facebook - hate site

[faceless]

After hearing on the news today that Vodaphone are pulling their adverts from Facebook because of secondary adverts for groups like the BNP I thought I'd login and see what I could find...

this was a good one: the 'Fuck you George Galloway and Ken Livingstone' group!

http://www.facebook.com/wall.php?id=2204999648

I always find it bizarre that so many people could have the lack of awareness required to spend their time attacking that which they hate rather than promoting that which they love. What a load of eejits!

[nekokate]

I can't see that page because I don't have a facebook account. I'm not gutted, lol.

[faceless]

Is Facebook racist? or enjoying the controversial attention?
September 03, 2007
http://weseepeople.blogspot.com


Thousands of people have joined a campaign to remove racist images and postings from Facebook.More than 2,000 have signed a petition after it emerged that British National Party members were posting pictures and messages on their groups' pages.

The petition, which was organised by Unite Against Fascism, has been signed by MPs including Diane Abbott, Keith Vaz and George Galloway.We had an overwhelming response of 1,000 signatures in a week and 100 people are supporting it a day,' said Denis Fernando from UAF.

One group on Facebook, called Vote BNP And Save The World, shows a photograph of people dressed as Ku Klux Klan members. The caption reads: 'Local BNP meeting, blacks welcome.'

Facebook's terms and conditions state that user groups can be removed for sharing anything that can be seen as 'harmful, threatening, hateful or racially or ethnically objectionable'. Since complaints started, the website has removed a racist image from one group's page but it remains on another's. That Facebook is allowing the grotesque use of its site to promote fascism is unacceptable,' added Mr Fernando.

Nobody from Facebook was available for comment last night.But yesterday the BNP claimed: 'UAF probably put those images on. It is a fascist organisation which doesn't believe in free speech.'Mr Fernando denied the accusations and added: 'The Facebook sites expose the reality of the BNP. It is not a normal political party.'

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[Mandy]

Why does this remind me of the controversy over the internet itself.

Just because the BNP have a web site on the web isn't going to stop be going on the web.

A similar argument could be made about facebook.

Indeed, asking (and empowering) facebook to apply harsher rules than found on the web itself, e.g. compared to a local ISP/web hosting company which is under country regulations, is giving the facebook admins too much power. I don't trust facebook not to turn round and banish "good" causes. Recall they deleted GG's account on facebook, and said it was non-appealable, but they yielded to strong protests from GG and the facebook community.

The litmus test is whether the same BNP images/info found on a US based web hosting provider could be legally removed.

Of-course, even if legal allowed, I would support and encourage any demonstration or petition against such material since this is our freedom of speech.

p.s. There are reports that facebook itself has intelligence community connections. Unfortunately same could be said about most large software/internet/communications/weapons companies (i.e. the military industrial complex - MIC).

click HERE to watch a flash movie about facebook.

[faceless]

I wouldn't allow someone to come on this site and post BNP stuff. So why should big sites allowed to be less responsible? If they can't or won't (more likely) control their own content then they deserve the crap that goes with it...

[Salim201]

thats just a question for individual administrators of sites, i hope the majority of them don't interfere too much with content but as long as anyone can set up a site and regulate it as they wish, then what you decide to have and not to have really doesn't matter. If that changes then i think its legitimate to protest decisions to censor the internet in any way because where does it stop? its really an issue of whether one has any concept of freedom of speech beyond just what views one personally holds or finds acceptable.

[faceless]

Every web host has terms and conditions, which if broken will see your site removed. I think that's fair enough if their conditions aren't enforced with extreme prejudice. Why don't Facebook have terms that are enforced? Because they're only interested in growing their site and making the money from advertising, I'd guess...

[nekokate]

I wish this website had a rule against posting auto-playing, unmutable flash videos so anyone who wants to contribute to the thread has to hear the fucking thing everytime they visit it.

[faceless]

I hadn't noticed there was sound in that video as I usually listen to the radio... sorted now.

I think having the ability to embed flash is a good thing in general though. Without it most videos wouldn't work at all.

[nekokate]

I agree - most flash can be paused though!

Back to the topic, I'm not sure where I stand at all on this matter. I've been threatened with legal action over a website I own because one of my users posted a LINK to another site that contained a copyrighted video. Not me hosting copyrighted stuff, just me merely allowing someone to post a link to it! I think that's a bit mad, and when I checked with my server host they pretty much confirmed that the guy could definitely get me shut down.

In their terms of service it said:

"[The company] reserves the right to terminate services if your usage of the services results in, or is the subject of, legal action or threatened legal action, against [the company] or any of its affiliates or partners, without consideration for whether such legal action or threatened legal action is eventually determined to be with or without merit..."

So I was basically screwed.

In the light of that experience, I'm against strict laws that make it easy to get people closed down based on trivial crap. The BNP is not trivial, of course, but sometimes you have to tolerate freedom of speech you hate in order to enjoy your own freedom to say things others hate.

[Mandy]

Yep, I am with Kate on this. Unnerving to know almost anyone can try to shut Kate's web site on any spurious ground (including the animation can cause me epilepsy, I don't like pink or Kate's hairstyle since it made me go to see my Psychologist, so I am suing for his fees, i.e. ANY legal threat, even ones such as : It is Monday & I felt like suing someone who irritated me)

Though some terms aren't legally enforceable if they are deemed "unfair terms" .. so there is a bit of a balance there. Especially if you paid by credit card, you may have even more protection.

[faceless]

If a person threatens to have this site closed they would need to send me a 'cease and desist' request, this would need to state clearly their name and address and indicate that they are the legal representative for the item. If I refused then they'd have a case - when we first started we were an open torrent site and that did bring a 'request', so we changed things.

I don't agree that hate-speech should be allowed at all. The people who use such tactics are using the principle of free-speech without the acceptance of responsibility that it originally implied, so therefore they shouldn't be allowed it.

[nekokate]

I recently got a facebook account (which I'll surely never use) so I just took a look at that "we hate Galloway" site.

It didn't really spark much of a reaction with me either way. It was exactly as I imagined it would be. The boy who runs it is selectively editing, as you would imagine him to; apparently deleting pro-Galloway comments, but leaving up the ones that include swearing and insults in order to reply to them with "this is what people who support Galloway are like", etc.

George himself does a similar thing on his radio show, he'll read out threatening and badly written crap and then say "that's the calibre of the opposition" - it's not overly imaginative but it's a perfectly understandable tactic.

Of course, when the title of the group is as imaginative as "Fuck You George Galloway" then any discerning visitor will automatically know what to expect, and it's not going to be reasoned debate.

The owner, obviously ignoring what he chose to call the group, insists "this group is for constructive criticism", yet he allows comments such as "I hate Geroge G and Ken Livingstone, if i ever see them in london they better get out of my way trust!" to remain. A veiled and grammatically sub-par threat of antagonisation.

Then we have gems of intellectual profundity like "I THREW A BOTTLE AT HIM THE OTHER DAY", and "Galloway should go and live in Afghanistan - it's obviously a dream of his".

Let idiots be idiots amongst other idiots if that's how they comfort themselves - they're certainly not starting a revolution.