A Turkish court has ordered Facebook to take down a number of pages that were deemed to be insulting the prophet Mohammad.
The court also warned Facebook that failure to comply with the order would lead to the social network being blocked in the country. Zuckerberg’s company has yet to respond though it has taken an ambivalent stance in the past.
While publicly taking a pretty strong stance in favor of free speech, Facebook can’t help but comply with local laws most of the time, even when those laws may be against the social network’s stance. The company itself said it has complied and taken down almost 1900 “pieces of content”.
At the end of the day Facebook is still a company and getting itself banned from large swathes of the world is in no way a long-term strategy.
As for Turkey itself, this isn’t the first time that free speech has come under attack in the country in recent months. Last year Twitter was blocked by the government when users exposed a corruption scandal involving the Prime Minister.
We’ll have to wait and see how the company responds and what stance it decides to take this time.
Source: Reuters
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