By Walid Shoebat (Shoebat Exclusive)
In a post earlier this month, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote about censorship in light of the terrorist attack against French newspaper Charlie Hebdo that left more than a dozen people dead:
“we all need to reject a group of extremists trying to silence the voices and opinions of everyone else around the world. I won’t let that happen on Facebook. I’m committed to building a service where you can speak freely without fear of violence.”
But when Turkey pressured Facebook, this as it turns out was all false. Following an order by a Turkish, not an American court, the popular social network has blocked pages considered insulting to the Prophet Muhammad.
So how did they do it? The Turkish court on Sunday threatened to ban access to the entire site if Facebook did not comply with the order and since the social network needs to expand its presence in emerging markets to grow globally, they capitulated. Pretty soon, and we predict, Facebook, Google, Twitter and Youtube will ban the saints who expose this spirit of Antichrist who have something to say about Islam and excercize free speech. And how that will grow is simple: when Turkey creates an Islamic alliance in which the Muslim world will speak and pressure collectively to ban social media from their nations and if these agencies refuse to comply this will be one way how such spirit of Antichrist will overcome the saints to even force the west to change set laws regarding free speech.
We have been concerned about this for a while and is why we ask our readers to subscribe to our newsletter since we are trying to minimize our dependency on Facebook and Twitter.
In March, Turkey took Twitter offline after recordings appeared on social media of conversations allegedly between Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and his son, in which the two discussed the topic of how to hide vast amounts of money. To cover up for this corruption scandal, Turkey banned Twitter.
A week after Twitter was taken down, YouTube was blocked apparently because the video site reportedly ignored requests from the Turkish government to remove videos that put Erdogan in a bad light. After two weeks, Twitter was turned back on following a ruling from Turkey’s constitutional court that called the two-week-old ban a violation of free speech and individual rights. YouTube also came back to life after a week — at least partially. Fifteen videos were to remain blocked, according to a court ruling. It took two months before the site was fully up and accessible.
Rather than resist the court order, Facebook reportedly blocked the unspecified number of pages in question less than 24 hours after it was issued, according to Mashable, citing an anonymous source familiar with the matter.
“In comparison with Twitter and YouTube, Facebook cooperates with the Turkish authorities much better,” Yaman Akdeniz, a cyberlaw professor at Bilgi University in Istanbul, told the Times. “Therefore, it’s not surprising that Facebook removed these pages right away.”
The company’s most recent public report on compliance with government requests covers the first half of 2014. In that time, Facebook said, India asked the company to block almost 5,000 pieces of online content, the most of any country. Turkey was second, with nearly 1,900 pieces of content blocked at the government’s request, and Pakistan was third, at more than 1,700.
Facebook said that Turkish officials asked for details about local users of the service 249 times in the first half of 2014, and that the company complied in about three-fifths of the cases.
So wake up and don’t say that you have not been warned. Subscribe now to our newsletter which you will find on the right column on our main website.