[governance] Facebook profiles blocked and content removed in Brazil

[Guru गुरु]

On Friday 01 June 2012 02:58 AM, Marilia Maciel wrote:
> Why am I in FB and "agreed" with this terms of use? Very prosaic 
> explanation. Unfortunately, this is the dominant platform for online 
> communication in my country. My family and friends, who live in far 
> away cities, post their lives in FB. Not being in FB is missing a big 
> part of their lives; is losing the chance of following their 
> day-to-day. It means loss of emotional ties to me. And, since FB is 
> becoming a platform for general communication, political protests, and 
> so on, it would mean a handicap in my ability to socially engage and 
> make my views heard. So, do I have an option? Sure, but the cost of 
> this option is becoming higher everyday. Too high for me to call this 
> a real �option�. The suggestion to create a parallel FB if people are 
> not happy with the current one seems so out of the reality of an 
> average user that I will not make comments about it.
>
> Matthias has put this argument better than I could ever do it, so I quote:
>
> as soon as social network providers are so successful that their 
> networks are a "quasi-public sphere" they lose, it can be argued, the 
> right to use terms of service to limit international standards of 
> freedom of expression. The more successful and public a service is, 
> the fewer restrictions may be allowed.
>
"when a network becomes a 'quasi-public sphere', the providers TOS needs 
to be treated much more carefully than any typical contract between a 
producer and a consumer".  I would like to rephrase Matthias here.

It is not 'fewer restrictions' on limiting 'freedom of expression' alone 
....  there are several rights that need to be considered - 
communication, association, privacy, development etc... and though 
rights need to be seen as a whole without division or hierarchies, there 
are obvious conflicts / contestations in the actual implementation of 
rights for different groups...

Hence the solution is not just 'fewer restrictions' which limit foe... 
but rather global regulation which can manage this complex interplay of 
rights in these virtual public spaces... and TOS of business entities 
cannot play this role.
national regulation is inadequate as we see - Brazil's own laws could 
not protect rights of her citizens against FB's suo moto actions...
de-facto regulation by US based corporates (or USG / EU) is also 
undemocratic.....

regards,
Guru
btw we had a similar case in India in the 'pink chaddi' campaign by 
feminist groups, which FB blocked - 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_Chaddi_Campaign  "Shortly after the 
campaign took off, the campaign's Facebook group began to be attacked by 
trolls and was eventually broken into. Attackers renamed the group and 
included racist slurs and death threats in its description. The attacks 
continued despite appeals to Facebook's support department for help, and 
eventually Facebook disabled the account of the group's administrator 
and access to the group. The group has decided to avoid Facebook in future"

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