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"THE GLARING FALLACY that always lies at the heart of pro-censorship sentiments is the gullible, delusional belief that censorship powers will be deployed only to suppress views one dislikes, but never one's own views. The most cursory review of history, and the most minimal understanding of how these tech giants function, instantly reveals the folly of that pipe dream."

"In 2016, Danish politician Mette Gjerskov used Facebook to post a link to her own blog post on the TV2 website, which included an image of the statue. Facebook automatically displayed the image with the link, leading the company to then take down the link. The explanation provided by Facebook was that the image had "too much bare skin or sexual undertones.""

" The children's charity NSPCC has called on Facebook to resume a programme that scanned private messages for indications of child abuse, with new data suggesting that almost half of referrals for child sexual abuse material are now falling below the radar. Recent changes to the European commission's e-privacy directive, which are being finalised, require messaging services to follow strict new restrictions on the privacy of message data. Facebook blamed that directive for shutting down the child protection operation, but the children's charity says Facebook has gone too far in reading the law as banning it entirely."

"Google and Facebook are both fighting against legislation currently before the parliament that would force them to enter into negotiations with news media companies for payment for content, with an arbiter to ultimately decide the payment amount if no agreement can be reached. On Friday, the pair escalated the dispute by threatening to remove the Google search engine from Australia and Facebook to remove news from the Facebook feeds of all Australian users."

In her intervention on Friday, the Norwegian prime minister wrote that the photograph, entitled The Terror of War and featuring the naked nine-year-old Kim Phúc running away from a napalm attack, had "shaped world history". Solberg added: "I appreciate the work Facebook and other media do to stop content and pictures showing abuse and violence ... But Facebook is wrong when they censor such images."

"Facebook has blocked and in some cases banned users who tried to share a Guardian article about the site incorrectly blocking an image of Aboriginal men in chains. On Saturday, Guardian Australia reported that Facebook had apologised for incorrectly preventing an Australian user from sharing the photo from the 1890s."

"People have been censored or blocked from the platform because their names sounded too fake. Ads for clothing disabled people we removed buy algorithms that believed they were breaking the rules and promoting medical devices. The Vienna Tourist Board had to move to adult content friendly site OnlyFans to share works of art from their museum after Facebook removed photos of paintings. Words that have rude popular meanings but other more specific definitions in certain circles - like "hoe" amongst gardeners, or "cock" amongst chicken farmers or gun enthusiasts - can land people in the so-called "Facebook jail" for days or even weeks."

"Facebook has lifted a ban on posts claiming Covid-19 was man-made, following a resurgence of interest in the "lab leak" theory of the disease's onset. The social network says its new policy comes "in light of ongoing investigations into the origin"."

"A total of 2.2m ads on Facebook and Instagram have been rejected and 120,000 posts withdrawn for attempting to "obstruct voting" in the upcoming US presidential election, Facebook's vice president Nick Clegg has said. In addition, warnings were posted on 150m examples of false information posted online, the former British deputy prime minister told French weekly Journal du Dimanche on Sunday."

"Facebook has taken down the pages of US right-wing group Patriot Prayer and its founder Joey Gibson, a company spokesman said, as part of efforts to remove "violent social militias" from the platform. Patriot Prayer has hosted dozens of pro-gun, pro-Trump rallies and attendees have repeatedly clashed with leftwing groups around Portland, Oregon, where one supporter of the group was killed this week."

"Facebook will ban any groups, pages or Instagram accounts that "represent" QAnon, the company announced Tuesday, in a sharp escalation of its attempt to crack down on the antisemitic conspiracy movement that has thrived on its platform."

"The Solomon Islands government is preparing to ban Facebook - an attempt, it says, to limit "abusive language" and "character assassination" but which critics argue is an attempt to curtail criticism of the government. "

"By then, calls over social media for crowds to gather in areas of Cairo, and converge in public spaces had built an unstoppable momentum. "Social media was the most important tool in the revolution," said Abdelkarim. "People could communicate very easily and express themselves without any censorship." Mubarak's police state was over run by dissenters with smartphones and Facebook accounts."

"Especially at voting time, fears grow of TikTok 'disinformation' threatening democracy. Politicians and their paymasters are terrified that they can no longer control the supply of information to the public, thanks to platforms like Facebook and TikTok. With Thailand's general election only a few months away, the Election Commission of Thailand (ECT) is battling to take back control of information through self-censorship of the TikTok video-sharing platform. Ostensibly, this is to keep young voters on the government's straight and narrow path."

"YANGON: Internet providers in Myanmar including state-owned telecom MPT were blocking access to Facebook-owned services in the country on Thursday (Feb 4), days after military leaders seized power in a coup."

"What wasn't publicly known until now is that Facebook actually ran experiments to see how the changes would affect publishers-and when it found that some of them would have a dramatic impact on the reach of right-wing "junk sites," as a former employee with knowledge of the conversations puts it, the engineers were sent back to lessen those impacts. As the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday, they came back in January 2018 with a second iteration that dialed up the harm to progressive-leaning news organizations instead."

"Conspiracy theories about Jewish people "controlling the world" are to be explicitly banned from Facebook and Instagram for the first time, after the company announced an update to its content policies on Tuesday. The ban on "certain kinds of implicit hate speech" would also include content depicting blackface, Facebook's vice-president of integrity, Guy Rosen, said."

"Two years after admitting under political pressure that Facebook must do more to prevent disinformation campaigns on its platform, founder Mark Zuckerberg told Fox News on Thursday that the company should step away from regulating online speech."

""But this is the lead, and I think it's going to be a very, very important game changer for our country. It will be a pivotal battle in the defense of the first amendment and, in the end, I am confident that we will achieve a historic victory for American freedom and at the same time, freedom of speech." The lawsuit faces tough odds. Under a law known as Section 230, internet companies are generally allowed to moderate their content by removing posts that, for instance, are obscene or violate the services' own standards, so long as they are acting in "good faith"."