Snap blocks Al Jazeera in Saudi Arabia to “comply with local laws”
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
Is it really worth it for them to be dismissed by the free-world as a totalitarian sycophant in exchange for whatever drop-in-the-bucket marketshare they get from Saudi Arabia?
What does it mean to not comply with local laws in Saudi Arabia? A ban for Snapchat in that country? BFD!
(I don't know if they actually have employees there, but in general, this is a huge risk for many international corporations.)
Doesn't sound accurate at all. Please cite or present data.
And this is only because people don't do that.
Do you know any $90Billion+ worth company that has impeccable ethics? It's the incentive structure of American capitalism.
If so, how far should it go? Should they stop serving Chinese customers because of the great firewall? How about privacy laws in EU? Many on the conservative spectrum don't hold those regulations in high regard.
Please remember companies are there to maximize shareholders' value not to fight people's ideological wars.
I should however acknowledge that social media have created a powerful tool for brand damage that gives more extreme ideologies the power to sway corporate policies.
Simply selling a product doesn't guarantee that a company will be in good standing with its customers. There are TED talks that even argue for companies to establish an identity beyond what and how they make money: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPYeCltXpxw
Saudi Arabia and Qatar are in a huge diplomatic fight right now with embargoes and lots of tricks to influence powers (like buying airplanes, arms etc from USA, EU...)
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/08/israel-seeks-close-al-...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Qatar_diplomatic_crisis
Why would they allow Snap in their country in the first place? A quick search turns up this:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/03/09/snapchat_saudi_gover...
That seems to answer my question. Snap is a Saudi monitoring platform. It seems only natural they would use their influence to shape opinions by removing Al Jazeera. Sorta like how Facebook removes "fake news" from their site for the US deep state.
2. "Why doesn't Saudi Arabia block Snap?" It really seems like you haven't been up to date on what Snapchat is. Snap is a huge social network, and I'd imagine someone is fighting to keep Snapchat so that they can still post their stories about their 20 lamborghinis they bought this morning. Again, blocking Snapchat would be like blocking instagram.
3. The real reason Al Jareeza is being blocked is political. Nudity isn't a "real" issue, much like you can certainly find Saudi princes allegedly drinking alcohol. Al Jareeza is a real thing royalty is cautious of, nudity is not.
3. I don't think we're talking about the same Saudi Arabia. Just talking about sex will earn you 5 years and 1000 lashes.
>MALONE: For the brother monarchies, Al-Jazeera was almost immediately an annoyance because, suddenly, you have a neighbor with a news network snooping through your trash, digging up your dirt, reporting on your scandals.
>SMITH: And this whole problem really came to a head during the Arab Spring, which, you may remember, there were all these sort of grassroots people's movements in Tunisia and Libya and Egypt. And Al-Jazeera really made its name being there on the ground with the revolutionaries, featuring them and, you know, sometimes glorifying them.
>MALONE: And when you're Saudi Arabia or another monarchy sitting and watching this, this is not good for you. You are worried that you may be next.
>KRANE: You know, here is one of their brethren with this news channel that's kind of egging on the revolution, you know. So they - you know, of course they're pretty upset about it.
There is a worrying trend all over the world where nations are censoring to protect their own turf.
The russians are doing it, the europeans are doing it, chinese are doing it, saudis are doing it and even in the US, we are doing it.
Two different sides of the same coin.
Consider the recent cases where LGBT customers have been refused service by small companies: because this form of discrimination doesn't fall afoul of the Civil Rights Act (no demonstrable case of discrimination due to race, color, religion or national origin here), is it still ok?
(To kill the strawman before it is erected: no, I'm not equating white nationalists with LGBT customers. But if a private hosting service can deny service to a customer because they differ with that customer on philosophical/political grounds, how is that much different than a bakery, for instance, denying service to a customer on religious grounds?)
One could argue religion is a choice too, and I'd agree with you on that, but that's not a battle we're going to win today.
Is "I think black people should be enslaved" fighting words? What about "All jews should be gassed"? Where do torch-wielding mobs marching down the street fit into all this?
See trope 7 from Ken White, a noted lawyer and first amendment expert - https://www.popehat.com/2015/05/19/how-to-spot-and-critique-...
This is not a theoretical problem. There have been ~50 hate killings in the US this year. (And we haven't even had a mass shooting.)
Where judges chose to draw the bar is incidental to the fact that this exception exists. That they chose to draw it where they did is a legal question, not a moral one.
The fact that judges draw the bar rather than you are me is critically important to prevent abuse. Innumerable boorish people would consider calling out their behavior to be "fighting words".
Yet the "you have no right to falsely yell 'fire' in a crowded theater"[1] was an opinion of a SCOTUS justice about a man who was peacefully protesting the WW1 draft, distributing papers arguing for his political ideals. Yelling "fire" in a crowded theater runs a real risk of injury and it's negligent to do so falsely. Telling other people that you oppose a draft does not, yet has not been protected by the 1A (unless the person can prove some religious exemption, as did Muhammed Ali).
As "cut and dry" as we pretend the 1A's protections are, they are far less than what laymen imagine.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_the...
