SOCIAL MEDIA: FREEDOM OR CHAINS, VOICE OR PUPPET MASTER?

Last week, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO, apologized for the Cambridge Analytica scandal with ads in multiple U.S. and British newspapers, and in an interview with CNN, saying the social media platform does not deserve to hold personal information if it cannot protect it.

The ads said a quiz app built by a Cambridge University researcher leaked Facebook data of millions of people four years ago. “This was a breach of trust, and I’m sorry we didn’t do more at the time. We’re now taking steps to make sure this doesn’t happen again,” the ads said. During his interview with CNN, Mark Zuckerberg suggested the question was not whether Facebook should be regulated so much as how best to do it.

Facebook’s privacy practices have come under fire after Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting firm affiliated with President Donald Trump’s 2016 election campaign, obtained data inappropriately. The firm is alleged to have created psychological profiles to influence how people vote or even think about politics and society through micro-targeting of thousands (if not millions) of Facebook subscribers.

According to data from the FEC, the Trump campaign paid Cambridge Analytica nearly $6 million for services during the 2016 election cycle. Seventeen other Republican political organizations, including Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign and a super PAC headed by incoming National Security Adviser John Bolton, also paid the firm a combined $16 million for services that included research and micro-targeting of voters.

As social media becomes part of life and often an extension of our thoughts, it is time to question whether it is a tool to enhance or restrict our rights. Furthermore, now our concerns must go beyond governmental acts and extend to the actions of private parties who may use social networks for a profit or to influence us by exploiting our personal information.

Social networks implicate our right to free speech but also our right to privacy. To be clear, most rights are not absolute, and neither the right to free speech nor the right to privacy is an absolute right. The right to free speech means that we are allowed to express ourselves without interference or constraint by the government, and that the government can limit both the content of speech and the ability to engage in speech only when there is “substantial justification.”

Likewise, our right to privacy is not absolute, and governments can intrude into our right to privacy to protect society. However, governments generally have had to justify their intrusions in our privacy to achieve the higher goal of protecting society and have had to make use of legally mandated due process safeguards, such as obtaining a wiretap warrant to listen to our private conversations. This is no longer the case with social networks being given direct access to our information and even our most intimate thoughts, which they may then exploit for their own benefit or simply lose track—as in the Cambridge Analytica example.

We might think that social networks allow us to express ourselves in ways that we could not before, and to do it anonymously. But how much of what we post on social networks is private? How much of our information is used for profit? How much control do we even have over our data on social networks? Will social networks provide greater freedom for people to express ourselves and our thoughts, or will they turn out to be a weapon that allows our governments and even private agents to control and monitor our communications?  More importantly, how much of what we think is determined by what’s posted on social media? How much are we being influenced by our online social networks?

These are all questions that as a society we must consider to be able to maintain our individual freewill. The alternative would result if a society where we become puppets of our social media accounts.

 

 

Secularization or Religious Intolerance?

In 2009 in Switzerland more than 57% of voters and 22 out of 26 provinces voted in favor of imposing a national ban on the construction of minarets, the prayer towers of mosques. In 2011, France introduced a law against covering one’s face in public. Muslim women in full-face veils, or niqab, were banned from any public activity including walking down the street, taking a bus, going to the shops or collecting their children from school.  That same year, another law that banned saying prayers in the street, a practice by French Muslims unable to find space in mosques, came into effect in Paris.

In a recent ruling, a Cologne’s (Germany) District Court criminalized the religious circumcision of minors, even with the consent of parents.  In Hof, a small German town near the Czeck border, four German citizens filed criminal complaints with the local prosecutor against a local Rabbi alleging the crime of performing ritual circumcisions. In New York, the City’s Board of Health voted earlier this month to require parents to sign a consent form before having their child undergo an Orthodox Jewish circumcision ritual.

Those favoring the regulation of circumcisions cite as their main reason the health risks to the children of certain circumcision rituals. The principal reason put forth for banning the construction of minarets was to eliminate conflict. Proponents of the law prohibiting the covering of the face saw the law as a way to prevent the oppression of women in Islamic communities.

Is there a trend of governments trying to eliminate religion and impose secularism as the new religion?

Are governments being insensitive to religious beliefs, or are governments only looking out for the wellbeing of their citizens?

Do these laws violate the right of individuals to practice their religion?

Intolerance, Terrorism and International Diplomacy

On Tuesday, September 11, individuals identified in media reports as armed “Islamist militants” stormed a United States diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, killing the American ambassador, Chris Stevens, and three members of his staff.

The attack in Libya, which came hours after a mob stormed the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and tore down the U.S. flag, was presumed to have been triggered by a movie, whose trailer had gone viral on YouTube. Morris Sadek, a conservative Coptic Christian in the US, promoted the film on his website last week. Koran burning, Florida pastor Terry Jones also promoted the film in his church.  Within days it was fuelling outrage in Arab countries horrified at the depiction in the movie of the prophet Muhammad as an illegitimate, murderous pedophile.

By all accounts Mr. Stevens was very much respected and a loved figure within the Libyan community. He had served twice previously in Libya, including as a special representative to the Libyan Transitional National Council from March to November 2011, helping to save the city of Benghazi during the country’s revolution. Hours after Stevens’ death, Libyans had started an Arabic-language Facebook tribute page for him where they shared photos of the ambassador — in one picture he can be seen at a local restaurant sitting with some locals and eating local food with his hand. They also posted pictures of themselves holding candles lit in his memory.

In her official statement after the events Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that: “Violence like this is no way to honor religion or faith and as long as there are those who would take innocent life in the name of God, the world will never know a true and lasting peace.”

As we grieve after yet more senseless killings in the name of religion we must ask important questions:

What do we do about religious intolerance on the part of anti Islamists, who feel they can gratuitously insult those who do not share their beliefs?

Should we continue sending diplomatic missions, that often help local people, to countries such as Libya or Egypt, knowing that their political unrest make them unsafe?

And, the most difficult question of all, what can we do to eradicate terrorism? Is that even possible to achieve?