This is a very old post! It’s attracted a few hits in May 2021. It was relevant at the time I wrote it eight years ago!
I remember a story from my childhood about The Emperor’s New Clothes. It was a Hans Christian Anderson story about two weavers who are commissioned to produce a new suit of clothes for the Emperor, telling him it is so grand that those of lesser status won’t be able to see it. The Emperor displays his new suit until a child in the crowd yells out that he is naked. Only then do all the sycophants in the crowd realise they have been duped.
Facebook is currently doing its best to behave like the two deceitful and irresponsible weavers in that story.
It has allowed beheading videos back on its site – yes, you are reading that right: videos of people having their heads cut off by savage, sub-humans who are lower than the lowest pig in the dirtiest pigsty. Facebook’s pathetic defence is that “users should be free to watch and condemn such videos.” However, they are “considering added warnings”. Isn’t that good of them?
Facebook is US-based. Barack Obama needs to realise what is going on here, and tear up a few of the more stupid pages in the American Constitution once and for all. Gun ownership is one, and the American interpretation of “free speech” is another. A bunch of zealots and religious nuts showing the murder of innocent people in graphic detail is not, in any shape or form, “free speech”. The only people who argue that it is are usually engaged in highly dubious activities themselves, which they are seeking to protect. Facebook, for its part, will gain many more visitors by allowing bloody mutilation to be shown, and especially by allowing it to be shown to children.
Lunatics from religious groups like those who would post such images should be hunted down and shot. Not given advertising space by Facebook.
When will people realise that they’ve been told by Facebook that they’ve effectively been given a new suit of clothes than are invisible to lesser minds? There’s no need to try and be clever about it (look at some of the Beeb site’s users’ comments – why do people who are stupid try to pretend they are not in public?) Facebook is no better than the two weavers in the Hans Christian Anderson story. And that’s all there is to it.
Facebook ought to be renamed “Facesbook” – because it appears to wear any number of them as it sees fit. My guess is that two is the preferred number.
Having allowed a video of a beheading to be shown with the pathetic excuse that people need to be allowed to make up their own minds, it has now taken the video down. According to this new article, Facebook changed its policy on showing graphic violence back in July, but:
…did not think the public would be interested to know.
It’s funny, isn’t it, how Facebook can be so dead set against censorship when it means losing visitors, but prepared to censor pretty significant policy decisions with weak excuses like this. Precisely what chimpanzee employees decided that the public “wouldn’t be interested” isn’t made clear – but I think the world and his dog will see straight through it and realise that the real reason was that Facebook knew damned well there would be a public outcry and that it would be better to conceal the decision.
Apparently, they have been tripping over each other to change the policy without exactly reversing it. And this time they’ve put it in a press release – which they should have done the first time. Even so, you can see the utter bollocks that comes from the mouths of companies like Facebook these days:
First, when we review content that is reported to us, we will take a more holistic look at the context surrounding a violent image or video, and will remove content that celebrates violence.
Second, we will consider whether the person posting the content is sharing it responsibly, such as accompanying the video or image with a warning and sharing it with an age-appropriate audience.
For anyone who doesn’t know, a “holistic look” simply means that they will have a meeting and come to a consensus opinion about any given complaint. And since the ones involved in arriving at consensus in those meetings will be the same idiots who are trying to defend the obvious moral problem with showing online murders in the first place, I wouldn’t hold your breaths. All those in the meetings will be New Age freaks who typify the staff at Facebook. Now doubt when consensus is reached they’ll all have a group hug, then go and talk to the trees and flowers.
What has the world come to when jackasses like Facebook can show videos of people being murdered – and defend it?