It's an obvious "following the local law" thingy, Facebook doesn't give a s*t, I personally reported 3 posts on different FB pages
1st was a religion extremist guy who says to Iraqi people that they should protest and fight the "other side" of the religion (aka start a new civil war) instead of protesting against the corrupted government.
2nd was a post that was praising the guy who murdered the Danish (Or was he Norwegian?) teacher who mocked Islam, and calling him a hero.
and the 3rd was a post that says "Women education is satanic, women's purpose is marriage".
all of these 3 reports was "The post was reviewed, and though it doesn't go against one of our specific Community Standards" and then it explains how to block blablabla... I don't report things anymore lol
I've given up during the time when ISIS regularly posted videos on social media. I've reported a video with a literal beheading about two thirds of the video in, and it didn't go against Facebook's community standards.
I guess whichever moderator saw it didn't bother to skip ahead during those like 5-10 seconds they reach their decision in.
Yeah, I've reported a bunch of stuff, all of it egregious. I have an inbox full of "thank you but this does not violate our community standards" to show for it.
Facebook has so much power with censoring only one side of the extremists. A good experiment would be if you could find a Christian priest to report, and check whether their response is weighted differently.
Data that Facebook is fighting hard to make sure people can't collect. Just like how they were poisoning the well while suing academic teams just trying to get information on ads data.
I think it is demonstrably proven that Facebook has no qualms about aiding and abetting government campaigns of crushing dissent across the world, despite its claims of "cherishing free speech". Facebook (and Twitter) has been doing the same in India [1].
I always thought it was interesting that the governments of Cambodia and Vietnam allowed Facebook where the media is tightly controlled. Cambodia used to have a couple independent papers. The Post became state-controlled-by-proxy [1] and the Daily was shut down by the government [2]. The existence and popularity of Facebook basically allowed them to shut down the older independent outlets without significant outcry from the public.
Maybe there is some calculus that shows it's better to get people online through access to Facebook, I just hope there's more journalistic competition and/or transparency in the future. Giving in to autocrats seems dangerous.
Locking someone up for disagreeing with you just highlights your insecurity. And I think the point here is that Facebook is a primary news source for many people. It may be enabling government censorship due to the company's monopolistic status.
Though I'd say the governments there are fairly secure. The Vietnamese communist party has been in power since 1945, China's since '49 and the Cambodian lot only got kicked out when Pol Pot, after having genocided a third of the population, attacked Vietnam who then invaded and got rid of him, and the new lot have been in power since 1984. Sadly throwing opponents in jail seems to kind of work. This of course predates facebook.
I did not comment on whether democracy or "democracy" is the best system for putting power at people's hands. That's another discussion.
My objections is whether we have actually been moving towards democracy or not. To just slap "democracy" or "republic" in the name of a state is not enough to make it so. It's how much autocratic the governors actually are and how much of the political decisions the population is actually able to define, that decides that.
In Greece, for example, government is in reality autocratic and people don't have much say. The only single check in place are the elections, but 1) You have to hope the other options are not just as bad as the current, which is unfortunately not the case, and 2) the established "aristocracy" has been doing a damn good job at managing people's opinions through the controlled media.
You're not locked up for criticizing the government or aristocracy in Greece. That's something. I agree that media, both traditional and the new social media, can be heavily influenced if not controlled by aristocracy. Democracy won't save you, it simply allows you to save yourself if you work very very hard to do so. My impression of Greece has been that it's a beautiful country full of great people that finds itself in hard times. Democracy isn't the cause of Greece's woes. As you say, people need to be better informed. Perhaps we should all go back to blogging on our own domain names, or at least encourage people to also take control of their social media content by using distributed systems. Clearly democracy + centralized social media isn't good enough.
It's the correct decision (although Facebook likely only cares about its bottom line). the YPG is designated as a terrorist organisation by the Turkish state and it's quite obvious that Turkey will want to exercise sovereignty over its communication channels rather than letting an opposing military force broadcast freely to its citizens.
It's not really the job of a private company to undermine nations in this way for simple reasons of sovereignty, and because even if Facebook were to somehow win in the short term, the five to ten year consequence would probably be that nations like Turkey decouple entirely and take control over communications back a la Russia or China.
It’s the wrong decision but no private company should be in a position to make it. The power that we have granted to centralized extralegal entities is obscene and we’re going to pay for it in blood if we don’t walk this back quickly by breaking up these orgs and building technologies that decentralize that power.
What would breaking up Facebook.com look like in a way that successfully prevents what you're describing?
It's not an oil conglomerate. It's a social network. That's irreducible by definition. Most people seem to throw out suggestions like forcing them to spin off Instagram and WhatsApp. That clearly wouldn't fix what youre saying is the issue. IG and WhatsApp would still be run by the same people, still owned in part by Zuckerberg, and still have the same incentives and goals. Essentially the only difference is that the employer name on the W-2s would change.
A death knell legislation would be better. Like making social networks entirely responsible for the content posted by their users so that it’s impossible to grow beyond a certain scale and still be functional. Or maybe enforcing interoperability so that users can take their data and friends elsewhere.
