
Facebook 'blocks accounts' of Palestinian journalists - bjourne
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/09/facebook-blocks-accounts-palestinian-journalists-160925095126952.html
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Crosseye_Jack
That's a nice site your have there Mr Zuckerberg it would be a shame if
something were to happen to it... Block a few "trouble makers" or risk being
being blocked nationwide.

Random guess. Facebook got put in a position where if they didn't allow
Israeli to close down accounts due to "incitement" they ran the risk of being
labelled as an "incitement website" and having access blocked completely. So
they chose what was better for their business. I don't agree with it but it's
facebooks garden and they can choose who plays in it and who acts as the
gatekeepers to it. Same happens on other sites. reddit block access to certain
pages from Russia (though they only filter on a country wide basis and not
remove content for everyone else). If Twitter thinks you are a problem (or
becoming one) they will boot you off.

~~~
shkkmo
> though they only filter on a country wide basis and not remove content for
> everyone else)

And that is a very critical difference.

Censorship happens on many platforms, but when that censorship is being done
to journalists the violations are particularly egregious.

~~~
Crosseye_Jack
And I completely agree. I don't agree with censoring journalists and when I
find sites I use doing it I make a personal dicision if I want to keep using
that site.

I would hate to be in this position. Do you comply and block accounts and
those with a loud enough voice will shout loudly enough that they can get back
in or run the risk of upsetting the people that hold the keys to your market?

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jwtadvice
The new modes of censorship and propaganda that are well developed in America,
Germany, Israel, the UK, etc and that are maturing in the UAE, Saudi Arabia,
Morocco really scare me.

The reason is that unlike prior art in information warfare (altering versions
of history textbooks, encyclopedias, newsprint, etc) where control for
narrative and shading of facts was done on a very coarse level - the mode of
surveilling social media and targetting individual news feeds and people with
high connectivity and influence - is tailored and specific.

This combined with the new way that information is injested and the new ways
that digital records have become an integral piece of regular thinking and
problem solving make these elements of every country's information warfare
programs uniquely dangerous.

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barnassey
These "accidents" keep happening and it should really give one pause.
Personally, censorship is censorship regardless if it is a state actor or a
company.

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contingencies
Important news, please don't flag it.

This could have been an honest mistake (IMHO highly unlikely), Israel-
suggested (quite possibly), executed against policy by an internal employee
with an agenda (IMHO possibly, but too easy a PR response), or is/was
Facebook's official policy from management to support an Israeli agenda? (The
scariest option) ... I guess we'll never know.

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LorenPechtel
An awful lot of what comes out of Palestinian journalists is incitement. Is it
any surprise that something is being done about it?

~~~
yfj211
Boy, that's quite a loaded statement considering many Israeli politicians have
also repeatedly called for the genocide of Palestinians
([http://mondoweiss.net/2015/05/netanyahu-palestinians-
governm...](http://mondoweiss.net/2015/05/netanyahu-palestinians-
government/)). I'm quite surprised nothing is being done about that.

~~~
Peaker
Shaked (an Israeli minister) posted (and thus endorsed) a text that calls for
genocide.

While many Israeli politicians are terrible, I don't think that single
endorsement substantiates your claim that "many Israeli politicans have
repeatedly called ...". Even that single endorsement was deleted by Shaked.

~~~
fjjrxcbdhx
If even politicians at the highest levels of government are doing it, let
alone hate groups inside Israel, it doesn't help the case of Israeli
objectivity.

~~~
Peaker
I didn't say Israel is objective. But the parent post is taking a true point
and hyperboling it into a total lie. Israel is bad enough without the lies
trying to make it seem even worse -- discrediting its detractors.

------
eli_gottlieb
And by "Facebook blocks accounts" we mean:

>Editors from two Palestinian news publications based in the occupied West
Bank _say_ their Facebook accounts were suspended last week and that no reason
was provided, _alleging_ their pages _may have been_ censored because of a
recent agreement between the US social media giant and the Israeli government
aimed at tackling "incitement".

Rubbish journalism: no actual causal connection between the Israeli
government, Facebook, and the pages being taken down has been established.
It's merely assumed to be there because al-Jazeera and its readership are
predisposed to believe the nefarious tentacles of the Israeli government can
reach anywhere.

~~~
Flimm
"blocks" and "suspends" accounts are the same thing. Nothing you said or that
the article said contradicts the headline.

~~~
DiabloD3
To be absolutely fair, the italicised parts are important.

There is no proof, only accusation.

Edit: The article also does not prove that Facebook unblocked them (as no
block was proved), nor reached out to Facebook on if they did indeed respond
saying it was accidental.

~~~
contingencies
Did you read the article?

 _Facebook replied on Saturday with an apology, saying the suspension had been
"accidental"._

That means it happened - Al Jazeera is one of the more reliable networks
according to my journalist friends, and aren't usually known to publish
something without fact checking or couching it in 'unconfirmed'.

~~~
DiabloD3
Replied on Saturday to whom? The way I parsed that as "replied to the owners
of the Facebook account", which is hearsay.

Facebook also has not published any PR statement apologizing for this, so
either they are not real news agencies to begin with, or this never happened,
or both.

Al Jazeera is reliable except when it comes to issues like this, they suffer
from a bias from having this done to them in the past as well.

