Thursday, January 29, 2015

Current Event Post 1

http://gizmodo.com/facebook-wants-you-to-know-it-loves-free-speech-except-1682288927

Quick summary is that Turkey demanded Facebook censor images of the Prophet Muhammad, and Facebook complied, despite supposedly being very pro-free-speech.
The article writers and commenters believe Facebook committed a grave sin by complying with the demands and applying the censor in that country. I disagree. As a business, Facebook needs to comply with local laws in order to operate in any particular country. If they decide to comply with censorship in order to be allowed in, then that's their choice to make. Facebook owes its users no moral stand.
Some social networking stories involve people using social networking to get messages about conditions in particularly oppressive governments out to the world, and that's admirable. But a business does not have an obligation to stand against a country it wants to operate in, and refusing to censor blasphemous images wouldn't help anyone's conditions there anyway.
Also, it seems that all quotes from Zuckerberg that I read about this are pulled out of context. He clearly stated that they'd follow government rules in a particular country, but wouldn't allow anyone else to dictate what users can share globally. So this situation isn't hypocritical.

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