Like making social networks entirely responsible for the content posted by their users so that it’s impossible to grow beyond a certain scale and still be functional
How would that fix the problem of Turkey's government controlling what gets posted and what doesn't? That'd exacerbate it.
I agree that decentralized moderation is right, in theory. What does that look like in practice — Reddit-style downvoting?
And do you really think the really bad stuff — child porn, terrorist recruitment, and so on, that FB/Twitter/Google already detect with ML 99% of the time — should be decentralized too?
> It's not really the job of a private company to undermine nations in this way for simple reasons of sovereignty
That may be the case (or not), except this isn't a principled stance that Facebook is taking, but a business decision. Facebook have absolutely no issue with undermining a nation's sovereignty when it suits them.
For example, in protest against Australia's new News Media Bargaining Code, they went and blocked Australians from being able to share news articles.
I fail to see how blocking sharing of news links undermined Australia's sovereignty. The Australian government gave Facebook a choice to either pay up or exit the news business and they chose the latter. So they are in compliance with local law.
The News Media Bargaining Code is not yet law, and didn't even pass its final reading until after Facebook enacted their ban, so Facebook was under no legal obligation to block links to news websites. They were in compliance with local law regardless.
What Facebook did was a blatant attempt to influence the legislative process. It was the equivalent of a nation enacting an export ban due to threats of tariffs.
It's not really the job of facebook to do anything or care about anyone. It's on you and me to force them to do anything.
Don't get me wrong, I will absolutely blame the corporate apologists when shit goes bad. It's assholes like you that create an abusive environment for the rest of us. Your hands are soaked with blood.
I had a nice long reply but had some time to simply fit.
The issue here isn't that Facebook is complying with a government's wishes it is that we don't hold our own governments liable first. As in, you should first blame your own government for turning a blind eye to events you find objectionable. People cheer on facebook and others here for locking out opinions they don't want, they just find a clean term to justify it (no fake news, hate, etc)
However to be blunt. No government is without issues and it would be a better use of your angst to clean up your own government before asking your government or a private firm to interfere in the actions of others. As in, police yourself first.
As a Turkish immigrant in Germany, I really find the word "expat" irritating. Why should I make it explicitly clear that my immigration happened on my own terms?
Apart from that, the sheer amount of Turkish immigrants who left the country in the last decade (including me) are not Erdoğan supporters. However, many of us refrain from heavy criticism as we occasionally go to Turkey to visit our relatives and we don't want some specific person having a bad day destroying our lives.
So you usually hear the other side and may mistakenly think that "expat Turks" support Erdoğan big time. The majority of votes he gets from Turkish immigrants are the Turks who left the country more than a couple of decades ago and partly, their children. The "why" has a complicated answer that touches religion, demographic dynamics and acceptance in society.
If the people who can speak up don't speak up then how is change ever to be expected? This is btw not what usually happens in such situations (immigrants fleeing authoritarianism are generally vocal against it)
You really shouldn't judge people (positively or negatively) by what their ancestors fought for or didn't fight for, especially under oppressive regimes.
Because it's ironic that you'd mention Germany, a country where the majority either supported or was silent as one of the most brutal regimes rose to power. It took armies of foreign powers to come in and change that.
Sometimes people speak up and sometimes they don't. The math is complicated. Do they think it will actually have an impact? What do they stand to lose? How desperate are they? The Arab Spring showed that sometimes all it takes is one or two events to switch people from being silent and passive to being vocal and active. Unfortunately, that didn't turn out too well and the repercussions will favor more passivity.
FTFY : Germans, and Europeans generally, have put the security of people of color in Africa, India, Americas and their families in jeopardy over half a thousand year to democratise systems across their population to live in free and open societies that we are now able to migrate to.
So, the revolutions in Europe (which lead to democratization) happened because of whatever happened in Africa, India and the Americas? Or what do you mean?
You obviously have no idea about ottoman empire; why it rose to power, its tax system as oppose to byzantine empire, why christian states co-operated with ottomans... This will be my last entry under this thread.
Ottoman tax system was favourable in comparison to Byzantine empire. Ottomans and ruling class of Christian states even had marriages between their families for centuries.
Comparing that to the colonies of industrial era West is just fantasy. Both from time & complexity perspective. Plus the cultural/oppression perspective.
Yes, and none of those states implemented anything anywhere close to the western model. We're not talking about general revolt.
The reason why imperialism was important is because it allowed the European upper classes to persist in a position of material advantage despite decreasing their oppression of their citizens. It was certainly a strong contribution to convincing European upper classes to accept social restructure.
Expecting immigrants to cut ties with their countries is completely wrong. It may be hard for some people to understand, but a person can belong to more than one nation.
In my case, I am proud to be American, but I am also proud to be Tunisian. My extended family is in Tunisia and I love the country, so I make sure to visit regularly. And I will be sure to teach my children about Tunisia, its culture, its language, and its cuisine.
Over a few generations, this dual identity usually declines, simply because successive generations feel less of a kinship to their original country.
That perspective may benefit from re-evaluation. People that immigrated to America before the advent of air travel, satellite TV and internet had no choice when it came to cutting ties with their home country.
People integrate at their own pace. First-generation immigrants' kids tend to integrate fast or develop a dual-culture identity, because that is what they're around from the time they're born. The parents may never fully integrate if they came here as adults and spent a significant portion of their lifetime in another culture.
