PM Calls Facebook Irresponsible For Allowing Beheading Clips 201
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt: "David Cameron has attacked Facebook as irresponsible for lifting a ban on videos of beheadings being posted on its site. The prime minister said the social network must explain its decision to allow images showing decapitations to worried parents. Facebook has said users should be free to view such videos and then condemn the content. Cameron wrote on Twitter: 'It's irresponsible of Facebook to post beheading videos, especially without a warning. They must explain their actions to worried parents.' Facebook introduced a temporary ban on such videos in May but has since decided to remove the block on the grounds that the site is used to share information about world events, such as acts of terrorism and human rights abuses."
Not quite a dupe but (Score:2)
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/13/10/21/239219/facebook-lets-beheading-clips-return-to-its-site [slashdot.org]
why not just add a post in there
Helping him censor the web for him now (Score:4, Insightful)
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yeah nevermind that if you don't have people posting beheading clips as friends or friends who comment on them then you will not see them.
I have not seen not one, and I got something around 200 fb "friends" on the feeds. they know that there's other venues for gore than fb. I don't send titty pics to my mom nor do I send her goatse.
you could get them in your email too, if someone was sending them..
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What I don't understand is, they allow them to rally in the streets of Britain and shout over megaphones "death to britains, death to americans" but aren't allowed to post this on FB? /confused
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Excellent (Score:5, Insightful)
This is wonderful news. Facebook will now be blocked by default in the government porn filters, and thus far more people will opt out of them. Turns out Facebook is actually useful for something.
Re:Excellent (Score:4, Interesting)
This is wonderful news. Facebook will now be blocked by default in the government porn filters, and thus far more people will just give up on using facebook, and it will be forgotten about and disappear. Turns out the government is actually useful for something.
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Meet your new opposition politicians.
Won't somebody think of the children... (Score:5, Insightful)
'It's irresponsible of Facebook to post beheading videos, especially without a warning. They must explain their actions to worried parents.'
So much fail...
Facebook doesn't post any beheading videos. It's users do.
I thought we were allowed to be irresponsible as long as it's legal?
If my Facebook friends don't like the content that I may or may not post, then they can hide it or unfriend me.
Looks like he's trying to win Family Votes, and slashdot is helping to peddle this crap.
Shame on you timothy. Shame on you.
Re:Won't somebody think of the children... (Score:4, Insightful)
"Facebook has long been a place where people turn to share their experiences, particularly when they're connected to controversial events on the ground, such as human rights abuses, acts of terrorism and other violent events. People are sharing this video on Facebook to condemn it. If the video were being celebrated, or the actions in it encouraged, our approach would be different," Facebook said in a statement.
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As much as I mostly agree, I think its more a bit of being spineless than dick heads. Facebook is, at the end of the day, not going to be banned in the UK, and the company is a US company anyway.
Standing up to Cameron doesn't take much spine, its basically just good PR for Facebook.
Porn and erotic images (a friend was recently ranting about people reporting a picture a friend of her posted where her friend was wearing body paint) on the other hand, while they likely could get away with it, and could fight t
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I think banning porn videos, bare breasts etc but not beheading videos shows a complete hypocrisy especially with this statement from the dick heads.
"Facebook has long been a place where people turn to share their experiences, particularly when they're connected to controversial events on the ground, such as human rights abuses, acts of terrorism and other violent events. People are sharing this video on Facebook to condemn it. If the video were being celebrated, or the actions in it encouraged, our approach would be different," Facebook said in a statement.
Actually, I feel less like there is proof that they are hypocrites after reading that statement. If people were posting porn videos, bare breasts etc. on facebook in order to say they were very bad things, then perhaps they might permit that.
Well, okay, not really. But you can't take things corporations say seriously, because they have no soul.
Re:Won't somebody think of the children... (Score:5, Insightful)
Then allow people to post nudity and sex. I can't see how naked people can be considered worse than a guy getting his head cut off. American puritanism in its worse.
And before all the jingos start telling me "if you don't like American puritanism, then don't use Facebook", I declare: I don't use it.
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Then allow people to post nudity and sex. I can't see how naked people can be considered worse than a guy getting his head cut off. American puritanism in its worse.
