Israel attacks Facebook, claims FB allows terrorists to incite terrorism

[Master Disaster]

Israeli minister Gilad Erdan has attacked Facebook over their policy of allowing post made by terrorists and requiring these posts to be manually flagged before they will remove them. 

 

Of course Facebook claims it has community guidelines in place that cover this and they must stick to them. 

Quote

Government ministers in Israel have accused Facebook of failing to tackle "inciteful" posts against the country on the social network.

 

Public security minister Gilad Erdan said Facebook had set "a very high bar for removing inciteful content".

Justice minister Ayelet Shaked wants social media companies to pre-emptively remove content which Israel considers to be a security threat.

 

Facebook said it worked closely with Israel to tackle threatening content.

 

Mrs Shaked has complained that threatening content must be manually reported by the website's users before any action can be taken.

 

"We want the companies... to remove posts by terrorist groups and incitement to terrorism without us having to flag each individual post, in just the same manner, for example, that they today do not allow posts and pages with child pornography," she told Israel's Army Radio.

 

In a statement, Facebook said: "We have a set of community standards designed to help people understand what's allowed on Facebook.

 

"We call on people to use our report tool if they find content they believe violates these rules, so that we can examine each case and take quick action.

 

"We work regularly with safety organisations and policymakers around the world, including Israel, to ensure that people know how to make safe use of Facebook.

 

"There is no room for content that promotes violence, direct threats, terrorist or hate speeches on our platform."

These is precedence for this by court action, Turkey successfully issued a court order against FB to get some pages blocked in the country that they claimed were offensive to the prophet Muhammad. 

Quote

In 2015, Facebook complied with a Turkish court order demanding the blocking of a page it said offended the Prophet Muhammad.

 

The court had threatened to block the entire website if the social media platform had refused.

 

At the time, Facebook said its policy was to block access to content within a country if it breaks local law.

German court also successfully persuaded Facebook, Google and Twitter to assess posts made in Germany under German law and not their terms of service. 

Quote

The same year, Facebook, Google and Twitter faced pressure in Germany to remove hate speech posted on their websites.

 

The three internet giants agreed to assess reported posts within 24 hours, evaluating them under German law rather than Facebook's own terms and conditions.

 

Facebook's latest government transparency report said the company blocked 236 posts in Israel that were alleged to violate local harassment laws, or were related to Holocaust denial.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-36702897

 

Come on Facebook, it's really not that hard to create a database of suspicious words that when x amount are contained in a single post the post is denied or has to be reviewed by a human before it goes live. The fact they require manual flagging of posts inciting terrorism is ridiculous imo. 

[thekeemo]

Real reason is FB is allowing people to write about how shitty israel is as a country and their violations against human rights

[samcool55]

Well manual flagging is in imo the best solution.

If you start creating a database or whatever that has hard coded limits, it would just turn into a cat and mouse game. A very bad one.

Such thing will cause immense collateral damage and facebook would turn into chinabook, and you don't want that.

I think this video explains quite well why a web filter, which is the same idea for the web instead of facebook so very similar, doesn't work.

 

[Master Disaster]

3 minutes ago, thekeemo said:

Real reason is FB is allowing people to write about how shitty israel is as a country and their violations against human rights

I'm not disagreeing with that but this has wider implications outside of Israel. Terrorists do openly use FB to post hate and recruit new members. Facebook SHOULD be actively blocking all terrorism related posts outright. 

[Misanthrope]

Not surprising giving how most tech companies are inherently pro SJW and pro palestine, Facebook is no exception.

[thekeemo]

4 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

I'm not disagreeing with that but this has wider implications outside of Israel. Terrorists do openly use FB to post hate and recruit new members. Facebook SHOULD be actively blocking all terrorism related posts outright. 

Question is who defines terrorism? What gives you the right to define it? One mans terrorist is another mans freedom fighter.

Better way to do it would be strikes from graphic posts.

[AresKrieger]

On the one hand I don't like automated censorship bots, but on the other I hate facebook and believe ISIS is worth censoring given how I believe we should kill them all preferably ASAP. So I'm a bit torn on this. Ultimately think facebook is trash and should be treated as such but this sets a precedent I don't want to have set. So the quickest solution is to vaporize ISIS with a nuke or one of those conventional bombs Russia made that's on par with a small nuke.