I definitely know Turks who are vocal against their regime, but I understand that many cannot afford to be. This isn't like the old days, before social media. Now, anything you say on social media can get you or your relatives back home on trouble.
PS Not Turkish but from another country with a regime that retaliates against critics.
> immigrants fleeing authoritarianism are generally vocal against it
There's a huge selection bias here (the immigrants most visible are those who speak up), so I wouldn't be so certain about this. My prior is that people don't give a shit about what's happening elsewhere, and their life is certainly easier if they don't _publish_ their controversial views. (Even if that controversial view is shared knowledge among immigrants, it's usually not common knowledge.)
I can give some background on this, I immigrated from Russia to the US when I was 5 and I still have a ton of extended family that lives there.
Do I like Putin or what Russia is doing? Hell no. But at the same time I'm not going to saying anything negative in public about Russia. If I got on the Russian governments radar forget what they will do to me, I live in America, what will they do to my Grandmother, my uncles, my nieces, my cousins?
I don't know what they will do, and for that reason I cannot risk saying anything.
The same applies in places like Turkey, China, etc. Yeah you might not like what the govt there is doing, but at the same time you can't risk speaking up and having the blowback taken out on your family that still lives there.
On the other hand public pressure from abroad does work , and since politics tends to run in families, their families are at risk anyway. I can tell from the experience of my country (greece) during the dictatorial regime 50 years ago. The greeks who were persecuted / emigrated to europe (France mostly) were very vocal about the (US-backed) regime and drew international condemnation, especially the high-profile ones. It certainly contributed to its eventual downfall a few years later, but importantly it helped the swift return of democracy, because there was already a group of people who were politically organized abroad.
This shallow understanding of Turkish politics, is gonna come to impact western influence in middle east adversely very soon. More so European interests in short term, and US influence globally on the long run.
I have been reading comments similar to yours. Your view is nothing but naive / pure romanticism. There is a large amount of us (Turks of all opinions), just reading silently. Yet you are confident enough to straw-man whole Turkish side of the story into your shallow view.
This is very common. Turkey has a bad PR, and it's been useful to a certain extent for the West. But there is a point where unrealistic bad PR, causes ignorance like seen above. This is a divide between West and Turkey.
If this is an orchestrated divide. I don't mind West being so ignorant of Turkey.
“Never Interrupt Your Enemy When He Is Making A Mistake” Sun Tzu
>If this is an orchestrated divide. I don't mind West being so ignorant of Turkey.
The west is so deep in turkey they know what color underwear edrogan wears each morning. You're mistaking PR with reality. The west misunderstanding turkey is much more likely to hurt turkey in the long run, than hurt the west.
Erdogan is not Turkey... A bigger power loses more from any conflict threatening the status quo. Turkey is a key player in protection of status quo surrounding the region shaped heavily by western influence.
Turkey siding with Russia/China, leaving NATO would be end of any US influence in mideast + eastern mediterranean. Guess why Putin is giving so many nice toys to Erdogan. He wants to make Turkey confident and stand up for itself by conflict instead of diplomacy. Meanwhile West is doing the opposite game. I think we all know where this goes.
Remind you, Turkey is 80M in population. Any all out war or a civilian war, will be 4 times worse than Syria, 2 times worse than Iraq. Europe/West had to redefine itself in face of refugee crisis from Syria. We will be talking about a whole different "Western values" if such a crisis happens. And if that happens, CCP won't look so bad to most of the world.
>Turkey is a key player in protection of status quo surrounding the region shaped heavily by western influence.
It's interesting that you think its in the west's best interest to continue being blackmailed by Turkey indefinitely. That's the status quo. It won't go on indefinitely no matter what.
>Turkey siding with Russia/China
Everyone is aware that turkey is playing the powers off each other, but I really doubt Turkey will really side with China or Russia who both hate the islamic religion.
>Turkey siding with Russia/China, leaving NATO would be end of any US influence in mideast + eastern mediterranean.
Edrogan thinks to forge anew turkish superpower by blackmailing the west and playing the powers off each other. Everyone knows.
>Any all out war or a civilian war, will be 4 times worse than Syria, 2 times worse than Iraq.
It won't come to that. The west will sanction Turkey into nothing, and Turkey will have the option of becoming 1/100th of its current economy or sell itself to china or russia and become a client state, something erdogan won't stand.
>And if that happens, CCP won't look so bad to most of the world.
Nobody with an sense in their head sees the political orientation of china and the way Xi can disappear its billionaires and thinks "I should sign up for that, that's the system for me".
The CCP system looks terrible, and being a client of theirs is just to be under a boot.
Actually being exposed to western media and attitude what makes Turkish immigrant pro-gov.
Simply you are taking sides of terrorists from the point of a Turk.
Thankfully truth is not subject to you.
So basically all world governments are locked in to their current state forever from the perspective of big tech, even if they are tyrannical regimes? Basically any group trying to invoke change will be labeled terrorists and will be censored and suppressed.
This is IMO the most valuable reflection of the whole thread. It can be seen as morals are conditional for big tech companies and depend of arbitrary circumstances like location
This is such a reductive argument. Are you saying that a private corporation is never responsible for its actions if they are compliant with a nations laws?