I guess you thought this story was about the American Prime Mister?
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Re:Won't somebody think of the children... (Score:5, Interesting)
And yet it's the UK that is rolling out a country wide porn filtering system [arstechnica.com] that you have to opt out of.
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Yeah, the Puritans. Know where they came from, originally? Hint: it wasn't America.
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I think that is probably more of a business decision. If they allow it the site would have been crushed immediately with porn and low value users.
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I think that is probably more of a business decision. If they allow it the site would have been crushed immediately with porn and low value users.
Voyeurs and psychopaths are more "high-value"?
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...make you unable to function in society or unable to form a child-baring relationship later in life...
classic.
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Scenes with full frontal nudity are common in European movies and series. There are statues of naked people in parks and squares in all European cities.
Obviously I don't think pornography should be shown to children, that's nuts. Between nudity and pornography there's a whole world of difference. Equating one to the other is indeed being prudish.
Forbidding pictures of naked breasts but allowing videos of decapitations is beyond my understanding. And pretty much everyone around here agrees, so it's not
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I can't see how naked people can be considered worse than a guy getting his head cut off.
Umm. Riiight.
I can't tell -- are you trolling, or is your moral compass genuinely that badly out of whack?
WTF?
American puritanism in its worse.
Yeah, this was a story about Britain.
But that's okay. I can see how you'd get them mixed up.
Not about the UK. Facebook is an American company, imposing the warped American sense of morality (illustrated in your previous paragraph) on everyone else.
Re:Won't somebody think of the children... (Score:5, Insightful)
You're right. But Facebook chooses if that's what they're willing to allow on their site.
Somehow I doubt this is some noble thing about freedom of expression like they're saying -- I strongly suspect it's more about the advertising revenue generated.
Zuckerberg and Facebook can claim some principled stand, but from what I've seen, it's likely just plain old greed.
I'm not convinced they're actually capable of being principled on these things -- they want to do two things, make as much money as possible, and collect as much of your personal information as they can (so they can make as much money as possible). But lets' not pretend that Zuckerfuck is, or ever has been, a principled actor in all of this.
They made it very clear (Score:3)
"I'm not convinced they're actually capable of being principled on these things"
Doesnt look to me like they even tried to pretend otherwise. Rather than taking a stand to censor or allow these videos, they seem to be saying they will censor them - but only if they dont like the reactions that are being posted. I believe that's the least principled stand they could possibly have taken here.
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Cameron is presently converting the UK into a totalitarian state. He already has a central spy infrastructure, cameras at every corner, and a content control infrastructure (for pron of course, other stuff is allowed). He fights free press together with his friends in the conservative press (including Murdoch). Most likely, he will perform a referendum on UK-exit from the EU, which if it succeeds will help the EU and harm the UK in many ways. For Cameron it has the advantage that it is easier to dump the Eu
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Islamic hate preachers can come to the UK and spread their shite, sponge benefits and resist deportation because they have a fucking cat, for 10 years at a cost of millions of pounds.
And you know what? The fucker has finally gone. The system worked eventually.
A clue: if you switch off rights for people you don't like, then they are not rights. Rights apply to everyone. That's the definition. Scoundrels included.
Secondly, he's pandering to the press on this one. There is not a single objectionable phrase (i
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1984 was set in (what used to be) the UK. Apparently Orwell was quite the clairvoyant. He just missed the actual year by a few decades.
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I thought we were allowed to be irresponsible as long as it's legal?
If my Facebook friends don't like the content that I may or may not post, then they can hide it or unfriend me.
Facebook is not a common carrier because they already censor content. For example, they censor stills of breastfeeding in which you can barely see a breast. They are the only and ultimate arbiter of what content is permissible on their site, and therefore they should be legally responsible for all of it.
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Facebook doesn't post any beheading videos. It's users do.