[Master Disaster]

1 minute ago, thekeemo said:

Question is who defines terrorism? What gives you the right to define it?

I'm pretty sure Facebook is an American company and the USA has an existing legal definition of terrorism (they must have otherwise they can't charge anybody with the offence), that seems like a good place to start. 

[thekeemo]

1 minute ago, Master Disaster said:

I'm pretty sure Facebook is an American company and the USA has an existing legal definition of terrorism (they must have otherwise they can't charge anybody with the offence), that seems like a good place to start. 

But the way the USA defines it is horrible.

It is basically if it affects our 1%s interests it is terrorism.

[samcool55]

1 minute ago, thekeemo said:

Question is who defines terrorism? What gives you the right to define it?

Nobody because you can't. What person A sees as terrorism is maybe not terrorism for person B, that's why the manual flag option is probably the best option.

If enough people are offended by it, facebook will take it down, seems alright. But unless you have a system that can somehow predict how many people will be offended by a certain post it might be possible to actively filter stuff without any human interaction. Thing is such system would be so smart it has to be basicly a very smart human, and we aren't even close to that.

[thekeemo]

2 minutes ago, samcool55 said:

Nobody because you can't. What person A sees as terrorism is maybe not terrorism for person B, that's why the manual flag option is probably the best option.

If enough people are offended by it, facebook will take it down, seems alright. But unless you have a system that can somehow predict how many people will be offended by a certain post it might be possible to actively filter stuff without any human interaction. Thing is such system would be so smart it has to be basicly a very smart human, and we aren't even close to that.

So now we should remove content because people are offended by it?

Isnt that anti-free speech?

[AresKrieger]

1 minute ago, thekeemo said:

So now we should remove content because people are offended by it?

Isnt that anti-free speech?

This is also a precedent I don't want to have set, the solution to prevent ISIS recruiting is killing ISIS as it has always been. Censorship never really works, especially on the internet and it will make people distrust the government (well more than they already do) who is doing such more than prevent terrorism

[Master Disaster]

7 minutes ago, thekeemo said:

So now we should remove content because people are offended by it?

Isnt that anti-free speech?

Nope, Anti Speech laws cover Speech and you don't speak on the Internet, you express an opinion. Freedom of expression doesn't exist hence why any LMG staff could delete this thread right now for no reason and without telling anyone. Their house, their rules. 

 

Of course there must he balance but at least hide these posts until a human can assess them. 

[thekeemo]

3 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

Nope, Anti Speech laws cover Speech and you don't speak on the Internet, you express an opinion. Freedom of expression doesn't exist hence why any LMG staff could delete this thread right now for no reason and without telling anyone. Their house, their rules. 

 

Of course there must he balance but at least hide these posts until a human can assess them. 

Humans are biased

Also in Canada there are freedom of expression laws. So for FB  to operate there they would need to block it only in the states.

[samcool55]

2 minutes ago, thekeemo said:

So now we should remove content because people are offended by it?

Isnt that anti-free speech?

Well it's complicated and just saying offended is probably not the exact right word.

Explaning what i mean will be difficult but whatever, i'll try.

 

If enough people are offended by a specific thing because it violates in their opinion a law, it should be taken down.

This is stuff like racism, sexism, terrorism and things that are not allowed by law.

It of course get's a lot more complicated if you have to look at each country individual, which you sort of needs to do because the law isn't everywhere the same.

Culture has probably also a part in this whole system but that would make it for me too complicated to understand what i say.

 

Removing content based on something that's offensive but allowed by law is of course something that shouldn't happen. But the thing is if you make a computer with the tech of today, and regardless of what you do with it, it will remove content that's offensive for people but allowed by law, which means it's flawed.

 

I'm probably missing some important points but whatever.

[AresKrieger]

7 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

Nope, Anti Speech laws cover Speech and you don't speak on the Internet, you express an opinion. Freedom of expression doesn't exist hence why any LMG staff could delete this thread right now for no reason and without telling anyone. Their house, their rules. 

 

Of course there must he balance but at least hide these posts until a human can assess them. 

Only if you agree to a set of rules when signing up to use a service, which we did when making our accounts, but lets say you own a site and want to talk about how everyone but yourself is a mongrel, and is inferior. Well you are free to do so, and are legally protected in the US.