Is there no limit to what you consider OK for a corporation to do within a nations borders, as long as the action is sanctioned by the government? Do all corporations have literally zero responsibility to uphold any kind of moral that isn’t enforced in local law?
I certainly would object if Facebook, like, handed over his location to a hit squad. This seems like it’s very far on the other side of the spectrum. If Facebook second-guessed an order from a duly elected government to remove purportedly terrorist content, I’d question whether there’s anything meaningful a government can make Facebook do if they don’t want to.
YPG is terrorist organization according to Turkey and many relevant countries and even US officials don't deny its connections with PKK.
They maybe freedom fighters for Biden but it is not seen that way in middle east. Especially to whom lost their kids in car bombs.
There's an easy common argument for these things: restricted mass information/communication is better than none, or better than the lower amount you'd get with a home-grown platform. Seems a pretty good argument to me.
One could look for good arguments to frame this in a better way, though I believe there might be a simpler way to explain: follow the money.
Companies and people in the West don't care what happens elsewhere, they're just in for the money. There's money to be made in Turkey as well, and Facebook doesn't care about specifics of how.
For the common people this all sounds fair and strategic on the surface level, though I'm skeptical of its sustainability. Just like how it's hard to be rich in a poor and sketchy neighbourhood, it could be hard to remain a free state in a planet where many of your neighbours aren't.
There is no simple solution here, and we also really shouldn't just throw our arms when faced with moral questions - this is probably what these decades will be known for in the future.
As a product of the United States you would hope that they would stand up for freedom of speech/expression as much as possible and take a principled stand occasionally.
Given they can't change the government of Turkey, I would think maximizing the speech given to Turks within those constraints _is_ standing up for freedom of speech/expression.
In theory, Facebook and others are subject to the same laws as a local company would be. In my experience (in China) though, what actually happens is the local companies will be much stricter, pre-emptively crushing speech they consider just 'risky' rather than actually illegal. Western companies, whose execs are somewhat insulated from local pressures, tend to do better. But only if they're allowed in the country in the first place, which means they have to commit to a certain minimum level of adherence.
There's a thin line between taking a principled stand and forcefully exporting your values to some other culture. For example, Germany outlaws Holocaust denial. It's not a crime in the US. Should Facebook follow German laws by taking down posts denying the Holocaust? Obviously they should follow local laws, most of us would agree.
Here's the thing - there's only two principled stands here. Either tech giants always follow US law exclusively, forcing it on every country in the world OR they follow local laws as applicable, even if they don't agree with the laws.
If a person says that following Turkish law outlawing the YPG isn't ok but following the German Holocaust law is, that's inconsistent.
Tech giants can’t force anything on anyone without being enabled by the local government. If Facebook does not follow German law, Germany will ban it and seize its German assets to pay the fines it owes.
As much as I loathe Erdogan for being a fascist prick, he was democratically elected, and I don't think it's much disputed he holds popular support. Though I haven't been to Turkey recently so I can't say that with certainty.
I'd love for Facebook to have some sort of ethical standard to adhere to, but we can't even get our own governments that we elect democratically to behave ethically, how could we expect it from corporations?
Considering YPG is considered a terrorist organization and is an extension of another terrorist organization recognized by many countries, including US, I'm not sure this is about the ruler of the country.
YPG/PKK terrorism is something Turkey is trying to deal with for ~30 years now.
Calling people killing Turkish citizens as Kurdish minorities is also overly romantic if it's unintentional.
Before you dismiss it, follow that wormhole a little.
Should amazon and wikipedia restrict armenian genocide content in Turkey? I believe this is illegal too. How about random blogger or small publication... should they geoblock content by country?
How about speaking disparagingly about a King? That's illegal in Saudi Arabia, Thailand & other monarchies. Should facebook do something about this?
Layer on to this the fact that FB has a near monopoly on all internet use in many developing countries through facebook zero.
At some point "just following the laws" acquires a pretty sinister smell. Content distribution isn't peripheral to what FB does. It's what FB is.
The old-school Ataturkists who are the opposite flank of Turkish politics from Erdoğan’s party, were the very people who started this denial of Kurdish identity and territorial autonomy or independence. It isn’t just Erdoğan who has a problem with those Kurdish groups, it is Turkish society overall.
I have an incredible amount of respect and admiration for Atatürk but he also had his flaws when it came to freedom of speech, expression and religion.
What’s interesting is all of the liberal turks I know (I live in Istanbul) voted for the HDP in 2015 but are also highly critical of their association with PKK and have since switched to CHP.
Here, HDP is (in purple) PKK affiliated legal party in Turkey. You can see their support among people in Turkey. All other parties call PKK as terrorist and they are strongly against it.
Should Facebook ignore Turkish law? Should they go by the US' terror organisation list instead? Should they maintain their own "terrorist list" alongside Turkey & the US'? Separate classifications of illegal or immoral content for in every jurisdiction?
You think there are political biases in American FB or Twitter? ... Try FB in a language or political context that no FB executive even speaks.
