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In the worst case, Turkey could ban Facebook. Would they really do that? It's nowhere near certain.

Google left China rather than submit to their censorship regime, and the Chinese market is like 18 Turkeys.

And if you do remove content, you can make that action transparent on Chilling Effects[1]. Facebook doesn't do that, either.

There are alternatives.

And if you decide to build censorship tools to stay in the good graces of the regime, then don't say "I am Charlie" while you're doing it.

[1] https://www.chillingeffects.org/



> censorship

China wanted to censor inconvenient history. Turkey wants to censor offensive (to them) religious images. I think that's the important comparison, not the size of the market.


The Turkish legal code has a clause against "insulting Turkishness", which has been used to censor mentions of the Armenian genocide, so they're clearly not against history-related censorship.


I doubt that's really the worst case, although it is pretty bad since Facebook is very popular in Turkey. I think being fined heavily would be worse. For example, Yahoo was threatened by the US government with $250,000 fine per day if it did not comply with demands to turn over data.


> Facebook is very popular in Turkey

This means Facebook has a lot of power to resist censorship.

Make repression costly for the regime in terms of widespread public outrage and international pariah status.

Maybe Erdoğan will pay those costs, maybe he won't.

But if you make censorship free then you're certain to get a lot more of it.


I'd be a fan of them doing more for sure(especially the Chilling Effects site addition). But many here are ignoring any possibility of compliance while filing objection, which this is exactly.

If this were used instead as an opportunity to get Facebook to make censorship moves like this more transparent, I'd be in full support.


Most countries, including USA, have "censhorship regimes". They just vary in scope and targeting.

Many companies could decide not to operate in USA due to the snooping, gagged court orders, civil rights attacks, selective and repressive law enforcement, etc.

I get this is a hard issue to speak in "western" sites because many see it as "us vs them" but let me tell you, I could easily subdivide "us" many times and make your portion "them".


Which characters' images from history are censored in the West?


I don't know.

You're ignoring all my other examples of censorship, though.

I knew it was going to be a hard issue so the downvotes are not unexpected.


It happens all the time with a lot of characters. Most recently, criticism of Chris Kyle (the real life sniper/camper/coward) has been censored on Youtube for offending the sensibilities of pro-war, pro-violence folks.


Citation please.



This guy's video titled "Chris Kyle was a pussy" is not censored on YouTube.

Maybe it got flagged off temporarily by his adversaries, but it's fully available now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Iypq11_n2I




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