Facebook Is Deleting Accounts at the Direction of the US and Israeli Governments
theintercept.com
theintercept.com
12/23/2017 Facebook banned the page of the Kremlin-backed Chechen leader Kadyrov (he has more power than police in Russia). FB said “that the accounts appear to be maintained by or on behalf of parties who appear on the U.S. Specially Designated Nationals List and thus, subject to U.S. trade sanctions." [1]
12/24/2017 Russian airline company registered FB page with the same name to get all traffic of the banned page.[2]
12/30/2017 Kadyrov makes this company to return this page back to him. The page is returned back to Chechen Republic[3].
Now FB is violating their TOS for transferring accounts and U.S. trade sanctions.
[1] https://www.rferl.org/a/facebook-instagram-kadyrov-chechnya-...
[2] https://meduza.io/en/news/2017/12/28/an-airline-makes-the-mo...
Hopefully this intensifies their downward spiral into irrelevance.
Yep. This is why FB, GOOGL, etc needed to be "neutral". The day they caved in is the day their "promise" ended. The demands of censorship will continue. FB is deluding themselves if they think this is a one time deal. And not only that, other countries will start barring FB/GOOGL/etc when it becomes apparent that they are essentially biased political tools.
Enforcing the rules is not straightforward and different parties tend to view things differently. Somebody sees hate speech, someone else valid criticism.
Russia can't direct "BitTorrent" to do something.
And really, it seems like social networks are perfect for these kinds of swarm P2P systems where the protocol is some evolving standard and various clients can interact with it.
I doubt this will drive many users away. Most people just don't care. And most users' friends are in the same country so they'll still have consistent experiences.
If somebody is on an American sanctions list, then Facebook USA making an account for that person on a database located on American soil violates the sanctions. That American citizens can't see the relevant account's data is irrelevant; if anything, it could actually amount to obstruction of justice if American investigators have a warrant to see the relevant data on an American server and it does not appear in the investigator's UI despite the warrant.
The way to solve that is to have different legal entities own different sets of data that exist under different sovereignties and then draw upon the data from each sovereignty through established (although potentially entirely private to Facebook and its foreign subsidiaries operating the foreign servers) protocols.
What is happening here is that Facebook is banning the accounts of political leaders in other countries at the behest of the US and Israel in order to disrupt the organizing efforts of those leaders with their own people.
This has nothing to do with restricting what content is available in the US or Israel but is basically an act of war to disrupt the communications of a foreign enemy.
I'm sure they could make it redirect anywhere they want.
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20030822-00/?p=...
Not really. China and Russia are the only countries in the world with the political will to ban a company like Facebook or Google where the market actually matters.
The US gov has no legal authority to ban anything. If you fold to them it is just because you are weak and scared or greedy for whatever the are offering you.
When someone in the US govt wants something from Google or Facebook they go to them and remind them about anti-trust law and the FTC and tell them that if they do what they are told they will have people in secret committees telling congressmen and senators that they are vital to national security and to leave them alone.
I'm sure it still requires a huge amount of talent and isn't lacking in meaty, difficult problems, but the core product just seems so unimportant.
From my experience, and based on people I know that work at Facebook, e.g., getting your foot in the door is just a matter of studying medium/hard-level problems on Leetcode (speaking verbatim here). I'm not sure you need a strong foundation in systems programming or design, or even a strong track record of building great software to get hired at these kinds of companies. The metric is mostly Leetcode; it's for efficiency I guess, because of the sheer number of applicants.
I've also worked closely with a few people from such companies. I'd say only one was a great engineer. And he definitely didn't have a high opinion of his former co-workers.
The one company whose engineers I'd probably give the benefit of the doubt would be Netflix, because they're so intentional about "performance".
If someone is a senior engineer at one of those companies, I assume they have a reasonable amount of talent. It's not easy to fake it or avoid expectations as a senior engineer.
Actually FB became a haven for xooglers that wanted to escape deteriorating engineering at lower levels at Google; there is still burning spirit of hacking present, even after IPO. FB works hard to retain it (outside noisy open offices though).
If you ever went through engineering interview process at FB, you'd have noticed it's one notch better prepared than the one at Google. Their Glassdoor rating is even slightly better and there are very few companies that are rated better (and usually smaller like Odersky's Lightbend, JetBrains...), so there is almost nowhere to go for a better engineering experience.
The article does disagree with that view.
>As Al Jazeera reported last year, “Inflammatory speech posted in the Hebrew language . . . has attracted much less attention from the Israeli authorities and Facebook. One study found that ‘122,000 users directly called for violence with words like ‘murder’, ‘kill’, or ‘burn.’ Arabs were the No 1 recipients of hateful comments. Yet there appears to be little effort by Facebook to censor any of that.”
Have you noticed comments like this? Have you ever seen them deleted or Israeli accounts suspended for hateful language?
Hint: A terrorist sponsor.
