{"id":181432,"date":"2019-01-02T06:34:35","date_gmt":"2019-01-02T06:34:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=181432"},"modified":"2019-01-06T08:27:43","modified_gmt":"2019-01-06T08:27:43","slug":"facebooks-secret-censorship-manual-exposed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=181432","title":{"rendered":"Facebook&#8217;s Secret Censorship Manual Exposed"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\">As platform takes down a video about Israel terrorizing Palestinians<\/h2>\n<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\">Jessica Corbett \u2013 Common Dreams Dec 28, 2018<\/h1>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">After the <em>New York Times<\/em> on Thursday published an <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong><a style=\"color: #ccffff; text-decoration: underline;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2018\/12\/27\/world\/facebook-moderators.html\">expos\u00e9<\/a><\/strong><\/span> of <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong><a style=\"color: #ccffff; text-decoration: underline;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/tag\/facebook\">Facebook<\/a><\/strong><\/span>&#8216;s global censorship rulebook, journalist <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong><a style=\"color: #ccffff; text-decoration: underline;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/author\/rania-khalek\">Rania Khalek<\/a><\/strong><\/span> called out the social media giant for taking down a <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong><a style=\"color: #ccffff; text-decoration: underline;\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/IntheNow_tweet\/status\/1078673085010710533\">video<\/a><\/strong><\/span> in which she explains how, &#8220;on top of being occupied, colonized territory, Palestine is Israel&#8217;s personal laboratory for testing, refining, and showcasing methods and weapons of domination and control.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Tweeting out the <em>Times<\/em> report\u2014and noting that while, according to the newspaper, &#8220;moderators were told to hunt down and remove rumors wrongly accusing an Israeli soldier of killing a Palestinian medic,&#8221; Israeli soldiers did <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong><a style=\"color: #ccffff; text-decoration: underline;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/news\/obituaries\/razan-alnajjar-dead-palestinian-medic-gaza-protests-a8398451.html\">fatally shoot an unarmed 21-year-old female paramedic<\/a><\/strong><\/span> earlier this year\u2014she announced Friday morning that Facebook had &#8220;just removed&#8221; her video.<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Speaking of Facebook censoring content on Israel\u2019s behalf, they just removed a video I made about how Israel uses Palestine as weapons laboratory.<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Rania Khalek (@RaniaKhalek) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/RaniaKhalek\/status\/1078658701219844097?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">December 28, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Here is my video on how Israel uses Palestine as a weapons testing laboratory, which Facebook erased without explanation. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/kT6YvZpVPj\">https:\/\/t.co\/kT6YvZpVPj<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Rania Khalek (@RaniaKhalek) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/RaniaKhalek\/status\/1078673648951717888?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">December 28, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">After she and other prominent reporters issued public complaints, Khalek announced a couple hours later that Facebook had restored the video. &#8220;Still this is a good reminder that at the moment these social media giants have the ability to disappear content as they please,&#8221; she said in a tweet. &#8220;It&#8217;s creepy and alarming and should be loudly opposed.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">After some complaints, the video is back up in Facebook. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/wdZjBQyAqC\">https:\/\/t.co\/wdZjBQyAqC<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Still this is a good reminder that at the moment these social media giants have the ability to disappear content as they please. It\u2019s creepy and alarming and should be loudly opposed<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Rania Khalek (@RaniaKhalek) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/RaniaKhalek\/status\/1078692906955952128?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">December 28, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Among those who highlighted Facebook&#8217;s censorship of Khalek&#8217;s video on Friday were Ben Norton of <em>The Real News Network<\/em>\u2014who called it an &#8220;excellent, informative video report&#8221;\u2014and <em>The Intercept<\/em>&#8216;s Glenn Greenwald, who pointed out that the platform <a style=\"color: #ccffff;\" href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2017\/12\/30\/facebook-says-it-is-deleting-accounts-at-the-direction-of-the-u-s-and-israeli-governments\/\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>has been silencin<\/strong><\/span>g<\/a> Palestinian and pro-Palestinian voices for more than a year.<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Facebook just removed this excellent, informative video report by <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/RaniaKhalek?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@RaniaKhalek<\/a>, in which she explained how Israel uses Palestine as a laboratory for weapons and military technology.