Greg Laden's Blog

MIKE: This is what I've got. The following is a quote from a note on facebook:

I had a rather uncanny experience last night when I tried to post a link to Carl Sagan’s "Origins" in YouTube.

I got this rather ominous response "Some content in this message has been reported as abusive by Facebook users." and I could not post the link to this quite innocent piece where Carl Sagan tells about his views on evolution, which are based solely on scientific facts.

I still hope that it was just a technical glitch, as I could post the same piece later that night without trouble. Very troubling was however that this was the very first time ever that I heard that Facebook even has systems in place that make it possible to prevent publishing information that is deemed to be of a wrong kind.

This incident hints that lurking in the wings is readymade system for monitoring the content published on the user’s Facebook-profiles. It is however no wonder that there are such systems, as it has been made clear on many instances that platform-providers are held responsible for the user content that is published in their systems.

I am very worried about these developments, as available means of censorship always breed possibilities to start using it to suppress not only criminal or on offending material on the personal or racial level, but also the material that is deemed as politically or ideologically wrong by the some vocal political or ideological groups out there.

I am at the same time really worried sick about the campaign by the Arabic OIC-countries to label offending religious sensitivities as criminal offence in the ongoing UN Durban II - conference concentrating on racism.

A resolution by an official-sounding unit of the United Nations would be a handy tool in preventing any criticism of the Islamic ideology that is much, much more than just a set of personal beliefs. Islam is a very active and potent political and social force in very many societies and stopping criticizing it is simply not an option for people like me.

The really troubling thought is that Facebook already has in place tools that would eventually to make it possible to filter away all the content that anybody with religious ideology will deem as offensive.
The funniest thing here is that if things on my Facebook-page would never reach the eyes of those really taking offence from it, as my Facebook-circle is made up of nonbelievers, freethinkers, agnostics, atheist, humanists and secularists.

Facebook is for me a tool for networking in just these circles and losing ability to post things interesting just these people would force at least me to leave Facebook for good.

Btw. the Carl Sagan-video is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShJwq3aPLMk&feature=PlayList&p=C599FFF859B905C2&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=5

PS. Another troubling thought is that Facebook would be following the system in place in YouTube that makes it possible to report abusive content. This system is now widely misused by the religious extremists to mark all material that is critical to their faith. We all are in trouble if Facebook would take this system and swallow it whole, as it is critically biased as it exists now.

From Jaakko Wallenius's Notes

Posted by: Greg Laden | April 19, 2009 12:01 AM