Hmm, yes, and drug dealers don't ruin lives, people do it to themselves. And so on. If you own a facility - a house or a website - where you invite people in and allow them to commit crimes, then you are an accomplice, especially if you benefit finacially from the activities. The only question here is whether posting videos of beheadings is a crime; IMO it should be. It isn't about whether it is good taste or not - these videos are for a large part posted by terrorists as propaganda. Is aiding and abetting
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fb blocked it in the first place because nannies were asking for it. what they could do maybe would be to introduce a M18 tag and let everything go in that.
it's not quite clear what he means because the nanny orgs lobbying him are wording it like facebook is posting the stuff - as if it wasn't their little kids "online friends" who were posting the stuff(I've never seen ANY gore on fb. plenty on other corners of the internet though).
that being said, cutting them is a short way of censoring a lot of activist
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In snail mail, it did.
Maybe you just aren't old enough.
Irresponsible, yes (Score:2, Interesting)
Of course.. (Score:1)
Think of the worried parebts (Score:5, Funny)
The prime minister said the social network must explain its decision to allow images showing decapitations to worried parents.
I would strongly advise worried parents not to watch decapitation clips.
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New Headline! (Score:3, Funny)
Facebook calls PM sissy fop for censoring what the children already see in games, on t.v. and in the backyard with a Barbie and Ken execution playset.
" Who is this irritation and why does he not realize that "I" govern more people than his silly little country and the Catholic Church combined?" said Zuckerburg, wiping the powder from beneath his nostrils and grabbing another turkey leg. " Off with his head!"
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Differentiate between what you feel, think, know and believe.
If you feel like watching one, watch one.
If you think it, is different, you don't know.
If you believe it is different, you don't know
If you know it is different, get Hollywood on it, we're all bored to tears.
If it was good enough for the Romans....
Independence..... (Score:2)
Re:Independence..... (Score:5, Insightful)
so what happened last time the British tried to enforce their morality across the pond....
I don't remember the American Revolution having much of a moral element.... In fact, while we've done a great deal to get over it, the US was substantially stocked by a mixture of moralizing assholes too moralistic to get along in Britain (ye olde puritans) and would-be feudal lords who couldn't compete with the incumbents at home and therefore went abroad (ye olde slave plantation regions).
Some political discontent, some economic interests; but King George wasn't exactly getting all up in our right to own filthy erotic lithographs...
Damn... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Headless breasts? (Score:5, Insightful)
As pointed out elsewhere, Facebook has the same odd puritanical streak as found throughout the USA. You can watch people being beheaded, but they still firmly forbid pictures of breastfeeding moms. The sight of a female breast might excite prurient passions, whereas watching a murder is just spiffy.
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How about "honor rape" as practiced by the same barbarians going around beheading infidels? I mean, as long as any visible breasts get blurred out, of course - Wouldn't want to accidentally titillate any impr
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These are videos of crimes ... (Score:3)
One thing to keep in mind is that these are videos of crimes. That is certainly the case in the Mexican excample that I saw cited.
I'll leave it up to you whether you support the posting of videos of crimes, but I don't see a good reason for it. Even in the cases of political speech and exposing human rights violations, you rarely need to resort to messages that are so graphic.
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One thing to keep in mind is that these are videos of crimes. That is certainly the case in the Mexican excample that I saw cited.
Is there any case where a beheading is NOT a crime??? Not only should any decent human being consider such videos way outside any TOS for any website, but posting them should be a crime too. How come the same standard apply here as in the case of pedophilia? If owning a pornographic image/video involving minors is a major crime, how can there possibly be any argument that distributing beheading videos should be legal, tolerated, encouraged, anything really...
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Is there any case where a beheading is NOT a crime???
Where it's the sentence of the court being carried out.
[Pedant mode off]
Although even in this case I'd much rather not see it. Saw one a number of years ago, still haunts me occasionally.
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[Pedant mode on] These beheadings often are the sentence of the court being carried out. The terrorists bring their courts and lawyers with them and justify their actions in Islamic law.
[Extended Pedant Mode On] Such punishment is not considered a crime when the actor is doing so as a duly authorized agent of a state whose sovereignty is generally recognized by the other sovereign states of the world community and the subject has been prosecuted and convicted through due process. Where such "court" is authorized by the whims of non-government organizations such as religious communities, terrorist organizations, or organized criminal enterprises, and the actor is authorized by same, such p
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1. Line your home with a few cameras and mics.
2. Take up some cause on Web 2.0 with a visible local press/police stance.
3. Wait till your ip is reported and you get a 'visit' at home.
4. Speak loudly for the mic
How about 'fake' beheadings? (Score:2)
I'm thinking of like: a web application, where you can upload a picture of some random politician of your choice.