Meanwhile, there's chance (grumblings in europe, atm) that FB/Twitter will be subject to positive pressures as well. IE, making it illegal to exclude (eg) a political party from a platform. It doesn't take long before the same content is illegal in one jurisdiction and illegal to restrict in another. The Armenian Genocide comes to mind as a likely example.
Zuck is like a case study in "no morals" corporate culture.
OOH, saying yes to revenue streams worked out really well. FB "retargeting" and creepy personalized advertising won. The effectiveness of the ads, and revenue soared. Being "cutting edge" really, really paid off. It was creepy, but people got used to it. Scandals like Cambridge Analytica also passed. Other platforms (adwords) did it too, and FB doesn't stand out too much.
On the other hand, having no morals makes it very hard to navigate issues like censorship & moderation in multiple jurisdictions. This is exactly the kind of work morals were invented for.
The only good solution is for social media to be a neutral service provider open to all. It would destroy Facebook’s business model but that’s a good thing.
Or put another way, the problem isn't what facebook (or twitter) chooses to do... it's what they are.
The problem is "neutral service provider" means something very different to nerds than it does to policy wonks that can actually do something about it.
To us, FB should be a protocol like email, rss or www. That means there is no FB, no $1trn market cap, no $90bn revenue stream. To them, it means something like "common carrier." That means keeping fb, but regulating it so they can't exclude anyone. The whole thing will be written with an eye to keeping revenue streams intact.
FB are already making the argument that such things will make it impossible for them to "compete with China." That already smells of too big to fail.
The absurd thing here is that FB's service is not scarce at all. No matter what happens with fb, there will be no shortages of social media. FB can exist. It can be a $5trn company. It can cease to exist. It can shrink 1000X. The quantity and quality of online social media is not more or less because of those things.
All those books about "abundance" 10-15 years ago were (in typical internet fashion) 10-15 years too early. FB is the real life example of abundance economics at work.
Funny that you compare YPG to ISIS. YPG/YPJ (alongside others in SDF) where some of the most successful militia in fighting back against ISIS (so much that there where some strategic co-operation with US forces in fighting ISIS).
They also generally fight for Kurdish rights and, ethnic pluralism in general (saved several Yazidi towns from ISIS for example), women's rights and democracy (including forms of local direct democracy seen few other places).
The reason PKK and/or YPG/YPJ is on some terrorist lists is mainly because Turkish government is against Kurdish rights in general. Turkey tend to claim any group fighting for Kurdish independence and/or rights to be terrorists.
So if they're ”terrorists” in the same way apartheid South-Africa saw Nelson Mandela, ANC and others fighting apartheid as ”terrorists”.
The PKK was formed in reaction to intense oppression of the Kurdish people by the Turkish State. The Kurdish language and traditional garb were banned, and Kurdish history was not allowed to be taught. The Turkish State also burned Kurdish villages and slaughtered many Kurds.
None of this is to say that the PKK has not committed acts which would surely offend western sensibilities, but simply slapping the "terrorist" label on them and calling it a day is not a nuanced way to approach the discussion.
> The Kurdish language and traditional garb were banned
How about nowadays? Nothing is banned yet we still see PKK bombing public buses in our cities. Seriously, when can we call these guys "terrorist"?
These problems were real, yes, Kurdish language was banned, people couldn't say they were Kurdish without any pressure back then but these days are no more. Does "cultural ban happened in the past" justify what PKK is doing now?
Given that I'm very far removed from these events, I don't think it's my place to make strong judgements about what is and isn't justified in what has obviously been a very long and bitter conflict.
That being said, I don't think the PKK explicitly uses these past offenses to justify their continued activity in the conflict. My understanding is that they continue fighting because the Turkish Kurds still lack any meaningful political representation, they oppose Erdogan's push towards Islamic national identity, and because the Turkish State continues to carry out military strikes against Kurdish targets outside Turkey's borders.
I'm by no means an authority on this topic so feel free to correct me if I've made any incorrect statements. It sounds like you're much close to this conflict than I am, in which case my heart goes out to you in wishing for a peaceful resolution to all of this.
Just to clarify, %20-25 of the population is Kurdish in Turkey. In elections, PKK affiliated legal party gets half of the Kurdish votes and other half goes to Erdogan roughly. So, there is no single Kurdish identity in Turkey, more like split between these two. Ofcourse, there is a few percent which is not among these two. So, if you ask is there any Kurdish people in the government, yes there are a lot. Erdogan gets half of the Kurdish votes, so we can say Kurdish Erdogan supporters have enough representation. PKK affiliated party is not in government, because they didn't get enough votes but they are in parliament ofcourse representing their %10 votes.
I don't think PKK cares about Erdogan's Islamic Turkey dream. You don't see PKK or it's legal party saying anything about it in Turkey, I think they mention it only when they are talking to western media :)
In Turkey, there is secular opposition which is rougly %40-50, they stand against Erdogan's Islamic push but they still lack of %50 + 1 votes to dethrone Erdogan unfortunately.
PKK says they want federalism for Kurdish cities, you can advocate for that, it's okay, their legal party is doing that, that's fine. But when you're holding guns and saying my way or high way, that's a big no. So, if they really care about democratic, secular Turkey, they can put guns aside, get together with opposition in Turkey.
