Facebook has cooperated with thousands of requests from oppressive governments to restrict content in countries like Turkey and Pakistan since last year. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, an advocacy group that works extensively on privacy issues, has now accused Facebook of being “complicit in political censorship.”
Facebook’s latest transparency report revealed that government requests for information from around the world increased significantly this year. Many of those requests came from India, Pakistan and Turkey, all of which have strict censorship laws.
According to the report, Facebook removed 1,893 pieces of content in Turkey and 1,773 pieces of content in Pakistan after government requests. Both countries have laws forbidding criticizing the state or religion.
EFF suggests this amounts to Facebook encouraging censorship, since “as governments grow aware of the fact that stifling speech is as easy as submitting an order to a corporation, the number of those orders will drastically increase.”
EFF argues that Facebook should do more to combat, rather than comply with, these censorship laws. Facebook states that they comply with local laws when those laws require some content be restricted, but EFF maintains that Facebook is not subject to these countries since they don’t maintain an office in the actual countries.
“When a company does not have a presence in a given country and is thus not subject to its censorious laws, we believe that it can and should refuse government censorship requests,” EFF said.
And while EFF acknowledged that Facebook has improved their reporting practices, they urged the company to disclose “exactly what kind of censorship requests it is receiving from governments” in addition to the number of requests.
EFF also noted that Twitter reversed a decision last year to censor content according to the request of the Pakistani government.
h/t The Hill
