Independent journalist Michael Yon, best known for his work during the Iraq War, has accused Facebook of deleting his posts and his users' comments without reasonable cause. Yon now says that Facebook suspended him for a week after his complaint made the news.
Facebook has previously come under criticism for banning links to its competitor Tsu.co, suspending political cartoonist Ben Garrison for his "Crybabies" cartoon critical of campus protests, banning atheist cartoonist Bosch Fawstin, removing a comment calling for the strict separation of church and state, and blocking access to The Federalist article "Microaggressions and Trigger Warnings Meet Real Trauma".
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
Independent Journalist Michael Yon Accuses Facebook of Censorship
|
Log In/Create an Account
| Top
| 42 comments
| Search Discussion
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Private Company -NO freedom of speach (Score:1, Informative)
the subject covers it all
Re:Private Company -NO freedom of speach (Score:5, Insightful)
Legal has nothing to do with it. Yes they're legally allowed. Yes it is still censorship. Yes it is still vile.
Wieners, wieners, wieners! Put 'em in your mouth! Wieners, wieners, wieners, get it it's like my Johnson! Alpha!
Parent
Re:Private Company -NO freedom of speach (Score:4, Insightful)
1) That only applies to legality. It is certainly possible for private companies to do things that are legal but unethical.
2) At any rate, if Facebook has a right to do it, he likewise has a right to rake Facebook's name into the mud about it for as long as he wants. He has freedom of speech too, you know.
Parent
Re:Private Company -NO freedom of speach (Score:4, Insightful)
sudo mod me up
Parent
Re:Private Company -NO freedom of speach (Score:4, Informative)
However, no one actually willingly grants another party control over his communications
Exactly, which is why private media owners don't grant people the unconditional right to communicate using their media.
The average Joe clicks the EULA/TOS, out of coercion more than anything.
Saying "these are our terms under which we are willing to cooperate with you" is not coercion.
Joe thinks, "I need to connect, Facebook is where everyone gets connected, so I have to accept the terms."
If Joe is mistaken and you feel that is a problem, then you could work to educate Joe about his options, such as nearlyfreespeech.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings
Parent
tragedy of walled gardens (Score:5, Insightful)
This story reminds us of the tragedy of walled gardens. No one asked this guy to wall himself up inside of Facebook. No one was forced to abandon the open, free internet. Anyone could set up a web site, back in the day, and publish anything they wanted. No one forced anyone into walled gardens. People abandoned the principles and benefits of the Internet to get into corporation-provided walled gardens. It's a tragedy that what made the Internet work in the first place was quickly abandoned by people using the Internet. They ran to corporations and began creating content inside walled gardens rather than building an open web of hyperlinked web sites. You can't say walled gardens are any easier these days than running your own site. You've got CMSes to handle content, Google News to index it. An open, distributed Internet would be hard to control.
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
Re:tragedy of walled gardens (Score:4, Insightful)
An open, distributed Internet is hard to control.
That's why they are trying very hard to kill it.
Parent
In other news (Score:0, Redundant)
Water is wet.
"Reasonable" (Score:2)
Secession is the right of all sentient beings
Fork FaceBook! (Score:3, Informative)
A while back, I said "Fork Slashdot!" (in a comment on Slashdot). I wasn't the only one who said it. Others got the same idea at the same time. Some of those people created Soylent News and here we are.
Facebook is even worse. If you say "Fork Facebook" on Facebook, they will censor it (and probably sue you). But we can say it here. If people don't like how Facebook operates, it looks to me like a business opportunity. Start a competing website with the advantage being that your version doesn't censor its users and perhaps allows the users to protect their identities (except as required by law).
Re:Fork FaceBook! (Score:4, Interesting)
Diaspora is probably a better bet.
It's open source and federated so you can easily run your own server and communicate with other "pods"
It's far from perfect but worth a look
https://diasporafoundation.org/ [diasporafoundation.org]
Parent
Freedom of the Press... (Score:2, Insightful)