Heatstreet: Facebook Has Been Regularly Shutting Down Atheist and Ex-Muslim Groups

[NeoGreen]

https://heatst.com/culture-wars/exclusive-facebook-has-been-regularly-shutting-down-atheist-and-ex-muslim-groups/

Facebook Has Been Regularly Shutting Down Atheist and Ex-Muslim Groups
By Masha Froliak, May 9, 2017

Yesterday, Facebook restricted and then shut down the public pages of Ex-Muslims of North America (24k followers) and Atheist Republic (1,6 million followers) –groups that advocate secularism and provide support to “apostates” (people who leave Islam and who often face persecution).

In fact, the ex-Muslim group claims that for the last several years, Facebook has been continuously blocking groups like it. The ex-Muslims have written an open letter to the social media giant, calling on it to “to stop exercising intellectual persecution” against atheist and ex-Muslim organizations and to “whitelist” such vulnerable groups from organized false flagging attacks.

Syed believes the pages had been targeted in coordinated attacks by Muslim fundamentalists using “simple and effective” Facebook flagging tools to report that pages falsely for standards violations. Facebook, Syed said, isn’t doing enough to protect “groups vulnerable to malicious attacks”.

Apologies for the adds on the site, but I thought the content was worth discussion.

[Duppers]

1. Another reason to hate FB.

I've a love-hate relationship with that site and stay away most of the time.

Thanks for posting this.

[Trueblue Texan]

2. Stupidity overdose on Facebook...

I de-activated my FB account permanently due to excessive stupidity and the threat of psychographic manipulation used by concerns such as Cambridge Analytica. After reading this, I'm doubly glad I did.

[eppur_se_muova]

3. Hmmm ... time for a new startup ... Godless.net ? nt

[TlalocW]

4. If it's the flagging tools

Then it's a growing pain that FB will need to get through. YouTube has had the same problem. One of the channels I enjoy watching is, "The Bible Reloaded," which is two guys doing "dramatic" readings of Chick Tracts, Bible studies from an atheist viewpoint, and what had been getting them in trouble - reviews of Christian movies, using clips, which is protected under the fair use act, but an employee for one film company kept tagging them for copyright abuse, and YouTube would take them at their word. They finally hired lawyers who talked to both YouTube and the film company, and I think YouTube is working to change things, and the film group tried to pass it off as they didn't know what was happening but would tell the employee to knock it off.

TlalocW

[Lordquinton]

5. This is why Atheist groups are very careful with their membership

So when a group like, say, the Boston Atheists have to remove a member for being obstructive, it's for a good reason. Even here we have to be very careful.