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Facebook Denies Report It Gave Kazakhstan's Government Special Direct Access to Its Content Reporting System (msn.com) 41

UPDATED: Earlier this week ZDNet reported that Facebook's parent company Meta "has granted the Kazakhstan government direct access to its content reporting system," as part of a joint agreement to work on removing content that is deemed harmful on social network platforms like Facebook and Instagram," with the agreement focusing on protecting children.

But the Washington Post clarified tonight that in fact Kazakhstan's statement "was apparently released independent of Facebook." Meta spokesman Ben McConaghy said in an email that the company has "a dedicated online channel for governments around the world to report content to us that they believe violates local law."

"We follow a consistent global process to assess individual requests — independent from any government — in line with Facebook's policies, local laws and international human rights standards," he added. "This process is the same in Kazakhstan as it is for other countries around the world."

Here's ZDNet's original report: In a joint statement, the Ministry of Information and Social Development of the Republic of Kazakhstan and the social media giant said the agreement, which is the first of its kind in Central Asia, would help increase the efficiency and effectiveness to counter the spread of illegal content. Giving the Kazakhstan government access to its content reporting system will allow the government to report content that may violate Facebook's global content policy and local content laws in Kazakhstan, Facebook said. Under the agreement, both parties will also set up regular communication, including having an authorised representative from Facebook's regional office work with the Ministry on various policy issues.

"Facebook is delighted to work with the government of Kazakhstan together, particularly in the aspect of online safety for children," Facebook regional public policy director George Chen said in a statement.

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Facebook Denies Report It Gave Kazakhstan's Government Special Direct Access to Its Content Reporting System

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  • by SlashDotCanSuckMy777 ( 6182618 ) on Sunday November 07, 2021 @05:01PM (#61966671)

    [redacted]

    • More questions. So every government has a special line to Facebook to 'report' OK - what is the outcome. Do they just remove it, or do they rat out IP addresses and first use unique hardware identifiers, and supply a list of friends of these 'political dissidents' ? Silence. Now take Hong Kong, where holding up an umbrella or sheet of blank paper maybe violates local laws. Or pictures of 'lost persons/family missing' . FB did wisely set up a special committee to ponder about UN human rights/ standards, Vs T
  • by stooo ( 2202012 ) on Sunday November 07, 2021 @05:02PM (#61966673) Homepage

    Think of the children !
    They clearly are full of BS on this. it is political censorship, nothing else..
    Think of the children !

    • I'm waiting to hear what the children think about this.

      • I remember during the Cold War, 1980s style, they asked some Soviet college students what they thought of reporting on their parenents.

        Sume said, sure, no problem with it.

        So, to answer your question, they will parrot the regime's command and control justification memes.

    • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

      It's Kazakhstan, the land of the "our old dictator for life died, we will rename our capital to his name in a unanimous vote in our parliament!" No shit it's going to be political.

      But it doesn't change the fact that multinational corporations don't get to supercede national laws. If you want to operate in a nation, you abide by its laws.

      • by q4Fry ( 1322209 )

        "Please don't throw me into LA-155/14," said regional public policy director George Chen.

        FTFTFS

        If you want to operate in a nation, you abide by its laws.

        When its laws require a "local staffed office" full of hostages to threaten, maybe that's a sign you shouldn't fucking operate in that nation. And if you think I'm just talking about Kazakhstan here, that's pretty naive.

        • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

          They're more than welcome to leave. VK will happily take the market share.

          And if you think that just because nation x isn't up to your standards, megacorp y shouldn't operate there, the question obviously becomes "who do you think you are to dictate such things?"

          • And if you think that just because nation x isn't up to your standards, megacorp y shouldn't operate there, the question obviously becomes "who do you think you are to dictate such things?"

            Someone with morals and ethics, you shit-bag.

            • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

              Oh no, I feel so bad now!

              Wait, no I don't. Literally every single person in the world is someone with morals and ethics. You're not special, you're ordinary.

              • Wait, no I don't. Literally every single person in the world is someone with morals and ethics. You're not special, you're ordinary.

                Oh bullshit. Authoritarian dictatorships are not run by a person with morals and ethics. Dictators care about power and not much else.

                • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

                  Ah, you're a fanatic. You believe that only your current morals and ethics have a right to be called as such, and other people's morals and ethic are inherently immoral and unethical if they differ from yours.

                  Got it.

                  • Ah, you're a fanatic. You believe that only your current morals and ethics have a right to be called as such, and other people's morals and ethic are inherently immoral and unethical if they differ from yours.

                    Got it.

                    Yes. But that's backed by real-world evidence. Most free nations share a common set of ethics and morals. yeah, they don't line up perfectly, but there is a a whole lot more overlap than difference.

