Although we are all fully aware that there are many forms of censorship that are being actively applied on a daily basis – which is not necessarily a bad thing – it still comes as a shock to me when corporate entities, which should be pretty apolitical, start censoring nuanced voices without any clear goal, other than, well, simply picking sides.
A friend of mine put this link in his status on Facebook, requesting people to read it. Since I am still naturally curious, I followed the link and found an extensive nuanced analysis of the current situation in the Middle-East (you did know that Israel invaded Palestine, right?). While there wasn’t really anything new in there, it was interesting and well written enough to warrant a post on my own profile, thinking ‘an informed populace is the first step towards a better tomorrow’. Unfortunately, as I copied the link into the ‘Share link’ box and clicked ‘Preview’, a red warning box popped up, saying “Some content in this message has been reported as abusive by Facebook users.”
After this happened, bumping into Facebook’s Great Wall of Censorship, which I’d only heard about, I started writing this post and, don’t you know it, now it actually works and I was able to post the link on my profile. This is a good thing, naturally, but still leaves me with quite a few questions. However, as I have an exam in nine and a half hours, I better get back to studying why there isn’t a single researchmethod that even comes close to being truly adequate for the social sciences. But that’s a story for another time.
