we can realistically imagine
users doing so.

(Unfortunately FB is not a formal monopoly because it's free to users.. so we
absolutely do need new legislation).

~~~
austinheap
You can download an archive of your Facebook data already. What "real APIs"
would you like the government to "compel" this private corporation to add?

~~~
sp332
You can't download most of the data facebook collects about you. This guy
tried, and it was a legal battle. [http://www.wired.co.uk/article/privacy-
versus-facebook](http://www.wired.co.uk/article/privacy-versus-facebook)

"The concept of access [to your data] was just alien to them. In the US
consent is just a privacy policy and a tick-box approach." "They break
democratically decided laws in the EU and get away with it. Instead of putting
money into compliance, they expect NGOs and authorities to do that work for
them."

------
smsm42
American censorship is bad, but wait until you meet Russian, Chinese or
Pakistani one... If Facebook limits itself only to American censorship that
won't be as bad, a bigger concern would be it will apply censorship rules of
any country that has enough market pull to influence Facebook's monetary
interests. As soon as you start on this road, Russia would say if you censor
what's bad in America, why don't you censor what's bad in Russia?

At least cat pictures aren't banned anywhere that I know of, so 99% of
facebook content is safe ;)

~~~
oneloop
Tell us more about this Russian censorship, you seem to know a lot about the
subject.

~~~
smsm42
How many weeks you're willing to spend on it? :) Yes, I know a bunch about the
subject, but most of it hardly relevant to the topic at hand.

------
sfifs
Facebook pays its bills by primarily being a mass reach advertising platform
just like any mainstream TV channel. They are not some public communications
service.

Therefore they will curate their content in such a way that preserves and
expands the mass reach as much as possible (eg. by following country specific
content guidelines) and keeps them out of legal hot water (in this case, the
risk of child porn) and negative imagery contexts to keep them an attractive
source for advertising. For instance, mainstream advertisers (with the
exception of the Bennetons of the world) don't necessarily want their brands
to appear in possibly negative contexts.

Given these economic interests, any content process they have will necessarily
lean towards extra caution. It's not so much "censorship" really as economic
self interest.

In these things, follow the money.

------
firasd
It's true that Facebook (and Twitter, Youtube, etc.) are expressing the point
of view of the platform creators as to 'acceptable content' and it's worth
pointing out. On the other hand, if I made a product that hosted user
generated content I would probably have pretty similar guidelines to them.

e.g. Yes the "nipple double standards" can be criticized but given current
cultural norms, when this limit doesn't exist, you end up hosting a lot of
explicit images like Tumblr or MySpace. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

~~~
mgleason_3
But, thats exactly the point. Americans are so bought into the idea that
"explicit" images are bad that they can't see another viewpoint. Its become
"natural". And, as the author pointed out, Americans are so blind to it that
you don't even see the problem with censoring nipples but not beheadings.

You literally cant see that noone should be injured by seeing a womans breast,
but seeing a beheaded body could.

Its interesting to see this story come out so soon after the LA times story
about libel and the fight against court ordered take-down of posts critical of
companies (think Yelp, etc.).

Maybe the point is that censorship shouldn't be allowed?

~~~
briandear
Americans? How about the British, Mexico, Singapore, China, Japan, Korea,
every country in the Middle East except Israel?

Then you have a German freak out over even talking about Nazis.

Almost every country has some hang up or another. Suggesting that 'Americans'
have a fear of nipples is short sighted. Every culture has something that
causes a collective freakout.

~~~
chippy
The difference (that mgleason_3 was saying) is that Americans cannot see that
other's have different viewpoints. Other countries are able to see that others
have different viewpoints and can justify their own decisions in comparison
with others.

It's why, for example, they are often puzzled when abroad and note that "some
people don't like us Americans" and cannot find out why.

I have noticed this particular way of looking at the world with many Americans
when working in global collaborative tech projects - it's a kind of
imperialism - a built in sense that their way of looking at the world is the
only way. It seems to be a common thing, and not everywhere. It also has the
characteristic that those with that mindset are unaware about it.

There are many exceptions of course, and the most successful people are able
to work with people from other cultures. But I believe this is what the
article and mgleason_3 is trying to say.

If you'd like another metaphor to explain the theory: Privilege. Americans
have a privilege as the "top" culture which makes them blind to others below
them.

