Italian Politician Blames Facebook For Berlusconi Attack; Facebook Begins Self-Censorship
from the well-that's-nice dept
By now you've probably heard that Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was attacked with a statue last weekend. Apparently, his political friends have decided that Facebook and Twitter are to blame for this, and they're now considering laws to crack down (even more than already) on what is allowed on such sites. Perhaps aware of how Italian prosecutors are still pushing forward with criminal charges against Google execs over a single video on YouTube posted by some kids, Facebook apparently was quick to respond that it will happily monitor and censor content on the social networking site that relates to Berlusconi.As the CSMonitor article points out, Berlusconi owns a significant portion of the media business in Italy, and the internet is often viewed as a problem because he hasn't been able to control it. Thus, this may just be another political move to try to gain more control over dissenting voices online -- and it's a shame that Facebook would so easily play along. Update: The politician in question has apparently clarified his remarks to say that there is no plan to introduce new internet legislation. Really. Of course, one could easily interpret the original statement as a trial balloon -- and the resulting outrage leading to the "clarification."
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Filed Under: control, free speech, italy, silvio berlusconi, social networks
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Something else occurs to me, however. A plastic model of Milan cathedral strikes me as an odd choice of weapon for a premeditated attack; a brick would have been just as effective and a good deal easier to conceal. It's equally likely that the perpetrator (who has a history of mental illness according to the BBC) simply happened to be in the area and saw an opportunity. Not much Facebook could have done about that.
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Egg throwers.
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Re:
While I don't condone the violence, it seems to me this is yet another set of politicians who are seeking to lay the blame elsewhere rather than trying to figure out why people dislike them so much. They (all politicians) really need to read up on the writings of people like Jefferson and Adams and realize that if they don't correct the situation, there may be a time when the whole lot of them will be the targets of pieces of lead. Having done so myself, I think that Adams and Jefferson would both be amazed that in 200+ years (depending on when you start counting), we have only had one revolution in this nation.
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Old news
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Wanna hear a joke?
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If I owned Facebook...
After all, if he found my service so dangerous and offensive, it seems like the most reasonable course of action -- stop offending him, and continue to provide service to everyone else who don't seem to have a problem with it (or, at the very least, recognize it for what it is -- a communications platform, rather than a malicious entity).
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Re:
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Facebook just doesn't want
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On the flip side...
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Re: On the flip side...
People inside society should deal with those kinds of speech not by government mandate.
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The italian government has clearly said there are no plans for new rules/laws
http://is.gd/5qvek
the issue is about education; the provisions against racial or social hate speech are already in italian laws.
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