[governance] Facebook profiles blocked and content removed in Brazil

[Norbert Bollow]

Salanieta T. Tamanikaiwaimaro <salanieta.tamanikaiwaimaro at gmail.com> wrote:
> > This is a very complicated debate, of public interest, that cannot be
> > carried out by the board of company alone, whose role is, naturally, to
> > maximize profit and minimize risks.
>
> Sala: The point is to see if there is any logic. If we moved away from the
> online world and consider organizations and clubs who impose rules on their
> members, is it reasonable to expect a certain type of rule or code imposed
> on those who willingly choose to subscribe. How different should it be for
> an ordinary entity in the ecosystem. There are many other social networks
> aside from Facebook that one can go to if one does not like the rules.

If the people with whom I wish to communicate use Facebook, the
existence of any number of other social network sites is irrelevant.
Even if I had the ability to create a social network site of my own
with the same features as Facebook, that would change nothing, since
there will always be only one "social network" site where "everyone"
is.

By contrast, if I don't like the dress code rules of a club that I
would otherwise wish to join, I can, with a reasonable hope of
success, start a new club with different dress code rules.

So I would definitely assert that Facebook Inc has a dangerously massive
amount of power, which is not effectively mitigated by the fact that
people choose to subscribe or not - and even registered users of
Facebook have the choice to actively use it or not. (I have a facebook
account and some "facebook friends" just for the purpose of making it
more difficult for anyone else to register in my name and impersonate
me; for reasons unrelated to the present discussion I do not actively
use facebook otherwise.) 

However, as long as Facebook Inc is only restricting the kinds of
pictures that users may *post* on facebook, but not what pictures may
be posted on other sites that facebook users may then link to, then it
doesn't seem to me that Facebook Inc's massive amount of power is
actually being (ab)used here. In fact I suspect that this spat might
quite by itself, without any kind of explicit Internet governance
action, have a positive educational effect in educating people that
the Internet is bigger than facebook.

> > What is the solution? It can't be one size fits all, otherwise we will only
> > see ankles of women in FB.
> 
> Sala: No one ever said that we should only see the ankles of women on FB.
> What we should be discussing is how to tackle the abuse of the exception
> under Article 19 of the ICCPR.

What avenues of potential action regarding this are available to us
currently?

What further avenues of action to address such an issue could
potentially in addition become available through a good implementation
of Enhanced Cooperation?

Greetings,
Norbert

-------------- next part --------------
____________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
     governance at lists.igcaucus.org
To be removed from the list, visit:
     http://www.igcaucus.org/unsubscribing

For all other list information and functions, see:
     http://lists.igcaucus.org/info/governance
To edit your profile and to find the IGC's charter, see:
     http://www.igcaucus.org/

Translate this email: http://translate.google.com/translate_t