AJ has some of the best reporting about, but attacking the messenger and not the message is far easier isn’t it?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFWVkSU3ic4
> but attacking the messenger
They are not a messenger but are full party to praising those who would proudly kill children. I know the US has killed children in conflicts, but the US isn't proud of it, they don't celebrate it.
> Others see the terrorists as freedom fighting
No. This is false. No one sees terrorists as freedom fighting, except for those who support them.
A terrorist is a terrorist. Period. Calling them freedom fighters is utterly repulsive, and whitewashing things like "killing a 4 year old girl by smashing her skull against the rocks with the butt of his rifle." Yes, that is the loathsome creature who AJ celebrated.
Tell me how that is freedom fighting? I challenge you - tell me, exactly how that is freedom fighting. I await your answer.
Yes, Palestinians think freedom is worth fighting for. That man didn’t help his cause. This is not related to the issue though is it? AJ cover issues in the region better than many news orgs.
And I guess that includes killing 4 year old girls?
And that's it? That's your feeble defense? "That man didn’t help his cause." No condemnation, no, "this is not what Palestinian are."
But of course you don't, because you can't, because this is the kind of offal Palestinians value. People who kill 4 year olds and rejoice in it.
If only this was some sort of one-off, that it was not representative, that it was just "didn't help his cause". But it's not, this is the kind of behavior Palestinians delight in. For example that guy who stabbed a young girl to death in her bed. Did they condemn that, or did they celebrate that?
You know the answer very well.
> This is not related to the issue though is it?
Of course is it. If AJ is going to throw that human excrement a birthday party then that are almost as loathsome as he is.
No one should ever read them again, that have removed themself from civilized life. Anything they say should be assumed false unless otherwise proven.
> AJ cover issues in the region better than many news orgs.
Only if by better you mean "praising and valuing terrorism".
If you are a Palestinian that it must suck to know you are by extension part of a group that is this horrible. I know very well not all Palestinians are this bad. Unfortunately the majority are. The fact that you don't condemn, and you even try to defend, them disturbs me though....
A constructive approach is needed by both sides, not more of the same. You are desperate for a finger pointing fight and seem to be hoping to vilify me for being Palestinian. Why?
I made absolutely no mention of Israel at all.
> ie story isn’t valid as it’s from AJ
Correct. You need another source. By supporting a murderer AJ has removed themself from civilized discourse.
> be hoping to vilify me for being Palestinian. Why?
Hoping to? Dude, you refused to condemn someone who killed a 4 year old by bashing her head in!!
What is wrong with you?
(If you refuse to condemn that, I guess it makes sense you would support AJ.)
Before I say another word to you I want to hear an unequivocal condemnation of that terrorist, and an unequivocal condemnation of AJ for throwing him a birthday party.
If you refuse to do that you have removed yourself from the realm of civilized people and I want nothing to do with you.
> I made absolutely no mention of Israel at all.
I refer to the thread as a whole, not just comments to me.
You’re obsessed with a bad guy who did bad things that is irrelevant to the thread, so of course I don’t join your soirée into the irrelevant (my race? Really?).
You keep arguing about the messenger, not the message. Dispute the message with a contrary link, not an attack on the messenger. There is a term for this style of argument.
There are very few cases where this doesn't provide a clear answer. (Although occasionally politicians get it wrong--the USS Cole bombing was not terrorism.)
Well, if you bury your head in the sand on a hot summer afternoon and proceed to claim its night, it's hard to take further claims seriously.
I will agree that there is extremists on both ends that just furthers their own political/economic interests and muddies the water.
...but my analysis of the conflict over there is that it is much deeper than politics or economics, spanning millenias of beef.
I suspect if Palestinians had F-16s and Apache gunships available they, too, would avoid street battles.
"Give me a break"? Isn't what you described exactly what happens?
I do have a lingering hope, given the number of organizations fighting asymmetric warfare like the IRA, FARC have now turned to non violent political representation, that we might see some change.
I condemn acts of terrorism there is simply nothing that justifies the murder of innocent lives, period.
Doesn't seem to me a very sound stance, as you can do very evil or wrong things while doing what you believe is just.
I agree with the "asymmetric warfare" definition (which by the way implies conventional warfare from one of the two sides); however you should not forget that is one of the two parties that is illegally occupying, controlling and expropriating a good portion of the other's territory.
If you see two people fighting in the street,the fact that one has illegally appropriated (i.e. stolen) something from the other might give you a better idea of what's going on.
I'm not denying Palestines their right to freedom. I'm not denying Israelis their right to exist.
All I've done is just depict the situation as it is. No judgement, no side taking.
North Korea does what it does to survive. South Korea does what it needs to do to the same.
> All I've done is just depict the situation as it is.
No, you didn't. You described the Israeli position as they made you believe it is, not as it really is.
Those are just some suggestions if you are looking for peace.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mF30AjvvusI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19jRZ2BIFqc
I think there must be a premise hidden somewhere behind that expletive.