> So, if they really care about democratic, secular Turkey, they can put guns aside, get together with opposition in Turkey.
On the flip side, learn the lesson from the iranian revolution. When religious extremists control the government and want to impose their religion on anyone, who holds the guns is the most important questions.
giving them up might be the surrender and death of democratic secular turkey, over time.
Terrorist is an ideological word, therefore it doesn’t always represent everyone’s views of a certain group.
Terrorist groups born as a reaction to heavy injustice. Hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqi civilians motivate a lot of members of the most popular terrorist groups today.
This has always been like this, we don’t live in a cartoon where the bad guy is 2 dimensional.
To try to understand these groups’ motivations is easy when you are immune to their actions. However, this behaviour is pretty off putting for the other side of the discussion, in this case Turkish people.
I think we need to draw a line somewhere. I don’t know where but this doesn’t feel right for me.
When you start the justification game, you need to do it for other groups too. Otherwise it would come off as hypocritical and dishonest. I don’t know you personally, maybe you do say this for all the “terrorist” groups. But I witness this behaviour online a lot when it comes to the groups that hurt Turkish civilians and I wanted to point it out, maybe this comment can give a bit of perspective to some people.
Also a separate note for the audience, not related with your comment, this is not an Erdogan specific issue as the people from the anglo-sphere tend to claim in this thread. It started before Erdogan, it will continue after Erdogan. If Obama could be the next Turkish president, the situation would still be the same.
> Terrorist is an ideological word, therefore it doesn’t always represent everyone’s views of a certain group.
> This has always been like this, we don’t live in a cartoon where the bad guy is 2 dimensional.
I completely agree and this was more or less the point of my comment. I'm not attempting to justify the actions of any group in particular, and I certainly don't endorse the use of indiscriminate violence against civilians for any reason.
I'm often bothered by the use of the word "terrorist" because I think it is often used as a means of putting us into this 2 dimensional world and creating a shortcut out of meaningful discussions. I will be the first to admit that my own government is guilty of terrorism under most definitions that people in my part of the world use.
I appreciate your comment, and apologize if mine came off as callous towards people who are suffering as a result of this conflict.
I always felt surprised how people are when they throw such "facts" very confidently. What's your source ? Have you been there yourself? How did you end up convincing yourself to know the truth so well that you can transmit to others without leaving any room for discussion? This reminds me something I quite dislike: the tone of fascism. It's widespread like a virus these days.
I've tried to find information about this, and all I can find is that Turkey claimed they committed war crimes, but when the US and UN investigated they couldn't find any supporting evidence.
depends on the pov. What's a terrorist to one side is a freedom fighter to the other.
from this month:
> ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Monday his ruling AK Party and its nationalist allies may start work on drafting a new constitution, less than four years after overhauling the previous constitution to grant his office sweeping powers.
the coup was justified and it's a tragedy Erdogan hasn't been removed from power. The AKP/Erdogan is no longer serving its people. Erdogan/AKP are the real "terrorists".
While I agree with the view that Erdogan/AKP might be the worst thing that happened to Turkey, the people behind the coup in 2016 wouldn't make things any better.
The group behind the coup had a perfectly happy marriage with AKP until around 2013, and both of them being islamic groups together they destroyed whatever they could from the previously mostly-secular state. [1] Whatever you see as a problem in Turkey today (say, non-existent separation of powers, human rights abuses, journalists in jail, collapsed legal system, government censorship, economic troubles... and a long list of other things) had their beginnings in this period.
Most of the power they amassed in Turkey was the direct result of this alliance with AKP, and their people filled the government posts while AKP replaced the old guard. After 2013, as a result of internal power struggles this alliance broke up, and in 2016 this organization attempted the coup you mentioned. If they had their way, power would be shifted from one islamic political organization (AKP) to another ("Cemaat"/The Service/FETO or whatever people call them nowadays) who has even less legitimacy.
Anyways, sorry for the wall of text on this comparatively trivial matter, it's just that I find it unfortunate that those guys are now being seen/depicted as some kind of failed saviours in the western media, while in reality they are anything but.
[1] which was maintained under the shadow of the army and wasn't nowhere near perfect either. Though I'd personally take that one over this one any day.
Remember that the invasion of Afrin was done by Turkey in conjunction with jihadist terrorist groups. Turkey has no problem with terrorism, only Kurds.
and? isn't FB doing the same everywhere, especially recently in the US? pretty sure they block whatever even smells like a pro Trump militia in the US.
YPG is actually run by the same PKK elements, Mazloum Abdi as an example. And both are under the same KCK umbrella of far leftist Kurdish organizations; Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in Turkey, Democratic Union Party (PYD under which YPG operates) in Syria, Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK) in Iran, and Kurdistan Democratic Solution Party (PÇDK) in Iraq.
I'm not saying it is terrorist organization or not, but it's inconsistent to have one of these organizations on the terrorists list and others not, since they all share the same ideology, goals, and tactics.
This is a good approach. Country must be able to control content served to their citizens. And that ruling should not be extended to other countries. Citizens can either elect different president or use VPN.
Freedom of speech/expression is a right of every individual on this planet. Any regime that does not support that should face pushback from its citizens, businesses, and other countries.