                    Absolutely there are morals and ethics that are abhorrent. Those morals and ethics tend to lead to tragedy. You gonna stand there and attempt to defend the morals and ethics of the average Nazi? Forced medical experiments. Racial superiority taken to such an extreme level that there was an attempted genocid

                    • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

                      Imagine having your head so up your ass, you compare modern day Kazakhstan to the 3rd Reich. And then thinking yourself espousing moral virtues for it.

                    • Imagine having your head so far up your ass you don't understand that extreme examples are used to clearly illustrate the point. Fuck off with you.
                    • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

                      In real world on the other hand, as far as dictatorships go, Kazakhstan is quite tame. The violent one of Central Asian -stans is Uzbekistan, where they even had a curious case of boiling dissidents alive at least once this millenium and where most of the violence tend to come from on the immigrant side, be it to Russia or Western nations. And the "That Western idiot Borat tried to use superlatives to mock dictatorships, but didn't even do research and so failed to be anything but a distinctly inferiour, ut

                    • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

                      Oh, China is in a category of its own. Even Uzbeks don't do systemic gang rape on female relatives to secure confessions like China does. But China is also not in Central Asia, so that's kind of irrelevant.

                      Time until Chinabot melts down over East Turkestan being in Central Asia in 3...

                    • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

                      You and your comrades make it very easy. It would be great if instead of helping making China into its current genocidal horror show, you and your comrades would actually try to fix its problems instead.

                      But I know, that requires actual effort. It's much more in the spirit of chabuduo to just troll the discussion boards to try to pretend it isn't a genocidal horror show instead.

          • by DarkOx ( 621550 )

            They government of the nation where 'megacorp' is legally homed obviously! We have all kinds of export and import controls here in the US, as does the EU and UK pretty much every other developed nation on earth.

            'The Internet' should not get any special treatment. Now in the US we constitutionally can't level taxes on export items but absolutely can say you can't sell certain classes of technology to foreigners. Congress should probably be looking at preventing social media companies from allowing content fr

            • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

              Sure. That's why quite a few of such companies can't do business as they would want to in some nations that are sanctioned.

              How's that relevant for nations that aren't sanctioned, like Kazakhstan? Or in fact overwhelming majority of the planet, and humanity, which do not live by the principles and standards of typical western liberal democracy?

  • Yes. Think of the children. That always works
  • wait for it... CHILDREN! OH my GAWD... oh.. my... GOD, how FUCKING transparent can you BE??!! Fucking holy hell fuck shit piss... I mean yeah, there have been a few comments about this already, but I just had to express this. How much of this shit can we take anymore, seriously? I this "journalism"? Never any single critical word about the fact that big tech and governments are now a single entity that performs political censorship on a massive scale and uses sickening excuses for their "tight cooperation"
  • by GlennC ( 96879 ) on Sunday November 07, 2021 @05:23PM (#61966717)

    This article has been up for almost a half hour at this point, and not a single Borat reference until now.

    Then again, it is late Sunday afternoon in the Eastern U.S.

  • ...to think of the children. Thank God the State has removed that burden!
  • by BitterOak ( 537666 ) on Sunday November 07, 2021 @05:35PM (#61966749)
    Clearly this is for make benefit glorious nation of Kazakhstan!
  • by Anonymous Coward
    "We follow the laws of the jurisdictions in which we operate". I guess the thought of standing up for a principal is beyond the understanding of Mini Mark.
    • "We follow the laws of the jurisdictions in which we operate". I guess the thought of standing up for a principal is beyond the understanding of Mini Mark.

      The only principle Facebook stands for is making as much money as possible.

    • The last time Marky had to deal with principals was at school.

  • Who do I think gives less a fuck about kids, Facebook or the Kazakh government...

  • Sacha Cochen's films are the reason for this. :)

  • They are thinking of the children. Children under 121 years old must be protected from "bad" online content.

  • by jonfr ( 888673 ) on Sunday November 07, 2021 @07:43PM (#61967009)

    It is in line with Facebook lack of moral that they are giving brutal dictator government dangerous access to their system. With this they dictator government can silence any criticism as copyright of something or by using some other baseless claim. This should not happen and Facebook must retract this access of Kazakhstan.

  • "This process is the same in Kazakhstan as it is for other countries around the world."

    In other words, where local laws require we grant special access, we grant special access.

  • Have we reached the point yet at which anything bad that we can think up, Zuckerberg has already pushed through against the protests of all/some of his employees?

"The vast majority of successful major crimes against property are perpetrated by individuals abusing positions of trust." -- Lawrence Dalzell

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