
Facebook begins censoring images of prophet Muhammad - xkarga00
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/01/27/two-weeks-after-zuckerberg-said-je-suis-charlie-facebook-begins-censoring-images-of-prophet-muhammad/?tid=sm_tw
======
cryoshon
From the article:

"Just this December, Facebook agreed to censor the page of Russia’s leading
Putin critic, Alexei Navalny, at the request of Russian Internet regulators."

"Critics have previously accused the site of taking down pages tied to
dissidents in Syria and China; the International Campaign for Tibet is
currently circulating a petition against alleged Facebook censorship, which
has been signed more than 20,000 times."

"“I’m committed to building a service where you can speak freely without fear
of violence,” Zuckerberg said in his Hebdo statement."

The outlandishly egregious doublespeak of Zuck aside, Facebook is a data
mining company devoted to making money from its users. The only terms on which
it can be said to support free speech are the terms under which it is able to
mine user data, then sell user data. In less polite terms, Facebook is a no-
limits whore for anyone with cash, so we should expect to see exactly what we
are seeing.

Here's a question: what are the conditions under which Facebook will censor
the content in the US/European market? I guarantee you that it's coming,
provided the right topics are being discussed and the right groups are
interested in squashing discussion.

~~~
DanBC
> Here's a question: what are the conditions under which Facebook will censor
> the content in the US/European market?

Breast-feeding mothers in Europe and US have had their images removed.

EDIT: Not sure if that still happens, but it's easy enough to find articles on
WWW about it.

~~~
notahacker
Also in the current news is a Frenchman suing Facebook for _closing his
account_ for posting Courbet's _L 'Origine du Monde_, an artwork which depicts
a certain part of the female anatomy _very_ prominently.

Several years ago an image of a friend I (re)posted was subject to FB policy-
based deletion. I'm not sure whether this was because reposting other people's
images was frowned on at that time or the sight of the top of a male ass
wearing female underwear poking out from jeans in a group called the "ass
appreciation society" was a bit too racy (I can't find the email I received
about it, and I believe the original pic is still there) but I'm convinced it
was several orders of magnitude less likely to have caused anyone offence than
a Muhammed-cartoon-meme.

~~~
nakkiel
I too posted Courbet's painting to Google+ a couple of years ago and it was
removed. I contacted Google on the subject but never received an answer.

~~~
pyman
Freedom of speech, blah, blah. Zuckerberg is a lier, he should be a
politician.

------
blfr
Blocking access to pages from countries where the court order was issued seems
entirely reasonable to me. GitHub does the same[1].

The censorship here is the responsibility of the Turkish government, not
Facebook. It's supposedly a democratic country so maybe even represents the
will of the people living there.

And anyway, when social sites block "objectionable" pages on their own or
under criticism, but with no involvement of the legal system, anyone who
complains about censorship is quickly shut down with arguments that it's a
private company under no obligation to protect free speech. Why expect them to
defy sovereign states when they usually can't handle a little outrage on
Twitter?

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8703650](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8703650)

~~~
panarky
A year ago, YouTube and Twitter refused to take down content that the Turkish
government didn't like, and they were both blocked.

YouTube - [http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/27/google-
youtube-...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/27/google-youtube-ban-
turkey-erdogan)

Twitter - [http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-
mix/wp/2014/03/21...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-
mix/wp/2014/03/21/turkey-bans-twitter-and-twitter-explodes/)

I was in Istanbul at the time, and I'm certain the Streisand effect more than
offset the censorship, and badly damaged Erdoğan's reputation at home and
abroad.

Banning popular sites shines a bright light on repression. Resistance can be
more effective than collaboration.

------
quaunaut
I still find the supposition that Facebook was supposed to defy a court order
hilarious. Yes, I understand it's a court order from Turkey, not America, but
you can't just flagrantly break the law in other countries simply because
yours believes differently.

Or put another way: As much as Americans like to act like it, we can't enforce
our ideals around the world without significant investment that I don't think
anyone wants us making after the last couple of times.

~~~
panarky
In the worst case, Turkey could ban Facebook. Would they really do that? It's
nowhere near certain.

Google left China rather than submit to their censorship regime, and the
Chinese market is like 18 Turkeys.

And if you do remove content, you can make that action transparent on Chilling
Effects[1]. Facebook doesn't do that, either.

There are alternatives.

And if you decide to build censorship tools to stay in the good graces of the
regime, then don't say "I am Charlie" while you're doing it.

[1] [https://www.chillingeffects.org/](https://www.chillingeffects.org/)

~~~
maged
> censorship

China wanted to censor inconvenient history. Turkey wants to censor offensive
(to them) religious images. I think that's the important comparison, not the
size of the market.