I agree, but in practice what would happen is Turkey would just block Facebook if they refused to comply. Facebook can't grant freedom of speech to people. They have to take control of their government and demand it for themselves if they want it.
Facebook has made it clear they don't care about free speech anyway, as they'll happily ban anyone who jeopardizes their ad revenue.
The moral thing to do is let the government ban them. The problem lies in the fact that totalitarian governments use social media to manipulate their own citizens and often run campaigns against them. By siding with the government in serious issues they make it even more difficult for citizens to "demand their freedoms", siding with the devil
Respectful nitpick: maybe you mean "Freedom of speech/expression should be a right of every individual on this planet"
Also, one thing is to wish for universal freedom of speech, another one is for a given community, or country, to impose its views on free speech (and limitations thereof) to another community.
No, "is" is correct. Everybody has the same intrinsic right to free speech at birth. You think that given communities should choose for themselves whether that right can be infringed.
This is basically the US' answer to the "divine right of monarchy." If you say that speech "should be" the right l of every individual, you are giving the government an automatic place of authority over the citizen,claiming they get to choose what rights people have.
What I mean is that I don't know any community without practical limitations on free speech.
The way I see it, we decided as a society that every individual was entitled to fundamental human rights. We also decided in practice that it would be good to put limits on some of these rights, especially when one interferes with another (try insulting a cop or denying the Shoah for example, or insulting the King in Thailand, etc etc). Different communities/countries have different views on what limitations to apply, even though they may all agree on these fundamental human rights.
Regarding FB's policy in foreign countries, the case can made that they should respect those countries' choices, even though they are different from USA's choices. Otherwise it can arguably be perceived as US imperialism.
Everything you mention is separate from my point, which has nothing to do with free speech. You're view is that practical limitations on free speech are limits placed on a freedom granted you, while I'd say they are infringements allowed on my inherent right.
Your notion that this is a small nitpick, or a theory that may be disproved is the wrong way of looking at it. It's two separate ways of looking at the same thing, neither more or less true than the other.
As an anecdote, I was pretty shocked when some foreigner friend told me "universal" human rights can actually be perceived as more of a "western imperialism" thing. While I still think human rights are a thing, I can understand that they have been used hypocritically many times through history.
Regarding TFA, I am unsure whether I'd rather FB to impose US's views on freespeech to Turkey or to respect whatever the local government is telling it to do.
>Regarding TFA, I am unsure whether I'd rather FB to impose US's views on freespeech to Turkey or to respect whatever the local government is telling it to do.
You have it backwards, facebook et al will slowly kill free speech in the US while claiming to be pro free speech.
We have before us the greatest setup for fascism in history, and these tech companies should allow themselves to be banned from countries before cooperating with governments to silence speech.
Instead expect them to help authoritarians silence dissent.
I am very wary of FB. In fact I deleted my account about 10 years ago (God knows I had to jump through hoops for this). Still using Whatsapp but mainly Signal.
Truth is one does not need Facebook at all. Don't rely on it for getting news, don't rely on it for giving news.
> these tech companies should allow themselves to be banned
So you expect Big Corp to have a conscience? How cute :P
Governments? Türkiye outlaws free speech through arbitary terror laws (see: HDP politicians imprisoned, members of Grupo Yorum who died of hunger protests for not being allowed to sing). Turkiye also has libel laws which basically outlaw free speech. tayipp has successfully sued many thousands of people for speaking afainst him.
Religion? Turks are mostly muslim. Blasphemy, apostacy, mocking the prophet or drawing pictures or him are all punishable by death in Islam.
The concept of universal or inalienable rights is noble and righteous in theory, but imaginary in practice.
Turks have allowed Tayipp to stomp all over the constitution (illegally acting as prime minister when he was president, rewriting the constitution under a state of emergency, violating libel laws by regularly insulting kurds, chp, hdp, christians, jews and zoroastrians, violating the secularity laws and arresting hundreds of thousands of people under allged ties to fetö), and Turks keep allowing it.
Even Atatürk banned turbanli women from working in government.
Turks have willingly rejected western-style free speech for a relatively improved economy and a sense of national pride.
> Freedom of speech/expression is a right of every individual on this planet
I'm not aware of any country with unlimited speech. Definitely not US or EU countries. I'm not observing huge pushback from US citizens, business and other countries when Facebook and Twitter tried to silence Trump and some other conservative leaders. There are topics that are forbidden by law to discuss in EU, for example to deny Holocaust. Those are examples of lack of freedom in so-called "free" countries. So obviously freedom of speech is not universal approach and some limitation of that freedom is an accepted norm.
This is simply tu quoque - clearly there are limits to free speech in every country but where possible the right to free expression should outweigh the the state’s desire to silence political opposition.
Twitter was a pretty good example of this actually - protecting people’s right to hear from the President (despite him saying and doing many things that would have got regular users banned) right up until the point where he led an insurrection on the Capitol. I don’t think you can argue anything other than Twitter taking their responsibility to free speech incredibly seriously - to the point where they were often accused of being complicit to juice user metrics. And perhaps do some research into Joel Kaplan before you claim the same of Facebook.
Clearly this is not in the same realm as Holocaust denial (which is incidentally also legal in roughly half of the EU countries).
