Face-off with Facebook
Of late, Facebook, the global social networking site, has been experiencing a series of glitches on its path to world conquest. With over 400 million users, and revenues in excess of a billion dollars, it is one of the Internet’s biggest success stories. And no, Pakistan’s decision to impose a ban on the site has nothing to do with Facebook’s current woes.
The big story is about the site’s privacy policy, and it is scrambling to undo the harm it did to its reputation by making data about its users widely accessible. Pakistan, with around 2.5 million users, is a drop in the ocean for Facebook. The people inconvenienced by the ban are the Pakistanis who were able to keep in touch with their family members and friends around the world. While younger, tech-savvy users can easily circumvent this ban with a few clicks on their computers, people of my generation will struggle to connect with their children or friends living and working abroad.
Frankly, I have never got into the whole social networking scene because I already spend too much time on my computer, writing, reading newspapers and researching articles, as well as replying to emails from friends and readers. Every once in a while, I log on to Facebook to see pictures of my grandson Danyaal posted by my son. But other than that, I generally avoid opening my Facebook page, so the ban has not affected me in the least.
In an excess of regulatory zeal, the Pakistan Telecom Authority has also slapped a ban on YouTube, Flickr, and several chunks of Wikipedia, the universal encyclopaedia. Is a total ban on the Internet next? All these childish measures only serve to remind us how out of step we are with the rest of the world. The truth is that it would have been a simple matter to block the offending Facebook page that was carrying the blasphemous drawings of the Holy Prophet [PBUH]. For PTA to take such an extreme step, there is something more to it than a desire to protect Pakistanis from sacrilegious Internet content. I suspect this decision echoes a controversy that took place last year when legislation was going to be moved to ban the use of cellphones and the Internet to spread jokes and allegations against the president and the government. The proposal became a joke itself around the world, and was quietly shelved. To my cynical eyes, PTA has used the indignation whipped up against the offending Facebook page to slap a total ban.
Interestingly, no other Muslim country has taken a similar measure, indicating that Pakistanis are more easily upset by any hint of blasphemy than our brethren elsewhere. And yet, according to Google, the popular search engine, the word ‘sex’ is typed in more often by Pakistanis than by Internet users in any other country. Clearly, we are not entirely consistent in our attachment to religious edicts.
Some five years ago, the Danish daily newspaper Jyllands-Posten caused a worldwide furore by publishing a dozen cartoons of the Holy Prophet [PBUH]. Buildings were torched in riots and many lost their lives. The Danish embassy in Islamabad was attacked by a suicide bomber who killed several Pakistanis. Those who were so worked up at the time will no doubt be distressed to learn that the price of one of the offending images drawn by Kurt Westergaard has gone up to $150,000 for the original, while 870 copies have sold for $250 each.
TV coverage of the recent demonstrations in Pakistan against Facebook showed angry, bearded faces of men who, it must be said, would be hard pressed to describe what the social networking phenomenon is about. In their ignorance, they were similar to the mobs who rioted, burned and killed to protest against Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses. In both cases, the protesters had no clue what they were so worked about, excepting that they had been told that somebody somewhere had blasphemed against the Holy Prophet [PBUH].
Such knee-jerk reactions actually boomerang against protesters. Rushdie’s book sales rocketed, while lots of people were driven by curiosity to check out the offending Facebook page after being alerted to its contents. Had Justice Ijaz Ahmad Chaudhry passed a less draconian order, it would have met the fate it deserved: complete indifference from the vast Internet community. As it is, the page is getting far more hits for its crude drawings than its creators could have dreamed of.
We all need to realise that the Internet is an unregulated and largely uncharted universe with literally billions of pages, and it is growing larger by the day. Among this enormous body of material, there are bound to be bits that offend somebody or the other. Equally, there is much of value on the Web. This is true of all media: while books, films and television all contain entertainment and information, they also carry pornography and other offensive material. Should we then ban libraries, cinema houses and TV broadcasts?
Within the last two decades, the Internet has transformed our lives in ways that were unthinkable before its advent, and the world is a far richer place as a result. Patterns of work, communication and entertainment have been altered forever, usually for the good. Those who set up the Internet and those who maintain it are determined to keep it as regulation-free as possible. Thus far, they have resisted attempts by governments to control how it is used, and to my view, this free-wheeling philosophy is to be welcomed and supported.
Once regulators step in to avoid offending one section of users or another, there is no telling where political correctness ends and censorship begins. The Chinese government has tried to censor and control the Internet, to little avail. In the aftermath of the Iranian elections, Tehran attempted to curb access to Twitter and many Internet sites following the protests, but again failed to block news from spreading.