And then the site will create an animation where there is a fake beheading, and, through the power of computer graphics; a plain color background is displayed, with the head replaced with a stub.
These fake beheadings could then be virally shared on FB
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With modern CG it shouldn't be too much asked to take the video of an actual beheading, and have the head of the person being beheaded replaced by someone you'd like to see beheaded. All the blood, gore, convulsions, and other effects are there already.
Bonus points for replacing the heads of the beheaders with another politician.
I think the hardest part of the above will be that to do this properly, you'd have to see those images for a very long time...
Solution (Score:2)
Start posting CGI videos of beheading Mark Zuckerberg, I have a feeling he will change his mind
Parents? (Score:2)
Let's test the fairness (Score:2)
Denial of reality (Score:2)
These videos are horrific but that doesn't mean we need to "omg think of the children. censor, protect, etc". The real world is horrific sometimes and that's the reality of it. If you don't want your kids affected by the harsh reality of the internet, then get off your ass, turn off the tv and parent. Going for censorship because your too lazy to watch your kid will leave a very sad future for them and in the meantime, d-bags like Cameroon will take whatever liberty they can to construe these edicts into
This Will Not Do! (Score:2)
How are we to remain in denial if we allow the lowly common public to see the atrocities, the inhumanity?
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Perhaps you have missed broadcast TV?
Have you heard of Cable TV?
Cameron is the worst kind of person (Score:2)
a politician only interested in power. Additionally, facebook doesn't have to do shit.
Terrorists thank facebook for their cooperation. (Score:2)
Well thank god for that, how could terrorists spread their message of hate and terror without Facebook's cooperation, thank you Facebook, from terrorists everywhere.
And that goes for the politicians and the news media too, thank you for scaring the shit out of people, rather than pointing out the low odds of being killed by terrorists, the terrorists would be nothing without you. You help to put the 'terror' in to terrorism.
Re:PM? Which country (Score:5, Insightful)
Why not do what everyone else who lives outside the USA is expected to do (when they see the name of some US-based politician) and just Google it?
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Now to feed the chickens.
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Are you really so crippled as to not have heard of Google?
Re:PM? Which country (Score:4, Insightful)
Nah, he's just a 'Murican!
Seriously, this is a MAJOR problem with the so-called "news" in the US. It's so US-centric (and crime and entertainment-centric) that even the prime minister of the UK is not known by name.
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What makes you think the UK is important enough that people from other countries should know the UK PM by name?
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These people make decisions that affect the world.
Re:PM? Which country (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah, No.
The UK isn't nearly as influential as the US. No country is. (Not American btw).
If you live in Europe then yes, the UK is influential and the name of the British PM should be common knowledge.
If you live on a different continent, I don't see why it's necessary.
The again, I'd say knowing the leaders of all the G8, even G20 countries is basic knowledge most adults *should* have.
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The again, I'd say knowing the leaders of all the G8, even G20 countries is basic knowledge most adults *should* have.
I fear that you ask for too much. It would be nice if the voting population in the US was that informed but I bet most of them couldn't name their current sitting elected representatives to the US congress (house and senate).
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Less important to know their local unit, those idiots never come up in conversation and it's not like Rumplestiltskin where knowing it will get you something useful.
Just because they "voted for them" (or against them) doesn't matter, since they were probably just following a party how to vote card anyway, the same as the local unit just votes whatever the leader says. If they went around thinking about everything they'd never get anything done.
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Growing up I knew who Margaret Thatcher was, she was constantly in our news making headlines. We never heard anything of Sir John, we know who Tony Blair was, Gordon Brown and David Cameron we've never heard of.
Kind of illustrates a pattern in our media. Most likely the only reason we know Tony Blair was the fact he was PM at the time Princess Diana passed.
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I live in the US, I don't regularly watch the news, yet I know who David Cameron is. I also know who Francois Hollande is, Stephen Harper...I could go on.