~~~
mercurial
The Turkish legal code has a clause against "insulting Turkishness", which has
been used to censor mentions of the Armenian genocide, so they're clearly not
against history-related censorship.

------
criley2
I find France's own crackdown on non-protected free speech during and shortly
after their legendary march for free speech to be much more ironic than a
business obeying local law.

~~~
panarky
The issue is not that Facebook obeys local laws.

The issue is Zuckerberg shouting "I am Charlie" while simultaneously building
the machinery of censorship.

[https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10101844454210771](https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10101844454210771)

If you think some censorship is better than an outright ban, fine. I don't
agree, but I understand your rationale.

But don't build the tools of repression and ride the "I am Charlie" bandwagon
at the same time. FB is blocking the same class of content that Charlie Hebdo
gave their lives to publish.

Zuckerberg n'est définitivement pas Charlie.

C'est écœurant.

~~~
dethstar
The whole I am Charlie thing is full of hypocrites. i.e anyone who talks free
speech to promote their agenda.

~~~
agentultra
The existence of hypocrites does not invalidate the movement. Democracy
suffers them and remains a valuable form of governance. It could always be
better and we should strive to make it that way. It's unfortunate that
hypocrites do raise the noise and wash out the message... we could be doing
this better.

------
discardorama
When a company blocks a page in the US due to a US court order: they're a
respectable, law-abiding company.

When a company blocks a page in another country due to that country's court
order: censorship! Where's the freedom of speech?!?!

I am an American, but: if my fellow Americans want to see censorship in play,
take a look at the fight Al Jazeera had to get into cable networks (especially
in the days after 9/11). And they had to start a subsidiary, Al Jazeera
America, to get around some hurdles.

~~~
vowelless
> When a company blocks a page in the US due to a US court order: they're a
> respectable, law-abiding company.

Forgive my naivete. Is there precedence for this? Are there pages blocked in
the US due to US court orders (and available elsewhere in the world)?

~~~
nitrogen
See ICE's "Operation In Our Sites" and related domain seizures. See also: DMCA
and ContentID abuse.

~~~
dublinben
As egregious as those are, none are an example of a site being blocked after a
court order.

~~~
discardorama
Well, to be honest, they were blocked even _without_ a court order...

------
panarky
For HN discussion, see
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8951262](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8951262)

------
kingkawn
We censor hate speech. They regard images of Mohammed to be hate speech.

~~~
gkya
It's not hate speech. It's sin. It's religiously forbidden to depict Mohammed,
neither pejoratively nor complimentarily, the teaching is that one shall not
depict the prophet anyhow.

~~~
arjn
Its a sin for Muslims. Why would it apply to non-muslims ?

~~~
gkya
In Islam, Muslims are to obey what the prophet says and follow how he behaves
and lives (Qoran, Hashr 7, Nejm 3-5, Maaide 99, Neesa 13-14 [1]). So,
sometimes some religious rules in modern Islam are rooted in hadiths, not
directly the Qoran itself. There are hadiths that forbid depiction of the
quick [2]. Also, some consider depiction and other forms of art to be _sheerk_
[1], which means pretending or comparing oneself to God, trying to be godlike,
which is sin (Hashr 24, Araph 11 can be interpreted to tell that creating and
shaping are attributes of the God).

Thus there are various interpretations of Islam's allowance and tolerance of
depiction of the things, the quick, the people, the prophecy and its
particular prophet Mohammed. Sunnis, which are Turks and majority of Arabs as
far as I know, loathe and are averse to depictions to some extent. More
religious older people in Turkey refrain from being depicted anyhow, while
some are fine with memorial pictures of themselves and relatives. Majority of
the community is though, do not oppose any sort of picturing apart from
Mohammed's, and they are taking and publishing pictures of themselves and
other people and objects, animate or not, as everybody does. I have heard that
Shiites are also lax regarding prophetical depictions, but I have not
encountered personally the shiite culture, so, I do not really know.

So, it all boils down to the fact that when someone, Muslim or not, publishes
visual material regarding Mohammed, and the God in an islamic context, they
should be ready to face different reactions from different parts of the
Islamic community. And, as we are living in the internet age, where
information goes from Alaska to Iraq in the speed of light (figuratively), its
no surprise that living in a non-muslim community does not matter at all in
this context.

One would be offended when somebody tries to hurt or offend someone who he
considers to be more worthy to him than himself, right? Well, the verse Ahzab
6 [1] says that Mohammed is more worthy to a Muslim than himself.

[1] I have tried to phonetically reproduce names of soorahs and religious
terms, I do not guarantee they are correct.