Governments need to understand that their monopoly over news and information is now a thing of the past. In Pakistan, when both radio and TV were tightly controlled by the government, news could be twisted in a way that is no longer possible. We really need to grow up and understand that knee-jerk bans and restrictions end up only harming ourselves and nobody else.
The big story is about the site’s privacy policy, and it is scrambling to undo the harm it did to its reputation by making data about its users widely accessible. Pakistan, with around 2.5 million users, is a drop in the ocean for Facebook. The people inconvenienced by the ban are the Pakistanis who were able to keep in touch with their family members and friends around the world. While younger, tech-savvy users can easily circumvent this ban with a few clicks on their computers, people of my generation will struggle to connect with their children or friends living and working abroad.
Frankly, I have never got into the whole social networking scene because I already spend too much time on my computer, writing, reading newspapers and researching articles, as well as replying to emails from friends and readers. Every once in a while, I log on to Facebook to see pictures of my grandson Danyaal posted by my son. But other than that, I generally avoid opening my Facebook page, so the ban has not affected me in the least.
In an excess of regulatory zeal, the Pakistan Telecom Authority has also slapped a ban on YouTube, Flickr, and several chunks of Wikipedia, the universal encyclopaedia. Is a total ban on the Internet next? All these childish measures only serve to remind us how out of step we are with the rest of the world. The truth is that it would have been a simple matter to block the offending Facebook page that was carrying the blasphemous drawings of the Holy Prophet [PBUH]. For PTA to take such an extreme step, there is something more to it than a desire to protect Pakistanis from sacrilegious Internet content. I suspect this decision echoes a controversy that took place last year when legislation was going to be moved to ban the use of cellphones and the Internet to spread jokes and allegations against the president and the government. The proposal became a joke itself around the world, and was quietly shelved. To my cynical eyes, PTA has used the indignation whipped up against the offending Facebook page to slap a total ban.
Interestingly, no other Muslim country has taken a similar measure, indicating that Pakistanis are more easily upset by any hint of blasphemy than our brethren elsewhere. And yet, according to Google, the popular search engine, the word ‘sex’ is typed in more often by Pakistanis than by Internet users in any other country. Clearly, we are not entirely consistent in our attachment to religious edicts.
Some five years ago, the Danish daily newspaper Jyllands-Posten caused a worldwide furore by publishing a dozen cartoons of the Holy Prophet [PBUH]. Buildings were torched in riots and many lost their lives. The Danish embassy in Islamabad was attacked by a suicide bomber who killed several Pakistanis. Those who were so worked up at the time will no doubt be distressed to learn that the price of one of the offending images drawn by Kurt Westergaard has gone up to $150,000 for the original, while 870 copies have sold for $250 each.
TV coverage of the recent demonstrations in Pakistan against Facebook showed angry, bearded faces of men who, it must be said, would be hard pressed to describe what the social networking phenomenon is about. In their ignorance, they were similar to the mobs who rioted, burned and killed to protest against Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses. In both cases, the protesters had no clue what they were so worked about, excepting that they had been told that somebody somewhere had blasphemed against the Holy Prophet [PBUH].
Such knee-jerk reactions actually boomerang against protesters. Rushdie’s book sales rocketed, while lots of people were driven by curiosity to check out the offending Facebook page after being alerted to its contents. Had Justice Ijaz Ahmad Chaudhry passed a less draconian order, it would have met the fate it deserved: complete indifference from the vast Internet community. As it is, the page is getting far more hits for its crude drawings than its creators could have dreamed of.
We all need to realise that the Internet is an unregulated and largely uncharted universe with literally billions of pages, and it is growing larger by the day. Among this enormous body of material, there are bound to be bits that offend somebody or the other. Equally, there is much of value on the Web. This is true of all media: while books, films and television all contain entertainment and information, they also carry pornography and other offensive material. Should we then ban libraries, cinema houses and TV broadcasts?
Within the last two decades, the Internet has transformed our lives in ways that were unthinkable before its advent, and the world is a far richer place as a result. Patterns of work, communication and entertainment have been altered forever, usually for the good. Those who set up the Internet and those who maintain it are determined to keep it as regulation-free as possible. Thus far, they have resisted attempts by governments to control how it is used, and to my view, this free-wheeling philosophy is to be welcomed and supported.
Once regulators step in to avoid offending one section of users or another, there is no telling where political correctness ends and censorship begins. The Chinese government has tried to censor and control the Internet, to little avail. In the aftermath of the Iranian elections, Tehran attempted to curb access to Twitter and many Internet sites following the protests, but again failed to block news from spreading.
Governments need to understand that their monopoly over news and information is now a thing of the past. In Pakistan, when both radio and TV were tightly controlled by the government, news could be twisted in a way that is no longer possible. We really need to grow up and understand that knee-jerk bans and restrictions end up only harming ourselves and nobody else.
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