These names are frequently mentioned in the news, though they stick out particularly well to me because of some of the silly things they say, like Hollande wanting a 75% tax on the rich, stupidly not realizing that these taxes have ruined his own country's economy (France even taxes you on money that you don't even have, which has driven a ton of businesse
Re:PM? Which country (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps he should know. Perhaps everyone should, but for any snippet of information, there will be a non trivial number of people who are not aware of it. Good journalists provide the information concisely withut forcing the reader to get key details elsewhere.
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They do edit it, actually, and for the worse. I've had some key details removed from some of my submissions when they were posted to the front page.
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Slashdot is not edited, it is user submitted snippets of info with links back to the source, more about the discussion of the subject than journalistic skills
Last time I had a story accepted, it was edited. By which I mean they deleted random bits and introduced a typo. If they're going to modify things, they could at least improve them...
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LMAO you criticize Slashdot for not editing, when you don't bother spell checking your own stuff?
A single post is not the same as a submission on one of the worlds most popular tech news sites.
Think before you post next time.
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It isn't hypocritical. A participant on a news discussion site is not supposed to be held up to the same standard as the articles posted by the site itself.
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I have no fucking idea which one David Cameron runs. How bout throwing us a bone and just telling us which country we're talking about?
How about that you read or watch news about world events once in a while? Note that by world events I do not mean what Rihanna wore on the red carpet or what Justin Bieber did last night but actual politics as in that stuff that pretty much play an important part in our daily lives. Bone for the search engine impaired and generally ignorant. [lmgtfy.com]
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How about that you read or watch news about world events once in a while?
So I take it you've memorized the name of every leader of every country in the world? Do you know who's in charge of Brazil? Germany? South Korea (It's a given you know who runs the north). Canada? Look, if you're going to name a country's leader in an international forum it's just stupid to not name the country, even if the country is the US or Russia. And stupidity should not be tolerated at a nerd site.
I should not have to google to
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Politics is only as important as we let them make it. It's hard sometimes for the politically active to acknowledge, but that's the deal.
How silly of me, of course politics have nothing to do with unimportant things such as that the houses most of us live in are subjected to building codes, whether your children's school curriculum include intelligent design next to evolution or not, minimum wages, military spending and the taxes we pay towards it, infrastructure, health care, accessibility to clean water.
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It really needs to be consistently applied, don't you think - there's often a reference to something particularly USian that needs further research. Either concede that it's going to be necessary sometimes, given the nature of a summary, or give the full background detail for all regardless of if it originates in the
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When Mr Cameron starts sticking his dick into US affairs the way POTUS shoves his into every pie on the damn planet, you might have a point, but regardless of where you are, someone in your government is either taunting or sucking off the head of USGOV.
Re:PM? Which country (Score:5, Funny)
I have no fucking idea which one David Cameron runs.
That's OK. David Cameron doesn't know either.
Re:PM? Which country (Score:5, Funny)
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I'm uninformed and the fact that other people might be more informed than I am is offensive to me. To counteract this, I will yell loudly about how uninformed I am to make sure everybody knows about it.
FTFY.
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I wouldn't mind. I don't have friends who'd do such thing.
If you have many friends who would like to post rape videos and snuff films maybe it's your problem and not everybody else's.
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"Minding about" does not equal "imposing one's view".
I don't like to live in a world where some people would post beheadings on their facebook for any but a very few reasons. However, I don't believe myself to be the judge of decency with the right to tell other people what they should or shouldn't share with their (and that's the key word) friends.
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I suppose that is true in an environment where only friends share with each other. But in my experience they are posted to public areas to gather attention. It's always an interesting moment when you scroll down and see that famous goatse image stretching across your screen.
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I suppose it is OK to post rape videos and snuff films on Facebook now as well.
Probably is... as long as you don't show any nipples!
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Next thing you know, Facebook will be showing ads to people without any warning. Perhaps even children!
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Quite frankly, if a friend of mine posted a beheading video on facebook I'd report it, just before I de-friend them. Then again, it won't happen as the my "friends" on facebook are actually friends who I see and socialse with. I don't think facebook should ban them, but allow users to police it, because most people will.
Then again, I'd be tempted report a photo of my sister breastfeeding, not because it's obscene, but because she's a breast feeding fascist (who thinks everyone who disagrees with her is an i
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Breast feeding fascist? So that's what BFF stands for!