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Facebook filtering Kurdish content, closing accounts |
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Facebook filtering Kurdish content,
closing accounts
24.2.2012 |
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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Photo: Getty Images
This
may ban you on facebook, an avatar picture, saying
“I am KCK” (Kurdistan Communities Union). Photo:
ekurd.net
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February
24, 2012
AMSTERDAM, the Netherlands, — A former
employee of the company oDesk, who used to filter
out offensive content on Facebook, has leaked the
website's secret rulebook of detailed instructions,
which include blocking any content related to
Kurdistan and the PKK.
The British Daily Mail reports that aggrieved
Moroccan worker Amine Derkaou leaked the information
to the U.S. gossip website Gawker.
The rulebook bans all attacks on the founder of
Turkey, Kemal Atatürk, along with maps of Kurdistan
and the burning of Turkish flags.
Furthermore, indications of supporting PKK, or PKK
leader Abdullah Öcalan, will result in IP or
Facebook account blocks, unless they are clearly
against the PKK or Öcalan.
A team of about 50 people from all over the third
world -- Mexico, Turkey, India and the Philippines
-- work to moderate Facebook content.
Kurds on Twitter were outraged by the leaked
rulebook, and suggested that Turks employed by the
company were behind the censoring. “[I] got banned
too for 3 days last week after posting a picture of
Ocalan ... FB's terms are BS and too broad,” wrote
Kurdish-American student Mohammed Hesen on Twitter.
Pro-Kurdish activist and blogger Mark Campbell, who
maintains the blog Hevallo
[http://hevallo.blogspot.com], claimed he was banned
for 24 hours for having an avatar picture, saying “I
am KCK” (Kurdistan Communities Union).
On Wednesday, the website of the German Der Spiegel
ran an article on the same topic, saying, “With
Facebook you can write: ‘I have a large penis and
like it when girls touch it.’ Prohibited, however,
is: ‘I am looking for girls who want to have fun.
Send me a message if you want to have a good time.’"
The writer Christian Stocker tries to explain the
intricacy of Facebook rules, saying, “The second
example -- albeit rather implicitly – is an
invitation to erotic dating, and falls under the
Facebook offense of ‘sexual solicitation.’ To have a
big penis though ‘is not a sexual activity,’ and the
thing about touching ‘no details’ and does not
fulfill the criteria for ‘sexually explicit
language.’”
According to this article in the Der Spiegel,
Facebook seems to have special rules for Germany and
Turkey, taking the interests of both countries
interests into account.
"Holocaust denial, with 'hate speech' in focus, and
‘all attacks on Ataturk (visual and textual)’ must
be removed, as well as content that apparently
supports the Kurdish terrorist organization and the
imprisoned PKK leader Ocalan,” reads the article.
Dogan Dogan, a Kurdish community activist in Canada,
told Rudaw that his Facebook pages have been closed
down more than five times.
“When you post anything against Turkey, when you
criticize Turkey or even mention the Armenian
genocide,www.ekurd.net
Facebook will immediately close your account,” he
said.
Dogan said that Facebook closed pages he had created
for Kurdish solidarity with thousands of followers.
“They are targeting the Kurds specifically. But why
do this?” he said. “I contacted Facebook
administrators three times but never got any
response from them.”
Dogan, who still runs Facebook pages for Kurds
living in North America, believes that if Kurds had
a country of their own, Facebook wouldn’t treat them
this way.
“There are many Greek pages against Turkey and
Ataturk, but Facebook doesn’t close them because the
Greek government protects the rights of its citizens
to free speech,” he said. “The Kurds have no one to
speak for them and represent them.”
By Wladimir van Wilgenburg
* Ayub Nuri contributed to this article from
Canada.
Copyright ©, respective
author or news agency,
rudaw.net
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