The social netwroking site, Facebook, is again in the news for deleting pages that deal with the socially unacceptable topic of breast feeding.
From the New York Times:
This past weekend, Facebook deleted the page for The Leaky B@@b, a breast-feeding support group where thousands of women come to ask questions and trade answers. It was the latest in an ongoing series of skirmishes between Facebook and nursing mothers — specifically those who have posted photos of their children breast-feeding.
This is nothing new for Facebook. I wrote about a similar incident back in April.
Apparently Facebook is not really very consistent or systematic in the process by which they purge material they don’t like:
Soon things got interesting. Martin-Weber issued a statement asking for her page back, and also demanding that Facebook stop treating breast-feeding as an obscenity. Facebook, in turn, appears to have deleted the pages of several women who were members of the original group. On Tuesday the Leaky B@@b page was reinstated, and Facebook called the deletion a mistake. Then, that same night, it was deleted again. Yesterday afternoon it was back. Last I checked, though, while one of the protest groups, TLB Support, is still in existence, the other, Bring Back the Leaky Boob has disappeared. A third page, Bring Back the Leaky Boob — Again, seems to have popped up in its place.
My main concern over cases like this is our increasing dependency on networking sites like this that impose arbitrary rules that are enforced inconsistently. Being private companies, they certainly have the right to decide how their sites are run, while we as customers can go elsewhere of we don’t like their policies. The problem begins when some tragedy triggers a paranoid response that gives the government an excuse to pass legislation that forces internet companies to police the content on their networks.
If you remember, just before Craigslist capitulated to the intimidation campaign demanding the removal of their adult services section, Congress held a hearing about whether sites like Craigslist should be held accountable for content they carry. By doing so, private companies would immediately be forced to eliminate any content that might expose them to civil suit or criminal prosecution whether that content was protected by the First Amendment or not. In other words, simply by making private companies responsible, the government could sidestep any need to prove the content was in actual violation of the law. Companies are not bound by the First Amendment and their strategy would necessarily be to err on the side of caution.
Personally, I think this is inevitable. It’s just too easy and attractive an option for the government not to exploit it. It’s only a matter of time.
When you say that companies are not “bound” by the First Amendment you mean they aren’t protected by the First Amendment?
I’m saying that the First Amendment is a restriction on government, not businesses. The government does not have the power to prohibit expression protected by the First Amendment, but a private business can refuse to publish anything it wants. Your option is to go elsewhere for publication, but if all publishers are equally threatened with civil or criminal liability, they will tend to be overly cautious to avoid getting into trouble. In other words, the mere potential for legal challenge would force anyone publishing the content (or carrying it on their networks) to prohibit protected expression just to be on the safe side. They have no interest in taking risks in order for you to publish something.
In other words, the government is not really respecting the First Amendment if they try to intimidate private companies to restrict speech.
So what else is new? The U.S. Congress voted to censure the American Psychological Association for publishing the Rind et al. study (1998), which found there is insufficient evidence to support the popular belief that child sexual abuse is “usually” seriously harmful.
Our elected representatives running for election or re-election know more about science than a peer-reviewed journal like the Psychological Bulletin. And just in case anybody disagrees our honorable representatives, keep in mind that you face the threat of a Congressional Vote of Censure.
The wisdom of this system is that the multi-billion-dollar infant bottle formula industry (e.g. the Swiss-French Nestlè company) can make enough profit from sales (driven in part by breast shame) to contribute money to our representitives, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the mass media that carry their advertising, etc., to cover their expenses.