[thekeemo]

2 minutes ago, samcool55 said:

Well it's complicated and just saying offended is probably not the exact right word.

Explaning what i mean will be difficult but whatever, i'll try.

 

If enough people are offended by a specific thing because it violates in their opinion a law, it should be taken down.

This is stuff like racism, sexism, terrorism and things that are not allowed by law.

It of course get's a lot more complicated if you have to look at each country individual, which you sort of needs to do because the law isn't everywhere the same.

Culture has probably also a part in this whole system but that would make it for me too complicated to understand what i say.

 

Removing content based on something that's offensive but allowed by law is of course something that shouldn't happen. But the thing is if you make a computer with the tech of today, and regardless of what you do with it, it will remove content that's offensive for people but allowed by law, which means it's flawed.

 

I'm probably missing some important points but whatever.

Who defines racism sexism and terrorism is the question

They are all real things but who has the right to define them?

You could go off each countries laws but those are constantly changing and biased towards the rich people of that country.

[patrickjp93]

20 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

I'm pretty sure Facebook is an American company and the USA has an existing legal definition of terrorism (they must have otherwise they can't charge anybody with the offence), that seems like a good place to start. 

Facebook is headquartered in Ireland actually to avoid taxes.

[samcool55]

1 minute ago, thekeemo said:

Who defines racism sexism and terrorism is the question

They are all real things but who has the right to define them?

Well nobody can, but if a majority read something that is in their eyes racist or whatever, it probably is?

It's probably up to the host to draw a line in the gray area. And even then it depends where the host is active and laws in the country, maybe the gov of a specific country can draw a clear line that a website has to meet. There are so much different scenario's that define it different. 

 

Yes there is also a thing called VPN and stuff but that's a whole bunch of different laws and stuff i don't know anything about tbh

[Citadelen]

This just in, Israeli generals using Facebook to co-ordinate attacks on Gaza.

Israel: "Well this is awkward..."

[WkdPaul]

41 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

Nope, Anti Speech laws cover Speech and you don't speak on the Internet, you express an opinion. Freedom of expression doesn't exist hence why any LMG staff could delete this thread right now for no reason and without telling anyone. Their house, their rules. 

are you serious?

[Misanthrope]

9 minutes ago, Citadelen said:

This just in, Israeli generals using Facebook to co-ordinate attacks on Gaza.

Israel: "Well this is awkward..."

Generals using Facebook for military operations?

 

I am affraid I'm gonna need a citation for that.

[Misanthrope]

11 minutes ago, wkdpaul said:

are you serious?

Not sure but the point that should be made is that current legislation regarding free speech means that you have the right whatever you say on the internet, but it doesn't means anybody has to give you a platform on their website or service.

 

This is a very clear case of legislation not catching up to technology fast enough: Even though in a very strict sense, Freedom of Speech doesn't applies to Facebook or Twitter since your right is covered by the fact that you're free to start a competing service or a blog, we've let this companies grow unchecked into out of control monstrosities that basically control enough user accounts and enough information to be considered key telecomunication services.

 

As such they should be regulated even if it is technically a private entity. However the laws regarding free speech were revised in a time where a privately own business had about as much reach as your local town with 400 people. It was reasonable to establish that the right to reply and such was covered under such a small scale by using competing platforms for communications.

 

Fast forward to Facebook having billions of active users and you can see how it's a problem if they decide they don't want to respect free speech.

[Volbet]

58 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

Nope, Anti Speech laws cover Speech and you don't speak on the Internet, you express an opinion. Freedom of expression doesn't exist hence why any LMG staff could delete this thread right now for no reason and without telling anyone. Their house, their rules. 

 

Of course there must he balance but at least hide these posts until a human can assess them. 

In most Western countries speech is defined as any expression, be it speech, written media, art, nodes, ect.

Basically, any form of communication is protected.

 

The reason why freedom of speech doesn't exist most places on the internet is because the speech takes place in privately owned forums. 

The duty to protect freedom of speech only applies to governments; not privatly owned entities. 

This is why sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinusTechTips Forum can freely decide what kind of speech they'll allow on their sites. 

[SurvivorNVL]

This is why I have a solution to all the problems in the Middle East and Israel.  Let Russia colonize it.  They're hurting economically, they like oil, they need more sand for glass.  It's a good day for Putin, bad day for others.