As with any advent in technology, the ethics that are inherent in the innovation, lag behind and slowly come to light, the more exposure we have to the new technology. It seems the question that Social Media sites are now facing, are what to do with controversial content. As we well know, social media sites have taken on an astounding role in the events in the Middle East, the problem is that some content has viewers worried. There has been significant protest over the Facebook group "The Third Jihad", letters have been written, counter groups have been formed. But does this group violate the terms and agreements of a Facebook account? Is "inciting violence" one of the things you can get shut down for?
In the early years of Facebook, I had no network to join since my high school did not want to acknowledge the existence of such a thing as Facebook, I joined anyway, stating that I was 23 years old and went to Saint Alamo High School. Obviously the age thing was stupid, but I got kicked off after a year or two and they realized I actually went to the local Bais Yaakov. Its ok though, happy ending was that by then you could join a city network. My story isn't that monumental, but for others, like Michael Anti who a journalist who was kicked out of facebook, it matters. Anti lost many of his contact information, and his ability to communicate in a country marred by censorship - China. Anti had an account under a fake name, another violation of Facebooks rules and therefore lost his account.
So the question is - how do social media sites answer these new sensitive questions? It is very difficult to stick to standard policy when you are faced with dangerous groups like the "Third Intifada" and people like Michael Anti who are are trying to affect change. What to do...
It is definitely a tricky situation for these social networking sites. On the one hand, they want to make money and keep their clientele, but on the other hand they do not want to become politically involved. The Muslim group who made the "Third Intifada" actually threatened that the Muslim community would boycott Facebook if the group was deleted. Could this be why Facebook will not delete the group? Facebook has made a bunch on enemies by kicking people off who do not use their real names, like Michael Anti, for security purposes or otherwise. However, these are usually individuals. If Facebook took action against this group, they could lose a significant percentage of users, and they may be afraid of this.
ReplyDeleteI think that social networking sites need to either remain completely uninvolved politically, and treat similar situations in the same way, or, like many other outlets, come forward with political opinions and act according to those policies. For example, Facebook would have to come out with an official position towards Israel-Palestinian politics and take action on their website based on that policy. But social networking sites cannot put on a facade of freedom for the user, as Flickr does, and then go and delete things as they see fit in certain situations and not in others.
There is a certain extent to which media outlets can censor material, but we must also remember that they establish these types of guidelines from the very onset of their company. Once you report something on facebook the system automatically generates a set of potential reasons for why the content was reported. Clearly if options include:
ReplyDelete"hate speech or attacks on an individual or targets a race or ethnicity, a religious group OR Violence or harmful behavior"
the company must have some guidelines as to what content is worthy of being removed.
Mark Zuckerberg is a total self hating Jew and he proves it time and time again. This not even close to being the first case of a radical Muslim group not getting kicked off and someone far less margianalized getting the boot. My mom (whos friend request i refused to accept) had about 1000 people following her pro-Israel pro-American posts. She woudl also respectfully comment on some of the most agregious FB groups you'd ever seen. Eventually she got so many threats on her wall that she was forced to shut down. Well at least she can't see what I'm up to anymore but you get the point.
ReplyDeleteWell, Facebook finally removed the page now. Unfortunately, another group has gone up in its place and is rapidly accumulating new members.
ReplyDeleteThis group called for a specific date for an uprising against Israel and to take back Palestine. Inciting violence and hatred towards a specific religious group/people violates Facebook content regulations and is grounds for removal.
I'm glad they finally removed the page. Not sure why it took so long.
@sasha - whats the name of the new group?
ReplyDelete@ media - it was fairly obvious to us that the "third intifada" was inappropriate, but I think the standards of facebook are going to have to be more well defined, what do you think about the grayer areas of "inciting violence" - our idea of violence is not the same as someone else's.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete@sophie - I don't want to promote the new group by adding a link. You can search on Facebook for it if you like.
ReplyDeleteAlso, in regards to the idea that "our idea of violence is not the same as someone else's," I just don't think it's that complicated here.
If there was a group that was just saying that they don't believe in the state of Israel and that Israel belonged to them, I would have no issue with them - freedom of speech.
However, this group was by any and all standards inciting violence. A quote from the group - "Judgment Day will be brought upon us only once the Muslims have killed all of the Jews."
Like I said before, they set a specific date to begin the intifada - to begin an uprising against Israel. This is not a question of bias or opinion. This group was made explicitly to incite violence.
It's actually interesting, they have now made several new pages on facebook to replace the one that was removed. I wonder what facebook will do next? Even if they don't keep up with all these new groups and keep deleting them (which I doubt they will), the fact that they deleted the original group did send the proper message.
ReplyDeleteYes, this group did violate the terms and agreements of Facebook. It entered in the category: contains hate speech / attacks an individual targets a race or ethnicity, which is a valid reason for reporting a group of Facebook. I believe the page was taken don and now a second page was created. However, it has only 66 like as of now, and doesn’t contain the messages it had on the previous page. I just reported it anyways because there is a strong likelihood they will publish hate speech when they have more likes. Social media can be a positive thing, a good method of communication that has the power to loink people across borders, but it shouldn’t be a platform for inciting hate and attacks. There is a big difference between using Facebook to organize people and using Facebook to promote an extreme viewpoint.
ReplyDelete