Facebook shuts down swedish pro kurdish page | Hacker News Reader

Facebook shuts down swedish pro kurdish page

rojavakommitteerna.com

81 pointsheymd21 comments

I suspect this is due to the algorithms handling reports - not an actual human action. Atheist Republic - a massive community for atheists and skeptics on FB - was also taken down after being report-bombed by malicious users, this despite the fact that it was not in serious violation of any FB rules.

I think you mean "bigoted" rather than "malicious".

There is no need to be bigoted to be malicious, and indeed you can be bigoted without taking malicious action.

Given that

    malicious: intending or intended to do harm.

    bigoted: having prejudiced intolerance of the opinions of others.

I was only merely pointing out that reporting an atheist page is simply the result of intolerance and not of an intention to harm.

"report-bombing" sounds like something done with intent to harm the community.

Why not both?

That would explain another incident recently, where a blog post about leaving a certain political party in Sweden was blocked, while a FB group with the name "legalize rape" was deemed appropriate.

Move fast and break things indeed.

I am not sure I understand the Facebook need to curate anyway. The phone company doesn't censor phone calls.

The phone company doesn't place adverts on your calls, nor suggests products based on the subject of your calls, does it?

Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc. all need to curate so that their platforms stay family-safe, in order to please advertisers and the general public (imagine how bad it would be for e.g. Facebook if the general media started portraying them as supporting e.g. "terrorism").

The phone company doesn't place adverts on your calls, (...) does it?

Actually, mine does, if you have a certain mobile plan, people who call you get an ad for the plan when its ringing.

>(imagine how bad it would be for e.g. Facebook if the general media started portraying them as supporting e.g. "terrorism").

The general public has to accept there are some things they don't like and still have the right to be there, and stop acting like a spoiled brat. IMHO. Of course that wont happen.

Only because calls are transient, one-party, and when the telephone was developed automatic censorship wasn't possible.

Argumentative takedowns like this pretty common. I wonder if an account diversity algo could help identify legitimate reports?

> I suspect this is due to the algorithms handling reports - not an actual human action.

I understand your point, but I would add some qualifications:

1) Let's remember that algorithms are human actions. For example, if Facebook created an algorithm that deleted accounts based on user skin color in their photos, it would be a human action.

2) Facebook is a highly sophisticated software company, not someone who downloaded a library without realizing quite what it did. They are especially responsible for what their algorithms do. (To think of it another way, imagine how they would look if they claimed otherwise, 'we don't really understand what our software does'.) EDIT: It's also a consequence of priorities: If the algorithm's quality had a billion dollar impact on their bottom line, there would be no errors.

3) Facebook isn't just a private business. With so much power over the world's political and social communication, they have an obligation to ensure their members freedom of speech.

4) Transparency and remediation is necessary for #3 (and maybe Facebook already has it; I don't know). Such things always can be blamed on an algorithm or computer error.

Cache with translation: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&pr....

Thanks.

This worries me. It has become acceptable for companies to shut down controvertial communities/forums. The precedent has been set that if you have an offensive community on your service, the appropriate action is to remove it.

The line between acceptable and unacceptable content is not clearly drawn, there is no trial or court system, and if a government was doing the same thing there would be strong freedom of speech concerns. If this continues, more and more controversial communities are going to be shut out of greater and greater portions of the web.

Communities like these are often important for challenging the status quo. It's not too hard to imagine that 50 years ago communities supporting homosexuality would be straddling some line of controversy. For example, Grindr would have almost certainly been illegal.

There are many reasons why it is important to protect the speech rights of people you disagree with. Important progressive ideas very often come from outside the realm of what is considered acceptable to the rest of society. The more we stamp out controversial and distasteful communities, the more at risk we become of supporting and perpetuating regressive ideas without even realizing it. People 50 years ago opposed homosexuality, and 350 years ago any religion outside of Catholicism was not tolerated. We don't have a good way today of knowing what things we do today that will seem horribly regressive 100 years from now, and we won't have a way of figuring it out if we don't allow controversial ideas to exist in our primary thought spaces.

The unsettling thing is how many people are willing to accept this sort of behavior, just because "it's a private company and can host what they want!" In a future where more and more of human communication is transmitted through more monopolized private channels, the people's ability to express themselves easily is curtailed.

Gate between Kobane and Suruc has been open for years in order to support Kurdish forces and also injured people have been brought to Turkish State Hospital. I think they simply lie because at the same time a terrorist Kurdish group PKK -declared as terrorist by UN for years- is attacking from another border and unofficially they have links with this group. You know, politics always suck.

That "terrorist" Kurdish group PKK has been in negotiations with the Turkish state for more than 10 years aiming for peace before their newly formed Kurdish political party HDP prevented Erdogan's AKP to become the sole ruler party in the last elections a few months ago meanwhile AKP decided to suddenly finish negotiations before the upcoming possible early elections excusing the Suruc bombing 2 weeks ago in which meaningfully 32 Kurdish socialists aligned with PKK have died trying to cross the border and join the resistance forces in Kobane fighting against ISIS which by the way is speculated to be backed up by AKP government itself for years and this move of breaking the negotiations is already adviced against by NATO which as you said is listing PKK as a terrorist group for years.

I know, politics always suck. That is not an excuse to get rid of free speech though.

We came to Suruc from Stockholm 5 days ago and have since been trying to help the people of Kobane from here. Since the bombing at the Amara Centre the border has been made almost impossible to cross. If you try you will be shot on sight by the Turkish military. We heard heavy calibre shots ten minutes ago from that direction.

Even basic aid like water and medecins are difficult to get across. We stopped by the depot for shipments and saw at keast 6 trucks full of water. They were kept there for 4 days before let through. No reason given. There are other worse examples.

The point though is that the blocking of our page occured at the same time as when 65 pro-kurdish websites were closed down by Turkish authorities. It's not unlikely this ban is related. It's not difficult to organise a number of Facfbook accounts to mass report pages. Facebook should at least reconsider.

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