I’m not a fan of Facebook (I deactivated my account months ago) but this is a new low for the social networking giant.
“Pakistani advocacy groups say that some senior members of the government telecommunications agency have boasted in court about the “arrangement” they have with Facebook, where they can have any “undesirable” content they wish blocked or removed. Twitter, however, is notorious for fighting such demands, which probably makes it seem like less of a soft touch. (GigaOm)”
Truthfully I am not perplexed as to why Facebook cowers at the slightest government criticism while Twitter defies censorship requests (whether it’s from Pakistan, US of A or Mordor).
Both companies have global ambitions although Facebook is willing to sacrifice freedom of speech in order to become “the pulse of the planet.”
The Art of Censorship
My theory: Facebook is attempting to achieve a pseudo balance between censorship & freedom of speech within a democratic theocracy (like Pakistan) before expanding into China (where Facebook is currently banned).
While companies like Twitter & (to a lesser degree) Google would not be willing to silence human opinions in order to please hyper sensitive bureaucrats, Facebook has no qualms with censorship as long as it leads towards more users & more gold at the end of the day.
Image Credits: ZDNet who has a very interesting article about Facebook censorship in India & Turkey. Yes, you should read it!
Disclosure: I actively use Instagram (username @Darnell) which is owned by Facebook.
