I contacted Facebook's press office, requesting answers for the removal of two anti-government pages during the course of Thursday.
One of the pages I'm talking is that of Khaled Said, a young man assassinated by the Egyptian police last June and whose murder raised one of the biggest protest movement in the past couple of decades.
The other one is a support group for Mohamed El Baradei, former IAEA director, Nobel laureate, and popular opposition figure.
This came a day before "Anger Friday" - what has been dubbed as the first political flashmob in Cairo, and three days before parliamentary elections expected to be another electoral sham.
Of course, everyone - myself included - assumed it was done under government pressure.
The pages were reinstated by the end of the day, but this remains a particularly worrying event and an example of Facebook showing what seemed like either a strange political bias - and it wouldn't be the first time pages have been removed for political reasons - or a responsiveness to government pressure. Either case is highly disturbing.
So I contacted Facebook requesting an interview with their Europe/Middle East/Africa (EMEA) director, and included a few questions on why the pages were removed, whether they had received a request from the government, and how they dealt with such requests normally.
I got a response from their EMEA director of communication, which is fine by me.
This is what he had to say:
Now given that I hadn't spoken about reports, it felt like a cop-out on their part. So I responded with a couple of very straightforward questions, on whether they had been asked to remove them by the government, and what was their standard policy when they received such requests from governments. This was the follow-up response:
Make what you will of it. Personally, I'm not really buying that it was a freak coincidence that those two pages had script or admin issues - three days before the election.
What do YOU think?
4 comments:
I totally agree with you. I think that Facebook tends to be very wishy-washy and inconsistent when it comes to policies for issues like this one. I think they're not nearly as politically savvy as they'd like people to believe, and that they're far more susceptible to to self-interest groups than they'd have people believe.
i have it on good authority that the pages in question where brought to the attention of facebook by a well meaning fool giving them a list of pages likely to fall under attack.
since the pages violated some of their fascist TOS like no pseudonyms and no anonymous activity they got removed.
that explains the timing, to me the fact that they nitpicked the moment pages where brought to their attention also means the process is not really automated. my guess is they didn't receive requests from government but they are convinced they don't want to anger government so when they found an excuse to get rid of this potentially trouble making activity they acted on it.
@ Liza,
'Wishy-washy'. Funny, I've heard that three times in the course of the past couple of days, with respect to Facebook.
In a sense, sometimes we expect too much of Facebook. After all, nothing says they should have ethics, but rules they put themselves. Facebook is, as you say, a group with self-interests.
@Anonymous
I'd be curious to know what your source is.
I'd be quite surprised if they didn't get complaints from governments. And I'm quite convinced that they're willing to bend to the pressure.
If it was b/c of the Egyptian gov't, it certainly didn't save them in the recent Internet blackout.
I personally doubt that Facebook cares enough about the Egyptian market or is politically aware enough to make special concessions to the Egyptian government.
Ironically, what really got me onto Facebook was my Egyptian friends who I made while studying in Cairo 'friending' me in summer of 2007. I am greatful to Facebook for helping us stay in touch, which otherwise I am terrible at, so that I could check on their safety recently (at least when the internet is on).
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