<\/p>\n<p>It gave no explanation for why the video was taken down.<a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/GN234qFy4K\">https:\/\/t.co\/GN234qFy4K<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/BenjaminNorton\/status\/1078677632315805696?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">December 28, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Facebook has been aggressively deleting the pages of Palestinians and pro-Palestinian voices for at least 18 months, obeying the demands of the Israeli govt. Congrats to those who thought it was a good idea for Silicon Valley to act as paternal censor &amp; guardian of the internet: <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/BTs9JBvfwT\">https:\/\/t.co\/BTs9JBvfwT<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ggreenwald\/status\/1078674746978521091?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">December 28, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">&#8220;In Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai, Sheryl Sandberg, and Eric Schmidt we trust to censor and regulate the internet with the most benevolent of motives, devoted as they&#8217;ve been their entire lives to safeguarding the voiceless and protecting the marginalized,&#8221; Greenwald sarcastically <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong><a style=\"color: #ccffff; text-decoration: underline;\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ggreenwald\/status\/1078675702998884352\">added<\/a><\/strong><\/span>, referring to Facebook&#8217;s CEO, Google&#8217;s CEO, Facebook&#8217;s COO, and the executive chairman of Alphabet, Google&#8217;s parent company.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">The short and successful fight to restore Khalek&#8217;s video, however, is just one of countless instances of Facebook taking down content without providing an explanation to the user or the public. Max Fisher&#8217;s report for the <em>Times<\/em> offers a glimpse into its secretive but widely criticized <a style=\"color: #ccffff;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/news\/2018\/10\/12\/facebook-accused-full-frontal-suppression-dissent-after-independent-media-swept-mass\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>censorship practice<\/strong><\/span>s<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">A review of 1,400 pages provided to the newspaper by a concerned employee\u2014and verified as authentic by Facebook, which supposedly has made some updates\u2014&#8221;revealed numerous gaps, biases, and outright errors,&#8221; Fisher wrote. &#8220;The closely held rules are extensive, and they make the company a far more powerful arbiter of global speech than has been publicly recognized or acknowledged by the company itself.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">While Facebook claimed the rulebook is for training, moderators\u2014who &#8220;describe feeling in over their heads&#8221; as they try to make decisions in as little as eight-to-10 seconds\u2014told Fisher they reference it regularly. And though Facebook staff reportedly craft moderation rules in meetings every other week, &#8220;the company outsources much of the actual post-by-post moderation to companies that enlist largely unskilled workers, many hired out of call centers.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">The lengthy and arguably confusing guidance that Facebook gives to moderators has produced mixed and, at times, alarming results. As Fisher noted, &#8220;They have allowed extremist language to flourish in some countries while censoring mainstream speech in others.&#8221; He explained:<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">Moderators were once told, for example, to remove fundraising appeals for volcano victims in Indonesia because a co-sponsor of the drive was on Facebook\u2019s internal list of banned groups. In Myanmar, a paperwork error allowed a prominent extremist group, accused of fomenting genocide, to stay on the platform for months. In India, moderators were mistakenly told to take down comments critical of religion.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ccffff;\">The key takeaway from his report, Fisher said on Twitter, is two-fold: Facebook &#8220;is intervening into political and social matters the world over,&#8221; acting &#8220;like an unseen branch of government,&#8221; and &#8220;is doing this all on the cheap, shipping disorganized PowerPoint slides to outsourcing companies it can barely control. And it is making many, many mistakes along the way.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/twitter.com\/Max_Fisher\/status\/1078423103712182273<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/news\/2018\/12\/28\/facebooks-secret-censorship-manual-exposed-platform-takes-down-video-about-israel\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Platform takes down video that exposed how Israel was using Palestine as a weapons testing ground<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[61,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-181432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-Commentary","category-controlling-the-news-andor-the-free-exchange-of-ideas-and-information"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=181432"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181432\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":181435,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181432\/revisions\/181435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=181432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=181432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=181432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}