The problem is that, since all countries acknowledge that there should be limits on speech, it's inappropriate for one country (or company, for that matter) to decide what should be the limit in another country.
If it were black and white, there'd be a much stronger case. But this is a company saying "our shade of grey is preferable to yours".
I obviously don't agree with what the Turkish government demanded, but I'm unconvinced that this in particular is a strong argument for a foreign company to decide to overrule local law. And I really think that should be a very high bar.
The issue is that once you go down that road, you preclude discussion of any issues by one country / company if that country also imposes limitations.
You need to pick a principle somewhere - and I’m not sure ‘we’ll simply block access to any material the host government finds objectionable’ is going to be one that’s going to lead us toward a better world.
> Freedom of speech/expression is a right of every individual on this planet
I do think that it's slightly more nuanced. On certain issues there is no freedom of speech. This is when it is determined that the opinions expressed are detrimental to the human race and largely false. Nazi beliefs are in this category. They are so harmful to the public that individual freedom is quashed. incitement to murder is another. You certainly don't have freedom to say everything you like. That would lead to anarchy.
Edit: the only true freedom is freedom of belief. You are free to believe anything you like. However you may not always be allowed to pass on those beliefs. The press are given gag orders all the time, it's not the most fundemental human right.
>This is when it is determined that the opinions expressed are detrimental to the human race and largely false.
Then any speech that threatens power structures will be determined to be detrimental, and banned.
The only way to protect speech is to protect speech, even if you dislike it. That's why the ACLU, before they were coopted as they are today, defended nazis in illinois.
Don't be short sighted, be long sighted. Today its nazis, 60 years ago its was activists. Same rules.
I'm not saying that it's a clear cut issue. I think there are definite cases when freedom of speech causes more harm then good. If someone will preach that we must kill every single person with 8 fingers, for example, we will curtail his freedom with very little consideration.
I don't agree with Turkey's law in this case, but you're saying that we should impose our laws and values on all other countries, and also that online services should not have to abide by any laws, with the internet as essentially a lawless state.
Why? If we are certain that values of free speech are important for national success, then if others suppress them, fine! It only provides us competitive advantage, let them suffer from their mistakes.
I'd say, only option for caring about that is if we actually suspect that values of free speech and personal freedoms in general are NOT important for development: rather, those are the luxuries which we simply can afford because we're rich. And it's wise to press values onto poor countries to prevent them from becoming richer and thus a threat to us. The experiment of helping countries to become rich so they become friendly, failed on China and Russia examples: becoming rich they got only more hostile just because they could, so assumption that it's good to separate countries into friendly or hostile regardless of how is their economy going, and simply suppress growth of the latter, seems a wise one.
Counterpoint: They let him use FB and Twitter for his perpetual disinformation campaigns and continue to let seditionist groups organize on their platforms. The recent bans amount to nothing after giving him platform pretty much the entire duration of his term.
Well, isn't it ironic that many people here appaled by this kind of censorship were backing the same GAFAs when they kicked Trump of their platforms ? Oh yes i know, "it's not comparable because...", well, yes, it IS perfectly comparable and it is in fact the same.
It seems to me like proponents of censorship want to enforce their world view in some way or another. It doesn't matter which pole they're on, if they think censorship is a good policy, then they're arguing from a perspective where their views aren't the ones that are censored.
> Well, isn't it ironic that many people here appaled by this kind of censorship were backing the same GAFAs when they kicked Trump of their platforms
People need to stop saying stuff like this. It's not like you looked through people's account histories or remember how specific accounts speaking today came down on that issue in the past.
YPG is Terrorist organization according to Turkey and 90% of its citizens. So nothing anormal here. It is not up to US or you to decide who is terrorist or not. Actually US, even though actively supporting YPG, does not deny that YPG is terrorist organization.
This kind of attitude simply disgust any Turk who see this topic. Especially like platform like this it is frustrating.
Hey man, but what if the CIA needs YPG to recruit more so it can put terrorist pressure on Turkey to, uh, defend NATO or something? Someone should check on the spooks to make sure that they're all OK and not suffering from some kind of collective degenerative brain disease.
Good to remind us that YPG has defended NATO quite valiantly from Daesh advancing on its borders in the past. And what happened next? NATO threw them to the wolves. The Afrin district that used to be the most peaceful place in Syria is now occupied by mercenaries and ethnically cleansed.
Facebook has been working on a clever solution to this kind of dispute: they have been installing a global network of indestructible monoliths with control panels which provide local governments complete authority to take down controversial content within a particular geographic location. Facebook no longer has to make a judgement call regarding whether a requester has a monopoly on violence within a particular region; control over the monolith implies genuine authority over the relevant area.
1st was a religion extremist guy who says to Iraqi people that they should protest and fight the "other side" of the religion (aka start a new civil war) instead of protesting against the corrupted government.
2nd was a post that was praising the guy who murdered the Danish (Or was he Norwegian?) teacher who mocked Islam, and calling him a hero.
and the 3rd was a post that says "Women education is satanic, women's purpose is marriage".
all of these 3 reports was "The post was reviewed, and though it doesn't go against one of our specific Community Standards" and then it explains how to block blablabla... I don't report things anymore lol