[2] Now, I am not that familiar with hadiths and how these are really cited,
but here are some citations nevertheless: Müslim 2107/96; Müslim 2107/90, 94;
Buhari 5957, 5958; Müslim 2107/87, and others.

~~~
4ydx
And once you decide that being offended > killing those who offend you, we see
how truly horrible certain mindsets can be. It is disgusting in my opinion.

~~~
gkya
Religion holds the power to make people horrible. Yes, killings are horrible,
but I also behold that hating people is similarly horrible, and not being
tolerant is also similarly horrible. I'm an irreligious atheist, for I think
that transcendent dogmas of faith make people horrible. And these dogmas made
people horrible before the Charlie Hebdo incident and these dogmas will
continue to make people horrible also after it. In the grandparent comment I
sought to explain the phenomenon, not to justify it.

------
blueskin_
If you carry out the request of an oppressive government, you are as much a
part of it as the people physically performing atrocities. Facebook should be
ashamed of themselves.

------
matthewmcg
I'm curious what the legal consequences to Facebook would have been for
ignoring the order. Would the Turkish government have sufficient authority to
make local ISPs block the site? Would Turkey fine Facebook?

Enforcing any penalty would be a problem. If Facebook has no assets in Turkey,
Turkey would need to go after Facebook's assets elsewhere, perhaps in
California. U.S. courts probably wouldn't enforce a judgement of a Turkish
Court that was at odds with the First Amendment in the U.S. Constitution,
though the cases on this are mixed.

It's also interesting to compare this "graven images takedown" system the
U.S.' DMCA takedown system. Here you can post some pretty offensive things on
the 'net, but god help you if you post a picture of Mickey Mouse!

~~~
gkya
> Would the Turkish government have sufficient authority to make local ISPs
> block the site?

Yes. This has happened with Twitter during the country-wide protests in summer
2013 and with YouTube when sensitive political conversations were leaked just
before presidential elections in march 2014.

------
SixSigma
How do they know what he looks like ?

~~~
cpncrunch
Exactly. The pic in the Charlie Hebdo magazine was just a brown guy with a
beard and a (turban?). No mention of Muhammad at all AFAIK.

------
tomp
TL;DR: Facebook prevents images of Muhammad to be seen in Turkey.

------
alphakappa
It is silly to expect a company to not comply with local law. Do we expect
Facebook to give up its business in the US if it decides tomorrow that it
doesn't agree in principle with some aspect of American law?

If Facebook was censoring content in America to assuage Turkey, there would be
a good reason to gripe about it. It is not doing that.

------
lenochang
how fb gonna ban pictures that nobody could verify it is him? every person who
use his name? or just picture with m* string on it?

this is absolutely crazy and very uncommon sense.

so the image is him because people claim it is him, but in reality the truth
is, it is not him, just bunch of ... perceive it is him.

------
grandalf
Je Suis Pragmatique

------
whatsgood
i quit facebook 12/31/2014\. before doing so i explained to many of my friends
and family why i was doing so. every single one of them, no exaggeration,
agreed with my reasons, but said they couldn't because of (reason x, y, z).
now that ello is patenting their ip i think it is especially important to
begin thinking about ways to create _public protocols_ for these type of
_services_. what do you think it would require for most people to give up fb?

------
wtbob
Why do they always call him 'prophet' Mohammed? The only people who think that
he was a prophet would be Muslims (and maybe B'hais?).

~~~
kl4m
Jesus is called _Christ_ (Messiah) in the media too. It's just part of the
vocabulary now, I think.

------
JDDunn9
What surprises me most about this article is how many censorship requests come
out of India. What are they trying to censor?

------
jdawg77
A quick mention of the first comment; true, we Americans can't expect to be
able to break the law overseas and get away with it...but, as anybody who's
spent time in a Muslim world, etc, or perhaps has a ton of family from that
tradition - it's easier to see why Je Suis Charlie could give Facebook a
headache.

I can't sue a journalist overseas for slander that occured about three years
ago and still exists; for the most part, I only recall it as an example of how
the "international justice," issue cuts both ways. We have the United Nations
for a good reason and in both Costa Rica and another country, some of my best
friends worked there.

If another country, not the USA, wishes to use an invention of my people (the
internet) to crap on me, well, they should also either suffer the consequences
of American justice...OR, even better, we should all realize that _living_ in
one place doesn't and should never subject one to _another_ place's definition
of right and wrong.

------
Dirlewanger
Just doing what's best for business and keeping costs down, nothing to see
here.

~~~
threeseed
It's what is also best for their users. The site would simply be banned if
they didn't comply with local laws.

~~~
dublinben
Would that really be so bad for users in Turkey? Maybe a blanket ban of
Facebook and other popular sites would encourage a change in government. This
appeasement just enables authoritarian censorship.

~~~
alphakappa
A change in government because some sites are unavailable? That's ambitious --
we just need to look at China to see how well that idea works.

