Sunday, February 13, 2011

Praise and Exhortation for Facebook

"Recent events in Egypt and Tunisia have again highlighted the significant costs and benefits of social networking technology like Facebook to democracy and human rights activists," Senator Dick Durbin said in a letter to Facebook co-founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg.

[...]

"However, as millions of people around the world use Facebook to exercise their freedom of expression, I am concerned that the company does not have adequate safeguards in place to protect human rights and avoid being exploited by repressive governments," Durbin said.

[...]

"[T]he Egyptian and Tunisian governments have reportedly used Facebook to monitor activists, which is surely aided by Facebook's refusal to allow activists to use pseudonyms," the senator said, citing Belarus, China, and Iran as other countries using social networking to track activists.

  

I think he may have left out one other major country (to whose demands on this very issue Facebook may well be bowing), but good on Dick Durbin.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

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