~~~
iThrowA1
So I'm an American but to be fair I'd like to think I'm one of your
acceptions. Personally I agree with you, the female body as a whole is overly
sexualized and part of that is making nipples taboo, but Facebook isn't
restricting your ability to show your friends pictures of your nipples, or
going to a nude beach. To me, their privacy policy is an expression of their
own opinion/ideals (or more likely the opinion advertising firms have decided
will make them the most money). And while both I have the right to think
nipples are nbd and they have the right to say nipples aren't a big deal, I
think telling Facebook they must have pictures of nipples on their servers
infringes on Facebooks right to freak out about nipples just as Facebook
preventing you from making a nipple collage and showing it to all your friends
would restict your rights to think nipples are no big deal. It's all good to
say anybody should have the right to express whatever they want, but part of
that right is to not express things you don't want to.

------
superice
This issue is quite easily fixable if Facebook would have set up their
censoring policy in a different way: allow everything by default, detect or
let users flag illegal posts or images (e.g. child pornography) Make the post
invisible for others from that point on, but do not remove it nor notify the
author. Alert the authorities when child porn is uploaded, and let them figure
out whether they'd want to pursue it or not. If authorities decide not to
pursue, make it visible again. If authorities do decide to pursue the author
should've abided the law. That way Facebook moves the entire censorship
discussion to law enforcement, which is pretty much the best place for it to
be.

Furthermore, because this may yield some shocking images into ones timeline,
Facebook should try to use machine learning to invisibly tag posts by their
content. For nudity there are already algorithms, and I'm sure other shocking
content could be tagged in a similar way as well. Last step: give everybody a
settings panel with what they want to see, except for kids, they can't see
anything that isn't according to the PG-[age] regulations.

That makes it completely PC :)

------
chippy
In writing some replies to a couple of comments, I think that the article is
referring to cultural privilege. Americans have the privilege as being the
most powerful western culture, Facebook comes from an educated, technological,
rich, American, culture and cannot see others that with less power should have
some of influence in how a global culture can be. Also, as with most forms of
privilege it's not common at all that those at the top need to compromise with
those below and characteristic is that those with the most priviledge cannot
see their own position at the top and inability to acknowledge their issues of
others.

What the article is showing is the privilege of American culture interacting
with other cultures and peoples.

edits: I think it's actually a great time for the Internet - I am seeing this
as the growing pains of a new global culture - a new global way of looking at
the world. We are seeing the makers and police of the rich west seeing that
the world is more complex and diverse than they are comfortable with, and the
result will be interesting to say the least, and glorious and rich if all
cultures can be supported in a global way.

------
tehwalrus
It hurts my brain when people describe censorship as "liberalism". Especially
fellow Brits.

~~~
chippy
Agreed. It's not Liberalism at all - if anything, from the article, thinking
about this on a global scale - it's a cross between a Silicon Valley tech
mindset, American puritanism, and the current flavour of rich, white,
university educated politically correct behaviour. In short it means an odd
mixture of whats allowed and not which the article talks about, but it's
nothing to do with liberalism.

edits: I think it's cultural privilege. Americans have the privilege as being
the most powerful western culture and literally cannot see others that with
less power should have some of that influence.

~~~
tehwalrus
Sorry, I can't allow the context to make it seem as if I approve of being
deliberately thoughtless. I generally try hard myself not to be incorrect
(politically) since it would break one of Bill and Ted's two commandments.

I just dislike it when Liberalism, which I believe in whole-heartedly pretty
much exactly as I think Mill intended, is dragged into this debate about
censorship, when it was about what should be _illegal_ not what was moral or
immoral. (Indeed, it is a way for people who _disagree with each other about
what is immoral_ to live in the same country under the same law and feel
safe.)

------
kybernetyk
It's facebook's platform. They can do with it whatever they want. And if they
prefer to remove certain content it's their good right.

If you don't like their policies don't use their platform. (No, "all my
friends are there" is not an excuse. At some time you have to decide what's
more important - your morals or whatever your peers pressure you into).

------
fapjacks
Interesting, considering I've been reporting the same photo for years, which
is constantly _not_ deleted by these people. The photo itself shows the naked,
bloody, mutilated corpse of a woman who was raped and murdered, then had a
crucifix shoved down her throat. For what it's worth, the image is absolutely
real, a crime scene photo. Every single time I report it, I get "We reviewed
the photo you reported ... and found it doesn't violate our Community
Standards." Humans are _definitely_ reviewing that photo. I would post a link
(in hopes that others here could help me report it) but it's extremely graphic
and I'm sure HN would implode.

Facebook is pretty much 100% terrible and 0% great. I don't think it does
_anything_ positive for anybody except Mark Zuckerberg.

------
snorrah
Facebooks' an american canc^^^^company, so naturally it acts only in its own
thinking.

I mean what do you expect? It's facebook. It was founded on dubious merit, the
company will operate in the most grey it possibly can.

(Not wanting to anger the tech nerds here: various FB employees have released
super interesting stuff back into the tech community such as the recent SSH CA
auth article)

But c'mon. When you see anyone accused of foul play, facebook should be the
least surprising of them all.

