Facebook censors group criticizing Thailand king after government pressure (opens in new tab)

Friendly reminder that when what can and cannot be said is chosen by a private company, they will always choose what’s better for their business.

The only way of having some moral (rather than commercial) principles guiding the choice, is to regulate it at government level.

It's even worse in America, FB volunteers to censor non-illegal content all the time, because, like, businesses reasons. Almost everyone believes in censorship, except it's only called censorship when they disagree with it.

When people support the censorship, it's called preventing fake news, combating misinformation, deplatforming hate, or whatever.

It's started to bum me out that everyone wants to eliminate others from voicing opinions they disagree with, even if they'll never hear or come in contact with it!

Thai citizen here. I've always seen the lese majeste laws as immoral, but unfortunately talking about the monarchy in any negative way is so taboo that many are not willing to do it publicly for fear of being penalized severely.

Anecdotally, public opinion of Rama X is lower than Rama IX. The latter was, objectively speaking, very prolific in the arts and sciences. The former, well, for one, spends excessive time abroad and has gotten into a number of controversies. It's definitely got more people questioning the lese majeste laws.

> This month Thailand’s digital minister accused Facebook of not complying with requests to restrict content, including insults to the monarchy. On 10 August he gave Facebook 15 days to comply with court takedown orders or face charges under the Computer Crime Act, which carries a fine of up to 200,000 baht (£4,860) plus an additional 5,000 baht per day until each order is observed.

https://www.facebook.com/RoyalistMarketplace/

Page still exists it looks like, just enforcing the local laws. It's another one of those damned if you do damned if you don't cases.

Facebook seems to punch down. If you're an oppressed or persecuted minority, you are out of luck and subjected to hate and incitement. If you are in a politically favored group, or a threat to FB's bottom line, FB is ultra-sensitive.

There are some 50 million FB users in Thailand.

https://napoleoncat.com/stats/facebook-users-in-thailand/201...

Don't expect many of them to comment here about this subject. Or anywhere. The risk is too great.

I think there is no point in blaming Facebook here . Facebook has to follow a country’s laws if it wants to operate there and there are well known laws in Thailand against criticizing the monarchy. If not followed, then Facebook has a real risk on being banned in that country.

Remember Thailand knows better than you what is good for their people. You cannot judge a man without walking a day in his shoes.....