What is the nature of the sentence between the quotation marks? Is that a hypothetical counterargument of someone who is misrepresenting (or misunderstanding) what Israeli soldiers are doing? Or is it supposed to be an accurate account of what Israeli soldiers are doing, and you mean to say that people wrongly think you agree with what the soldiers are doing?
A race to zero is what I’m after. It’s been/being done in other places, it can happen there.
What interests me are the consequences that follow from making a US corporation the global censor and arbiter, in the realm of communications, of other people's disputes.
The original article had zero factual content about the accounts that were suspended and presented no evidence that they were not suspended for completely valid reasons so I have no reason to think that they should not have been suspended.
Even with that being true, it is still interesting that people are both expecting Facebook to be a global censor, and then also criticizing them for the censorship decisions they make.
> Palestinians attacking locals
That attitude, in a nutshell, is a large part of the problem.
The Palestinians ARE the locals.
Once you accept the above, everything else starts to make sense.
Ignore this most obvious of facts, and then you start asking nonsensical questions like "why are they so touchy?" ,"why do they hate us?", "why are they so angry?", and "why aren't they content with living in a large open camp?"
https://qbix.com/blog/index.php/2017/12/power-to-the-people/
I will refrain from causing any future concern from you or anyone else, since I don't mean to hurt anyone's feelings.
False. Heck, the modern understanding of censorship is strongly influenced by the (officially, still continuing, but greatly reduced in significance even within the Catholic community) official censorship practice of the Catholic Church.
Now, there are certainly consideration that apply tomstaye censorship that may not apply equally to non-state censorship, but state censorship isn't the only kind of censorship.
This is astounding to me given the likelihood of Facebook's unspoken allegiances and their history with respect to censorship.
Very sadly, it might actually be their best source of news.
Common examples are pages promoting illegal activities in a country - like drug dealing, weapons trade etc.
Maybe because they are incitement? This kind of thing isn’t incitement? https://goo.gl/images/oknvLC many other examples catalogued here: http://m.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Social-media-playin... the incitement to violence is real. Love how Greenwald glosses over this as insignificant. In his world view, Israelis should just accept social media posts that incite murdering them, because Israelis are big bad guys.
> Last March, Facebook briefly shut down the Facebook page of the political party, Fatah, followed by millions, “because of an old photo posted of former leader Yasser Arafat holding a rifle.”
which is on the soft side of what Israel contests is incitement (see my post above, or Google for more examples, there are many).
I first saw this article on Facebook.
So why clamp down and fine if you can threaten to fine and help shape what is displayed to who? It seems like a much more effective approach since there are few other sites, sources, etc that everyone visits.
At that point, it comes down to who has the biggest hammer or budget.
But we can look deeper. Violence is usually a symptom of a disease and not necessarily a contagious disease itself that need to be purged.
It's a test of will for a nation state to properly handle dissenting voices.
Israeli Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked said Tel Aviv had submitted 158 requests to the social media giant over the previous four months asking it to remove content it deemed “incitement.” She said Facebook had granted 95 percent of the requests.
Aside: It's funny the article says Tel Aviv submitted the requests, when the office is in Jerusalem http://www.justice.gov.il/ContactUs/Pages/default.aspx. Subtle.
In fact this isn’t even a reference to the capital but how the Arab media refers to Israel in order not to recognize it.
I can guarantee to you that the original quote was “Israel or The Israeli government has submitted...”
AJ is just doing their creative editing.
I wonder if they’ll publish the posts again last time it had nothing to do with human rights unless the right to stab people is a human right now.
Can we please not post that nonsense here? I expect it in some of the stupider social networks (which tend to draw a certain kind of poster), but seeing that here is surprising.
Other countries do not get to tell a county where its capital is.
What exactly makes Tel Aviv the capital anyway? There's no seat of government there, nothing. Did they just randomly pick a large city?
Can you please not post nonsense here. Tel Aviv IS the internationally accepted capital of Israel, period. It's a fact you might like or not, but it remains a fact.
All the world's embassies are in Tel Aviv, not Jerusalem.
All International agreements are under signed as Jerusalem, anytime there is a foreign visit they go to Jerusalem, even Sadat when he came to visit Israel during the peace process went to the Knesset in Jerusalem to give his speech.
The US embassy and many others in the Netherlands are in The Hague it doesn’t make it the capital of the Netherlands. International recognition isn’t what defines a capital city so while most nations won’t publicaly say its Jerusalem not a single one would say it’s Tel Aviv they would simply refuse to answer.
You would think this kind of thing would be limited to fringe websites, and Arab sites.
> Tel Aviv IS the internationally accepted capital of Israel, period.
There is no such concept. Since when does the international anything "accept" a capital? As if the decision was given to them!
> It's a fact
You don't know what a fact is.
> All the world's embassies are in Tel Aviv, not Jerusalem.
That doesn't make it a capitol. It just means ambassadors have extra travel to do to get to the actual seat of government.
I think the second sentence doesn't follow so clearly from the first one to warrant a "that means".