[danijelb]

Why would Facebook have any content moderation obligations towards any government? It is their private platform, their rules. A community they built = their community standards. They can decide what content they allow on the platform. Governments imposing content rules upon private companies is a form of censorship. China is not a democracy. If a country doesn't like their citizens having free and unlimited access to the internet, they can come up with their own versions of "Great Firewall"

[tomp]

They don't have any obligation, but then again neither has the government any obligation to permit/not penalize the business. If Facebook wants to operate in the EU, it will have to follow EU rules.

[21]

I agree.

And in muslim countries, if someone posts LGBT or atheist positive posts, they should immediately be moderated and the poster reported to authorities.

Facebook should also prevent users from these countries seeing such content posted from more liberal places.

[tomp]

Personally, I'd rather not operate in a country than face arbitrary censorship requests, but then, I don't run a billion dollar business (and even countries like EU and US have some fairly "arbitrary" censorship requests).

[nhanq]

I know you're being ironic, but I think that's the way it should work. The customs and culture of a country should be respected and followed; the same we ask immigrants coming to first world countries to adapt to our customs, our businesses should adapt to theirs if they want to sell there.

[radiator]

Hungary is a sovereign country. Why would a government have any obligations towards any medium, to allow it to operate within the country? Esp. when said medium has an agenda to influence public opinion? (In this case, by taking down videos expressing the opinion of the democratically elected government, and by only allowing videos criticising the opinion of the majority of the citizens). Governments can decide what content they allow in the country. Or is it the case that Facebook's community standards should for some reason be universally accepted?

[danijelb]

You are absolutely right. Hungary is a sovereign country. If they don't like their citizens having access to a particular private platform/medium, they can block access to it. It's very simple. The same way it's done with everything else. If a country doesn't like a particular book, they ban imports into their territory. If they don't like their citizens having ability to catch a TV/radio transmission from a neighboring "enemy" country, they can jam the signal. They don't ask the publisher from that other country to modify the contents. So, if they don't like Facebook operating in their territory, they can copy what China does and get rid of it. But once a country decides to do such things, they can no longer be considered a democracy.

Facebook should not accept instructions from Hungarian government. Now it's "Please don't remove videos from our minister", tomorrow it will be "Please immediately delete any bad comments about our government. Oh, and that opposition candidate's page? Delete that too"

Facebook's community standards should not be universally accepted. Does anyone force Hungarian people to use Facebook and accept their community standards? No. But if they freely choose to use it, of course they are expected to accept the rules of the community they willingly chose to participate in.

I am not a Hungarian, and I don't care what the Hungarian government is doing within their own country. If they want they can censor newspapers, ban TV shows on local media, close the borders, not have foreigners in their country, whatever. But they shouldn't influence foreign media the same way that they cannot ban a TV show airing on some Croatian television because Hungarians near the border can catch it...

[corerius]

I'm confused. I thought that Facebook was doing the censoring.

[794CD01]

>They don't ask the publisher from that other country to modify the contents.

They shouldn't rely on this as their only option, but they may as well ask. If the publisher complies it saves everyone a lot of bother.

[pixl97]

>But once a country decides to do such things, they can no longer be considered a democracy.

Shit, the US isn't a democracy? I don't think this is how any of this works.

[dexen]

>Why would Facebook have any content moderation obligations towards any government?

This argument, if applied strictly, would allow any government to meddle in the affairs (say, influencing elections) of any other government simply by establishing ostensibly private companies that'd perform to their wishes, whether overtly or secretly. That being anti-democratic, there's clear need for limiting actions of private companies.

While I am against compelling speech, I do not consider Facebook a newspaper publishing its own editorial content, but rather a platform for publishing third-party content. In fact, posts on Facebook are clearly attributed to the author, which, with minor exceptions, is not Facebook itself. On the other hand, official communications of Facebook are marked as such and clearly delineated from users' posts. Thus preventing Facebook from deleting posts (i.e., forcing them to let posts remain) would amount to preventing them from performing (the seemingly arbitrary and capricious) censorship, rater than compelling them to speak.

For me the line is clear - illegal content must be removed, legal content must be left undisturbed, and if Facebook considers law of some country to run counter to their conscience, do not operate in that market.

[danijelb]

>For me the line is clear - illegal content must be removed, legal content must be left undisturbed, and if Facebook considers law of some country to run counter to their conscience, do not operate in that market.

The only problem is, since the internet is free and open, whether Facebook operates as a legal entity in a particular country or not, doesn't prevent internet users from that country to access the services. And Facebook doesn't have any obligations to ban IP ranges from that country. So, it's the country's responsibility to ban traffic to Facebook.

[zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC]

But the banking system isn't free and open, and facebook is in it to make money, not to have users.

[amanaplanacanal]

Facebook is a business, Youtube is a business, Twitter is a business. If they determine that certain legal content is going to cost them business, they are not going to allow it. That's just the way it is. Which is why all of those companies disallow harassing content, and why two of those three has kicked Alex Jones off of their networks. These are business decisions.