The importance of social media networks such as Facebook and Twitter is evident. The latest example is what appears to have happened in the last couple of days in the UK with Facebook removing dozens of profiles from its site, causing an outcry from campaigners trying to organise anti-austerity protests this weekend.
The Guardian reports:
The deactivated pages include UK Uncut, and pages created by students during last December’s university occupations.
A list posted on the Stop Facebook Purge group says Chesterfield Stop the Cuts, Tower Hamlet Greens, London Student Assembly, Southwark SoS and Bristol Uncut sites are no longer functioning.
Administrators for the profiles say hundreds of links between activists have been broken in the run up to the May Day bank holiday. When users click on URL links the message “the page you requested was not found” now appears.
Online news site Ekklesia reported that:
The social networking site Facebook is facing massive pressure from campaigners, civil liberties activists and journalists tonight after suspending a series of UK-based ‘political’ accounts.
In what University College of London students, UK Uncut and others are calling a ‘purge’ – coinciding with police action against radical and dissenting groups on the day of the royal wedding – more than 50 Facebook pages have been put out of operation.
Among those affected have been Save NHS, Rochdale Law Centre, Tower Hamlets Greens, Bootle Labour, Bristol Bookfair, Westminster Trades Council and London Student Assembly.
Specifically anti-cuts and student protest groups are also targeted. Only progressive or radical groups seem to have been impacted.
At first Facebook refused to comment, but after grassroots digital action and national media reporting (including the Guardian newspaper and Channel 4 television news), the company responded to protesters by suggesting that their action related to a a technical “violation of terms issue” relating to the “wrong” kind of page.
A spokesperson told Channel 4: “The reason all of these profiles came down at once is simple. Facebook’s security tools constantly work to maintain our real name culture by removing profiles that are ‘fake’ or don’t belong to an individual person, but rather a campaign, an animal, or an organisation.”
But critics say this does not explain the apparently selective effect of the action.
It appears there’s been cooperation between the State and a major online networking site to address perceived or actual threats surrounding the Royal Wedding.
The issue for me is not so much whether Facebook should ever interfere with an activist page. Sometimes there may be good reasons, and every online social media site, including Red Alert, must have some rules and standards and make them clear to everyone.
But what if what appears to be arbitrary censorship and take downs occur, which may have political motives? Affecting the ability of citizens to lawfully protest and object to government policies, or dare I say. Even the Monarchy? That’s the issue. How do you guard against that?
By not relying on corporate/government controlled social media and utilizing free, open-source, distributed, peer-to-peer, social media.
Alternatively, or also, by ensuring there are enough commercial alternatives hosted in locations of varying different political backgrounds around the world, and that everyone is using clients that aggregate and post to them all. That way any one government taking out the primary local provider will not prevent the dissemination of the message.
The latter, of course, will only work while we still have competing political systems, so the first solution is more future-proof.
It appears?
Where?
Wonder how some of the Middle Eastern States would regard the blocking of sites by the British Government? Egypt. How would you have managed your revolution if your internet sites were blocked completely?
Different in UK of course. That blockage is for the good of the Queen and country.
Private businesses like Facebook and Twitter are, uh, private businesses. They are driven by profits for their shareholders, expectations of their customers, and their legal obligations.
To answer your question, one of these three things needs to change.
This was best illustrated during the Wikileaks saga. If the US Government leans on PayPal or Visa, they will bend. You can call it “cooperation between the State and a major online networking site” or pragmatic response; arbitrary or State-inspired censorship.
The reality is that asking a private business to react to State pressure on principles isn’t going to happen if one of the three levers above isn’t present.
Ask Google how its Chinese adventure went.
There’s also the question of consistency. In New Zealand, Internet intermediaries are increasingly being forced to be an instrument of the State by law. Introducing criminal liability for one of an ISP’s customers breaching name suppression is a classic example. Or taking libraries and universities to a Tribunal and fining them heavily because, despite their best efforts, someone using their Internet connection knowingly or unknowingly breached copyright.
And then we want these people to turn around and oppose the State on the grounds of fairness and principles?
The problem isn’t State intervention in social media. It is excessive and wrong State intervention.
Just shows how evil Farcebook really is.
If anyone took the time to read Farcebook policy and actually have a think about what it means for them as an independent citizen then I’m sure that this wouldn’t happen.
Join Diaspora. Free and open source.
Considering the damage and mayhem these lunatics caused during a Union organised rally its not surprising. As an Englishman we dont need much encouragement for a bit of civil disobedience, however doing it during the royal wedding and the lunatics would be the ones needing state protection.
I was in the riots in Tottenham, the one where the locals tried taking the coppers head off (after they killed him)to pop on to a post. It dont take much for the English to get going so censoring facebook occaisionally is not a bad idea with all those women and kiddies around.
Funny how when a corporate causes damage and mayhem we don’t censor or legislate to stop them. usually the damage and mayhem isnt being caused in “our” country so we excuse it.
Never heard of a corporate throwing bricks through shop windows and scaring the living daylights out of workers going about their lawful business.
The gloved fist behind the popularity of royal celebrity is exercised on the day of the wedding, becoming a celebration of the continuance of authority over the common people.
No you haven’t David because those few who behave badly do it differently (more money means they can try to hide the trail)… like Union Carbide, Tobacco companies deliberately putting an addictive substance inside a product that harms people and then covering up the research and claiming publicly they don’t, blood diamond trade and BP in Nigeria. I’m not excusing the tiny minority of protestors that you speak of for their vandalism but the majority were not behaving that way.
In NZ DOW Chemical is almost undoubtedly responsible for maiming and killing many people but because they didnt use a brick or a gun, you choose not to condemn their behaviour
Corporates like Union Carbide killed and poisoned hundreds of people in Bhopal but they payed the families $300 US each so that’s okay then.
No windows were harmed.
Good on you, Clare, for drawing attention to this. It’s hard to believe that the British government are not somehow behind this. How exactly they did it is a mystery, for the moment, but as the Wikileaks saga shows us, governments have ways of pressuring companies to succumb to political pressure.
It’s amazing how ready we are to condemn oppressive Arab governments when they censor Facebook and Twitter to avoid public protests, protests in which, yes, a few windows may be broken. But we are less ready to condemn our own governments when they do the same.
Then again, the Royal Wedding has been such a convenient distraction from what the British government is doing to British society that one can understand why the politicians might not want the weekend spoiled.
Does anyone watch the TV series ‘Spooks’ – about the MI5 and their antics?
Whilst this is fictional the portrayal of the home secretary pre and post the Blair/Brown era is very interesting; the current one is so pro USA and big business, probably just like the real thing!
I wonder if the 1000000 against the BNP group that I am a member of still exists, the I Hate David Cameron or the No State Funeral for Thatcher pages still exist!
Ironically chaps if the British Government are behind these site being taken down, the laws allowing them to do so were designed, voted for and implemented during the Blair/Brown years where NUlab decided that things like, freedom of speech, freedom of assosciation and taking photos of police officers were things for the criminal statute book.