I believe there's a gray, ambiguous spectrum of acceptability, and that somewhere down the line there are opinions which incite (or consist in) violence, which inspire malice, and which are overtly harmful. A line between "disgusting, but acceptable" and "reprehensible" can carefully be drawn to not permit these terrible ideas to be promulgated.
I agree that we should be cautious that this line does not creep into acceptable speech, and that the mechanisms used to enact these decisions are not re-purposed inappropriately. I understand that technology makes speech cheap, and suppression of speech difficult, and that encryption algorithms and other mathematical constructs make no distinction between acceptable and unacceptable speech. But these opinions do not need to be tolerated within society.
That's the reason why we have free speech rights ( in america at least ). So that people can't use and exploit the "gray" as an excuse to censor everyone.
> A line between "disgusting, but acceptable" and "reprehensible" can carefully be drawn to not permit these terrible ideas to be promulgated.
If the ideas are terrible, they should be promulgated and shown for all to see.
> I understand that technology makes speech cheap, and suppression of speech difficult
Actually, technology makes suppression of speech easy.
> But these opinions do not need to be tolerated within society.
Which opinions?
You make generalizations and don't speak of any specifics? And who gets to decide which speech shouldn't be tolerated?
In which case it's a good thing Larrikin has a well defined definition of "political arguments with sound reasons" we can use in legislation.
Snark aside, this post steps over and then directly back into the "who determines what's acceptable speech?" problem. Few will disagree with your extreme example, but your extreme example isn't what people are worried about.
To hell with the people who actually advocate nazi ideology - I'm a lot more worried about what the overreaction to their stupidity will bring, that overreaction being a much more clear and present danger.
If you tolerate hate speech, there's no paradox: you can do so, without surrendering the protection against intolerance for those members that speech targets.
While I can understand the motivation to interpret it this way, it seems directly counter to Popper:
> In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance#Discussio...
The rest of that quote does mesh well with my take on this: "Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. — In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise".
(Indeed, as Popper himself notes, this is a very straightforward reformulation of the paradox of freedom, whereby you need to suppress the actions of some people that are aimed at reducing the freedom of other people - so you need to reduce freedom for some to maximize freedom for all.)
Another way to approach it is via definitions. Tolerating something means putting up with it. Tolerance is generally deemed to be different from acceptance - to tolerate something means not trying to persecute it or otherwise stamp it out by violence, whereas acceptance is to acknowledge something as proper. But from there follows that intolerance is an action - merely holding some opinion, or even letting it known that you do, is not per se intolerance. "I will not tolerate X" implies that you're willing to act to prevent X from happening. If and when you do, the paradox of tolerance kicks in - people who want to maximize tolerance, have to act themselves, to restrict your acts - thereby being intolerant towards your intolerance. But if you don't act, suppressing your freedom of conscience or of expression is intolerance of dissenting opinion, not intolerance of intolerance.
So then let them say it and make fools of themselves.
I'm well of paradox of tolerance and it doesn't apply to free speech. Free speech is what keeps the nazis at bay, it's not what gives them power. It's why hitler and the nazis hated free speech and it's why they banned it.
Incitement to violence, slander, false statements that result in public harm ("fire in crowded theater"), that sort of thing is where the law should be involved.
But there shouldn't be laws against bad manners.
Suppression of free speech is a cornerstone of despotism. It is paradoxical to me that people are lobbying for this given the state of our government today. I could, to some degree, understand thoughts of enabling the government to suppress free speech if we had a practical utopia of a government which you could fully trust to be judicious, responsible, and deliberate with any utilization of said powers.
But that is certainly not our present situation. And that is the issue that is confusing to me. One needs not appeal to some possible future situation to see why this would be an undesirable idea. Look at our president, look at our congress. Does anybody truly want to give these people the power to criminalize words? How long would it take before we'd have an act with a 3 or 4 letter acronym that was aimed at using said powers, we've now vested in our government, to deter critique of the government itself? I'm sure they could come up with an excellent name like the "Freedom of Speech Expansion Act". FSEA.
Of course we would go into an outrage and use all of our social media power to write lots of angry letters, start some digital petitions, and maybe even get facebook and google to show an icon on their homepages to 'raise awareness.' And the government would relent. Of course before we'd even finished cheering our amazing victory, an "Amendment for Socially Constructive Discussion" (which is oddly identical to the FSEA) would be quietly attached to a defense or other must-pass bill, and the FSEA becomes law. Feel free to complain. Hopefully it would still be legal to do so.
Does this sound in any way unbelievable or hyperbolic? Now take the contrary. Our government reluctantly passes the bill granting themselves substantially more power, but uses it only judiciously, fairly, and with the utmost concern for the implications of their actions. Constantly ensuring they never give way to companies lobbying for "speech modifications" and ensuring to never overstep any invisible boundaries that would hinder the rights of citizens. Oh yes, and this also continues on indefinitely through each and every congress. Which sounds more probable?
This rights so important that they listed it first. It protects the deplorable because the acceptable needs no protection. You are not the arbiter of what is and isn't lawful, thankfully.
Yeah, Nazis suck, but they are still afforded basic human rights, that of freedom of expression. We've clearly decided this.