Kenji's reflection

More than a Social network.


Normally, we will say Facebook is a kind of social networks. It used to connect friends and sharing things. For example, you can sreach your classmates when you were in college. You can also group somebody who are having same interest as you. Its function is connecting people; make people seem to be closer.


But in this article, we can see another kind of function of facebok. This news is talking about facebook in mid-east. Just a few months before, the Egypt Revolution. The leader of revolutionists thanked to facebook special. Because of the group function, they are find people who also want to overthrow government easily. After this experience, many of the states in mid-east concentrate on facebook. This not only discover another kind of function of facebook, but related to the Statement of Rights and Responsibilities of facebook. The example in this article, "Third Palestinian Intifada", want to do the same thing like Egypt. They created a group named "Third Palestinian Intifada", try to group the people who would like to against Israelis. Initially, facebook got some of the complains from Israelis. Those Israelis hope facebook shut down the page, but facebook refused to do it. The facebook also stated that.

"While some kinds of comments and content may be upsetting for someone— criticism of a certain culture, country, religion, lifestyle or political ideology, for example—that alone is not a reason to remove the discussion." The statement added, "We strongly believe that Facebook users have the ability to express their opinions, and we don't typically take down content, groups or pages that speak out against countries, religions, political entities or ideas."

Then, Facebook made a U-turn by shuttingdown the "Third Palestinian Intifada" page, claiming the page's developers and monitors of participating in calls for violence.

This is not only showing facebook could be a kind of political tool. It also show the usefulness of the Statement of Rights and Responsibilities of facebook. Because facebook can change it anytimewhen they like. Facebook is difficult to maintrain their neutrality sometimes.


http://www.arabamericannews.com/news/index.php?mod=article&cat=World&article=4106