Minister Edelstein Receives Reply from Facebook

Minister Edelstein Receives Reply from Facebook

(Communicated by the Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs Spokesman)
March 31, 2011

Attached is a letter from Facebook Director of Policy Richard Allan to Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs Minister Yuli Edelstein regarding the latter's 23.2.11 letter (which was sent to GPO email subscribers) to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on the Facebook "Third Palestinian Intifada Page".

For further details, please contact Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs
Ministry Spokesman Gal Ilan at 050-6207774 or 02-6587120.
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30th March 2011

Reply from Facebook to letter from Minister Edelstein

Dear Minister Edelstein,

Thank you for your letter to Mark Zuckerberg concerning a Page on Facebook entitled" The Third Palestinian Intifada". Mark has asked me to reply on his behalf as I manage Facebook's relationships with governments in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.


We reviewed the Page in question extensively in response to several reports we received including your own. Our reviewers felt that the content of the Page began as a call for peaceful protest, even though the term Intifada has been associated with violence in the past. In addition, the administrators initially removed comments that promoted violence. Under these conditions a Page of this nature would normally be permitted to remain on Facebook.

However, after the publicity of the Page more comments deteriorated to direct calls for violence. Eventually, the administrators also participated in these calls. After administrators of the page received repeated warnings about posts that violated our policies, we removed the Page yesterday.

We continue to believe that people on Facebook should be able to express their opinions, and we do not typically take down content that speaks out against countries, religions, political entities, or ideas. However, we monitor Pages that are reported to us and when they degrade to direct calls for violence or expressions of hate - as occurred in this case - we have and will continue to take them down.

We are aware that there have been reports of a number of copycat pages on the site and will similarly review reports related to this content and take appropriate action in accordance with our community standards.

We have been in touch with your spokesperson Gal Ilan throughout this process of initial and further review and this contact has been very helpful in working through this issue.

Thank you again for your interest in Facebook.

Yours sincerely,
Richard Allan
Director of Policy EMEA Facebook

Thank you again for your interest in Facebook?
This is not the first time Facebook's policy has been under question--
see: Facebook: Attacking Israel Is Not The Same As Attacking Israelis

Hat tip: Dr. Aaron Lerner (IMRA)

Technorati Tag: Facebook and Third Palestinian Intifada.