Communist regimes and dictators really do not like Facebook. We’ve written about China blocking Facebook on an ongoing basis, and now Vietnam is possibly blocking the site as well. According to Ben Stockton of AP, “Over the last week, access to Facebook has been intermittent in the country, whose government tightly controls the flow of information.” We’ve seen access to Facebook limited before but this is the first time we’ve heard of issues in Vietnam.
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Even though the Israeli government is turning to online social networks to distribute information about the war in Gaza, there are others using such social networks for their own agendas. According to Gawker, some Facebook users have found it impossible to post certain content related to words like “Gaza” or “Palestine.”
From the users’ perspective, it seems as though Facebook is censoring some politically sensitive content. But Gawker reports that the supposed censorship is really a result of the self-contained flagging system, which enables users to report inappropriate content. To the dismay of many, this merely reflects Facebook as the user-generated network that it is. As a reflection of human nature’s truest colors, users are no doubt frustrated by the act of not being able to express themselves through Facebook’s network. What’s a user to do?
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