------
sebringj
I love the stackoverflow model of up and down voting and how it is moderated
so well. It is apples and oranges to a large degree but I wonder if there was
a way to introduce up and down voting, then having things show up based on
that, rather than having some moral authority taking things down. For example,
if enough people down vote something, it has the effect of disappearing from
the public stream but of course you can still see your friends posts. Maybe
this is just a software problem given the right setup.

------
lmm
And yet for all their pretty words, the Telegraph don't show the actual image
at the centre of this furore? Too scared of upsetting their own advertisers
perhaps?

------
fit2rule
"You need to subscribe to read this article". Well, then, I guess there are
forces more powerful than censorship that can be applied to this problem ..

------
nihonde
If you are fighting for your rights on Facebook, you are going to be
disappointed and you are very, painfully niave about how walled gardens
operate.

------
jedberg
I feel bad for Facebook here. Having been responsible for managing this same
problem for another (albeit smaller) multinational user generated website,
it's a tough problem.

Everyone around the world, and even within the United States, have a vastly
different sense of morality and taste. Which do you cater to?

Not to mention the legal issues, where some content is legal in one place and
illegal in another.

------
bartkappenburg
Not sure how the 'flag' system works but based on the two examples (famous
news photo and famous work of art), you could easily circumvent wrong flagging
(wrong = deleting famous and important photos) by generating a 'similar photo
search' in the system and giving context. That would help the over-ambitious
flagger to recognize this.

------
mtgx
Twitter is just as bad, if not worse. Take yesterday for instance. The Hillary
health issue EXPLODED on Reddit and other places within 2h. And I saw single
tweets with multiple thousand retweets on Twitter as well. But not single
trending topic on Twitter about the incident the whole day.

There's NO WAY none of those hashtags weren't eligible for trending. Twitter
has been caught doing it before, but I think yesterday was far worse than
anything they've done before. They've must've told everyone to be on the
lookout of any Hillary-related topic becoming a trend, or just automatically
banning anything that may be been about it from trending.

Only today you see the body double thing trending, which I'm sure has far
fewer tweets and at a much lower speed than yesterday's incident had.

I know Trump looks to be a terrible human being and likely an even worse
president, but it really scares me to see that not only the mainstream media
actively try to side with Hillary, but now also tech/social platforms like
Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Google, etc. I think if Hillary is president,
you'll see the US succumb to the same media censorship and _self-_ censorship
that you see in Russia.

~~~
k-mcgrady
As someone standing on the outside looking in you're definitely letting
conspiracy theories get the best of you. BBC had an article up while she was
still in her daughters house and had a video of her fainting not long after.
As did most 'main stream media' sources. I can't speak for Twitter's trending
system but mainstream media had the facts up very quickly.

------
helthanatos
Facebook can do what they want, but they do censor everything. I don't care
about FB, as I have an account that just sits and does nothing. When some
organization censors something, they should say a reason, though... Some sites
like to delete things and act like they never happened.

------
dexterdog
So is Google: [https://sputniknews.com/us/20160912/1045214398/google-
clinto...](https://sputniknews.com/us/20160912/1045214398/google-clinton-
manipulation-election.html)

------
Mendenhall
I think people are conflating real violence with pretend violence in many of
these comments. Real violence is way more restricted than nudity in US.

------
rwoodley
I don't go to hacker news to read recycled UK tabloid journalism. Who cares
what some hack in London who is paid to provoke outrage thinks.

------
aikah
lol, here we go again, like Facebook is an public institution that owes
anybody anything ... But outrage sells so let's trigger a few people that have
nothing better to talk about than censorship on Facebook, when their own
government is restricting their speech everyday, this is especially true in
UK. The biggest hypocrites, ever.

------
JustSomeNobody
I cannot wait until the post-Facebook era. Hopefully whatever comes along next
will learn from this mistake.

------
20yrs_no_equity
I'm not a fan of Facebook so this is great news. The more they manipulate the
platform and undermine its objectivity and freedom, the less people will trust
it. And while the reasons they shouldn't trust it - namely privacy- are not
directly related to these actions, Facebooks attempts to control people like
this will make them aware of its untrustworthiness.

TBH this is an area very prime for disruption, the "next Facebook" is right
around the corner, but it will bear less relationship to The Facebook than The
Facebook did to Myspace.

------
jackmaney
Complete FUD. The rest of the world is not forced to use Facebook. Neither is
anyone in the US.

There is no such thing as free speech on a social network, nor should there
be.

------
dbg31415
If you don't like it, don't use it. It's really that simple.

I stopped using Facebook about five years ago, no complaints. Wish I had
deleted my account sooner.

