Posted on 05/11/2017 12:08:40 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Yesterday, Facebook restricted and then shut down the public pages of Ex-Muslims of North America (24k followers) and Atheist Republic (1,6 million followers) –groups that advocate secularism and provide support to “apostates” (people who leave Islam and who often face persecution).
In fact, the ex-Muslim group claims that for the last several years, Facebook has been continuously blocking groups like it. The ex-Muslims have written an open letter to the social media giant, calling on it to “to stop exercising intellectual persecution” against atheist and ex-Muslim organizations and to “whitelist” such vulnerable groups from organized false flagging attacks.
On Monday, Muhammad Syed, the president of the Ex-Muslims of North America took to Twitter to report that the Facebook pages of Ex-Muslims and Atheist Republic were restricted (and the next morning shut down) “in violation of Facebook’s community standards”. No details were given as to what standards were violated. On Tuesday, after appealing the case, both groups were able to regain full access to their pages.
Syed believes the pages had been targeted in coordinated attacks by Muslim fundamentalists using “simple and effective” Facebook flagging tools to report that pages falsely for standards violations. Facebook, Syed said, isn’t doing enough to protect “groups vulnerable to malicious attacks”.
In the open letter to Facebook, which was revealed to Heat Street, Syed pressures the social media company to take measures to improve its reporting mechanisms and to protect ex-Muslim groups.
“Ironically, the same social media which empowers religious minorities is susceptible to abuse by religious fundamentalists to enforce what are essentially the equivalent of online blasphemy laws. A simple English language search reveals hundreds of public groups and pages on Facebook explicitly dedicated to this purpose – giving their members easy-to-follow instructions on how to report public groups and infiltrate private ones,” Syed writes.
The Atheist Republic group has been shut down 4 times in the last two years, Syed says, and then reinstated. He adds that attacks of this nature are not new and there are there are hundreds of Facebook accounts that are working to shut down atheist and ex-Muslim public pages in an organized effort. Facebook, he alleges, is doing nothing about it.
“Arab atheists, Bangladeshi secularists, and numerous other groups have been under attack for years, as religious conservatives in the Muslim world learn to abuse Facebook’s reporting system to their advantage. Early last year, multiple atheist and secularist groups were targeted with mass, coordinated infiltration and reporting – leading to the closure of many groups. These groups were eventually restored, but only after a lengthy and sustained effort by organizers to draw public attention to the issue,” he explains.
In his letter to Facebook, Syed, with the help of the Arab Atheist Network, compiled a list of groups that have been targeted in coordinated flagging attacks and shut down by Facebook in the last several weeks. At least nine other groups have been abused with Facebook’s reporting tool.
Syed, who was raised in Pakistan, believes that ex-Muslims are among the most persecuted groups in the world and that online platforms like Facebook are the “last refuge” for many atheists and secularists in the Muslim world.
Muhammad Syed “Many of these groups are not simply pages – they are communities in which atheists who are abandoned by those around them find comfort, support and emergency assistance in case of persecution or abuse. The closure of these groups means the loss of these vital resources for the isolated and vulnerable,” Muhammad tells Heat Street.
The letter urges Facebook to create a “whitelist” for groups and pages that are vulnerable to such attacks and asks to penalize accounts that repeatedly abuse its reporting tools.
In the meantime, as Heat Street reported, in March Facebook kowtowed to officials in Pakistan and removed “blasphemous” content insulting Islam within the country. In this instance, Facebook had no problem with censoring freedom of speech on its platform.
Other atheist groups shut down by Facebook in the course of a month:
A Science Enthusiast (750,000 members)
Arab Atheist Network (23,500 members)
Arab Atheist Forum and Network (9,200 members)
Radical Atheists without Borders (23,500 members)
Arab Atheist Syndicate (11,000 members)
Arab Atheist Syndicate, backup (5,000 members)
Humanitarian Non-Religious (32,000 members)
Human Atheists (11,000 members)
Arab Atheists Forum and Network (6,400 members)
Mind and Discussion (6,500 members)
This is good. This should keep my atheist relative busy for awhile, so he can take a break from Trump-bashing on his FB rants.
Why can’t fakebook (sic) and their ilk be sued like Christian bakers, etc. for refusing service?
I replied to a post about a “Peaceful” religion by saying “so we should ignore all the be-headings?” And I got banned for 24 hours.
Which is nice because it was on my bucket list.
Good news.
Are you Muslim?
No Nick are you? I was commenting on the atheist part.
Someone can start an alternative to FB and it would probably take off, just like FB did when it replaced whatever people were fed up with before.
Read the whole article. They are only banning ex-Muslin atheists. They aren’t banning other atheists.
Seems to be some conflation, here, of “atheist” and people specifically leaving Islam. Not all who desire to leave Islam are rejecting theism generally, nor monotheism specifically, nor even Abrahamic monotheism in particular. That’s not to say they’re intent on becoming Jews or Christians, but assuming they’re intent on becoming atheists goes too far, as well. Not all who would seek out an Ex-Muslim FB page would find an equally welcoming home on an Arab Atheist FB page. So I don’t find a strong basis for the article lumping the two genres together.
“Well, and I may get flamed for this but, if you’re going to use someone else’s backyard you’ll have to play by their rules (if they have any).”
That’s bullcrap. Zuckerberg is involved in treason and sedition and pushing the mass-murdering Islam cult. For that alone, the traitor has lost his 1st amendment protection.
Yeah they are banning NON-atheists or ex-muslim atheists only. Meanwhile I’m noticing that any conservative toons I post are getting mysteriously “stuck”
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