There is a big difference between the two incidents:
Something related to Charlie Hebdo will gain a lot of attention; something related to a Middle Eastern country will not.
It's not about free speech, it's about publicity and profits.
Earlier this month, in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo massacre, Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg proclaimed that his social network, used by millions, was a free-speech zone. "As I reflect on the attack and my own experience with extremism, this is what we all need to reject – a group of extremists trying to silence the voices and …
If a country's laws are crap, it is up to that country's citizens to get them changed, not some big multinational corporation. Or would people like to set a precedent for unelected company CEOs setting national policies where and how they see fit*
* I mean without at least pretending to go through a government sock-pupet!
I'm sure the Saudis would love to hear your suggestions on how to change their laws when political parties are outlawed and you can be imprisoned and flogged for criticising the royal family who hold all positions of power.
>I'm sure the Saudis would love to hear your suggestions on how to change their laws when political parties are outlawed and you can be imprisoned and flogged for criticising the royal family who hold all positions of power.
But you don't know whether the majority of people love the king there. We have "sovereign nations" specifically to prevent international meddling, which leads to war. Otherwise the Saudis could claim that most Frenchies agree (they don't? how do you know for sure?) that Mohammed shouldn't be depicted so punishing Hebbdo with the death penalty was the right thing to do. Angry words get spoken, stones thrown, perhaps the odd missile and Shell.
The Americans in particular seem to have no concept of geography and restrictions on their jurisdiction. Just because you are right and someone else is wrong, does not mean that you should beat the living daylights out of them. We hold this to be self-evident, because we've seen doing otherwise starts a lot of wars and being at war is a lot worse than not being allowed to draw funny pictures of Mohammed.
So, we pass laws that allow us to speak more or less freely, but we don't go around the world saying, "What, your citizens can't vote? We'll bomb them then." At least we shouldn't. At least, we didn't used to.
As far as FB is concerned, it complies with French law and Turkish law, which is probably right.
Because you support free speech and condemn lunatics, it doesn't mean you go around breaking local laws in their jurisdiction.
I'm no fan of Zuck or FB (or even a user) but there's tough choices. Yes, being for free speech, yes to following local laws. Does he risk having FB banned completely in Turkey, or follow the edict? This is one of those situations that having mega-dollars in the bank won't solve.
To be honest, I find this story disturbing since they're getting beat up FOR following local laws and yet Google and others get beat up for NOT following local laws. Which is it? You can't have it both ways.
There may be something else too. The article states it was "a Turkish user's page" so it was clearly a violation of local laws. It is also one of those instances where it might be wise to use a nom de Facebook as, also mentioned in the article, some posts can fetch a lashing.
Who said if you've done nothing wrong you have nothing to fear? When wrong is defined by silly laws, as they frequently are, sometimes anonymity is a matter of life and death. Pity that fact gets lost on the likes of Google, Facebook et. al.
The BBC quite shamelessly self censors, despite the harm that it does, but much of it is invisible because they do not have the honesty to own up. They are systematically falsifying one aspect of history and anthropology, and unless you have expert knowledge there is no way to know that they are doing it. NB that is not just my opinion, I have correspondence from the BBC confirming that they are doing it.
"But our own, taxpayer-funded BBC is too scared to show us the pictures which the demonstrations it shows us are supporting."
How so? I saw the magazine cover on BBC News the day it was published. Apart from the standard "This may offend" disclaimer, they showed it.
Do as the Romans. The Facebook corporation is a guest in Turkey. Guests should respect local laws and customs. Religious zealots who choose to remain in countries more tolerant of satire and secularism than their ancestral homes also should respect local laws and customs. Respect is a two-way street.
I imagine the downvote was for the naivety. It was indeed a perfectly reasonable assertion, however when dealing with religious zealots, "reasonable" is not in the vocabulary (or doesn't mean what we think it means).
From the extremist perspective, everyone else on this planet who is not ascribing to their value system/interpretation of their faith is a heathen who should be killed. Millennia of civilisation growth into a semi-mature set of nations with on-the-face-of-it fair laws counts for nothing.
To convince an extremist that they're wrong is a long drawn out process, and all the way through that process you'll need to keep them away from pointy things and opportunities to stick aforementioned pointy things in you. At the end of it, you'll then never be confident that they're no longer an extremist who wants to kill you.
".... that it's a cartoon of the prophet Mohammed? When I first saw it, I assumed it was a steroetypical drawing of an 'Arabic type'."
From what few cartoon depictions I've seen, it appears to be the white "double-bulge" of the turban that signifies Muhammed. If you do a google image search on "muhammed" you'll see him often wearing a somewhat wide "baggy" turban (although the infamous "bomb head" cartoon didn't look like this, was probably just a typical "Arab", and yet they still claimed it to be blasphemous).
In this case however, cartoonist "Luz" has publicly confirmed that it is intended to be Muhammed.
Facebook censorship is appalling and much wider than just what may be illegal. Consider the fight over breast feeding photographs. It was not until it started losing revenue that it did the right thing, and then only as little as they could get away with. Their prudery is causing harm, and it is chiłdren who bear the brunt of that harm. Despicable.
"In Zuckerberg's post on the Hebdo atrocity, he made it clear Facebook follows local laws in the countries it operates in"
So it operates where: in every country from which the sites can be accessed, every country in which it has data centre resources, every country in which it has a CDN-type presence it doesn't necessarily own / run / (trying to avoid the word but "operate") itself?
Answer to that clears up a whole load of free speech, copyright, libel, tax and similar issues.
So of course there won't be an answer; too many leeches politicians and/or lawyers nice people will lose out from clarity that would help everyone else.
Hahahahahahahahaha
The Douchebook network doesn't allow a picture of proud parents breastfeeding, yet gorges itself with scams, click bait, scams, annoying paid for adverts, scams and pages specialising in bigotry and hatred.
I think my sides have split and I have fallen off my chair.
Free Speech.....hahahahahahahahaha
I infer from your comments that free speech beats everything else. If correct then I can impune your integrity, cast aspersions about your heritage without any fear that you would ever use the courts to protect your public persona. Yeah, right. More like it's free speech when it suit you and rule of law when that suits you. Heads I win, Tails you lose.
It may be reprehensible that countries have laws like the one in Turkey, and it is certainly one example of why Turkey cannot be admitted as an EU member state, but is the law in Turkey. Unless you can say that you will never use the law to protect yourself you have no choice but to respect the law of a country and instead find ways to encourage the elected politicians in that country to change the law.
You need to go and learn what Free Speech means. Libel has never been included in Free Speech.
Free Speech does not mean that you are free to say any inane thing you want, it means that you are free to state your opinion on subjects of importance, be it religion, state or law, without fear of retribution.
It means that you have the right to stand up in the middle of your Mayor's speech about some transformation of your town and say that you don't agree with it, and why.
It means that you have the right to choose who you wish to vote for without somebody beating you up for it. And if somebody does, you have the right to obtain justice through the Courts.
Free Speech is the foundation of a democratic society - one I suppose you are living in. So please educate yourself about the foundations of the country in which you live, because it's all the morons spouting nonsense about everything that are bringing civilization into the gutter.
FB follows local laws of a region and if they don't allow such to be displayed or written there, then sobeit... FB won't display that subject matter there... that doesn't mean that they will prevent folks in those areas from putting that subject matter up... everyone else will be able to see it except those fools over there with their heads buried "where the sun don't shine"* O:D
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* get your head out! that reference is to sand... not arses :lol: ;) ;) ;) :lol: