back to article Facebook kills pic of Mohammed weeks after Zuck's Je suis Charlie!

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 …

  1. Crazy Operations Guy

    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.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: There is a big difference between the two incidents:

      I think you're probably right.

      I'm also curious to know what would have happened if a "satirical" cartoon had been published showing Coca-Cola in a bad light. Or what if the cartoon had depicted homosexuality in a negative light?

      1. Bernard M. Orwell

        Re: There is a big difference between the two incidents:

        Easy way to find out - publish a cartoon parodying Judaism or Israel.....

  2. Big Al
    Stop

    So the real story here is... big company obeys local law and places localised restrictions on one page, while some other people think it should do what it likes and ignore local laws. After all, what could possibly go wrong with that kind of precedent?

    1. JustWondering

      Perhaps if the little Zucker hadn't made that heartwarming speech first. It looks like maybe he isn't Charlie after all.

    2. PleebSmash

      Doesn't Facebook offer a Tor hidden service for access?

      I'd say they are at least partially committed to free speech despite complying with local laws.

  3. JustWondering
    Thumb Down

    Imagine that!

    That Zuckhead doesn't have principles; just poses.

  4. LaeMing
    FAIL

    As healthy as hating on facebook generally is,

    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!

    1. Thorne
      FAIL

      Re: As healthy as hating on facebook generally is,

      "If a country's laws are crap, it is up to that country's citizens to get them changed, not some big multinational corporation"

      Tell that to the TPP............

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: As healthy as hating on facebook generally is,

      They seem to work around tax laws quite efficiently and without attracting the indignation of local governments.

    3. Jedit Silver badge
      Flame

      "If a country's laws are crap, it is up to that country's citizens to get them changed"

      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.

      1. P. Lee

        Re: "If a country's laws are crap, it is up to that country's citizens to get them changed"

        >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.

  5. Mark 85

    Caught between a rock and a hard spot, that one is.

    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.

    1. Eddy Ito

      Re: Caught between a rock and a hard spot, that one is.

      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.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Unhappy

      Re: Caught between a rock and a hard spot, that one is.

      More Scylla and Charybdis, methinks.

    3. Potemkine Silver badge

      Re: Caught between a rock and a hard spot, that one is.

      You have to practice what you preach, or be at best a cynical hypocrite.

      It seems Zuckerberg's morality has a price and can be bought for not that much.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Facebook, mwah. BBC, huh ?

    I don't realy care what a social media site does.

    But our own, taxpayer-funded BBC is too scared to show us the pictures which the demonstrations it shows us are supporting.

    THAT is shameful.

    1. Malcolm Boura

      Re: Facebook, mwah. BBC, huh ?

      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.

    2. lorisarvendu

      Re: Facebook, mwah. BBC, huh ?

      "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.

      1. Woodgar

        Re: Facebook, mwah. BBC, huh ?

        I don't recall them actually showing the pictures directly, more that there was a film sequence of the magazine being printed which contained a brief shot where you could see the cover of the magazine as it sped along the conveyor belts.

        1. lorisarvendu

          Re: Facebook, mwah. BBC, huh ?

          Nope they showed it, because they said "Don't look now if you're easily offended". It was on Business Breakfast at about 6:30am, so maybe they felt safe because no-one was watching.

  7. Florida1920

    When in Rome

    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.

    1. Mark 85

      Re: When in Rome

      Exactly. I'm not sure why you got downvoted on a perfectly reasonable assertion. Maybe someone from one of those groups that believe you should only believe what they believe, perhaps?

      Anyway, have an upvote to counter-act that...

      1. Cassini

        Re: When in Rome

        I concur. Have another upvote from me.

      2. JetSetJim

        Re: When in Rome

        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.

    2. Potemkine Silver badge

      Crucify people?

      But don't claim then that Human Rights are the top priority for you.

  8. JDX Gold badge

    a court in Turkey ruled that it infringed a local law

    Non-story.

    I think El Reg just wanted to post the image themselves - now who's hating the hero image?

  9. SuccessCase

    Well done The Register, for having the guts to publish a cartoon picture of the Prophet as an entirely appropriate illustration of this story. Very few UK publications have.

  10. frank ly

    How does anyone know ....

    .... 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'.

    1. lorisarvendu

      Re: How does anyone know ....

      ".... 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.

  11. Malcolm Boura

    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.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Meh

      It's the US way I'm afraid.

      Show people getting shot dead on live TV....OK

      Show a bit of boob, end of the world.

    2. JDX Gold badge

      It's their site, their rules - as long as those rules don't contravene laws. Just like on El Reg, they can decide to remove stuff that is posted for any reason they wish.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Confused ...

    "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.

  13. ukgnome

    Did Zuck actually say that it was a free speech zone?

    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

  14. Sirius Lee

    There's also respect for the rule of law

    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.

    1. Pascal Monett Silver badge
      Flame

      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.

  15. waldo kitty
    Devil

    look at it this way...

    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:

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