12/23/2017 Facebook banned the page of the Kremlin-backed Chechen leader Kadyrov (he has more power than police in Russia). FB said “that the accounts appear to be maintained by or on behalf of parties who appear on the U.S. Specially Designated Nationals List and thus, subject to U.S. trade sanctions." [1]
12/24/2017 Russian airline company registered FB page with the same name to get all traffic of the banned page.[2]
12/30/2017 Kadyrov makes this company to return this page back to him. The page is returned back to Chechen Republic[3].
Now FB is violating their TOS for transferring accounts and U.S. trade sanctions.
There is no way Facebook can satisfy the competing demands of different political factions and their own users so the more they capitulate to political demands the more users they will drive away and the more radical the demands on them will become.
Hopefully this intensifies their downward spiral into irrelevance.
> There is no way Facebook can satisfy the competing demands of different political factions and their own users so the more they capitulate to political demands the more users they will drive away and the more radical the demands on them will become.
Yep. This is why FB, GOOGL, etc needed to be "neutral". The day they caved in is the day their "promise" ended. The demands of censorship will continue. FB is deluding themselves if they think this is a one time deal. And not only that, other countries will start barring FB/GOOGL/etc when it becomes apparent that they are essentially biased political tools.
We're not yet in some cyberpunk world of sovereign corporations (not sure I'd prefer that anyway). Companies work within the political control of nation states. Dismantle state power if you want what you say to be possible, as it is it's just not.
It seems that we are in the cyberpunk world of sovereign corporations when it comes to tax avoidance but not when it comes to free speech, so take from that what you will.
Is it possible to be "neutral" and yet keep sensible limits for what is allowed and what is not?
Enforcing the rules is not straightforward and different parties tend to view things differently. Somebody sees hate speech, someone else valid criticism.
IMO, the solution to this is to develop FOSS platforms that run similar to a mesh network, yet to the common user look like an app or a website.
Russia can't direct "BitTorrent" to do something.
And really, it seems like social networks are perfect for these kinds of swarm P2P systems where the protocol is some evolving standard and various clients can interact with it.
How are you going to get people to use your platform? That's the problem with all of these "Facebook but better!" ideas, the killer feature of a social network is the people and Facebook has them.
There's no technical reason why Facebook can't present different views and filters on the same underlying data depending on which country an HTTP request comes from. Personally I find that kind of collaboration with censorship disturbing, but they clearly have the engineering talent and financial motivation to make it work.
I doubt this will drive many users away. Most people just don't care. And most users' friends are in the same country so they'll still have consistent experiences.
That is not what is described in this article though.
What is happening here is that Facebook is banning the accounts of political leaders in other countries at the behest of the US and Israel in order to disrupt the organizing efforts of those leaders with their own people.
This has nothing to do with restricting what content is available in the US or Israel but is basically an act of war to disrupt the communications of a foreign enemy.
(IANAL) To make that really work, you need to collate data from different databases located in different sovereignties.
If somebody is on an American sanctions list, then Facebook USA making an account for that person on a database located on American soil violates the sanctions. That American citizens can't see the relevant account's data is irrelevant; if anything, it could actually amount to obstruction of justice if American investigators have a warrant to see the relevant data on an American server and it does not appear in the investigator's UI despite the warrant.
The way to solve that is to have different legal entities own different sets of data that exist under different sovereignties and then draw upon the data from each sovereignty through established (although potentially entirely private to Facebook and its foreign subsidiaries operating the foreign servers) protocols.
Facebook already has similar functionality. Being in Australia, if I visit a large multinational companies Facebook page, it will redirect to the local page. Going to facebook.com/mcdonalds will redirect to facebook.com/mcdonaldsAU.
I'm sure they could make it redirect anywhere they want.
There may be no way to satisfy the demands, and countries will ban companies that don't comply. It's not a new problem; here's a 2003 article about Microsoft having trouble due to shipping a timezone map.
Not really. China and Russia are the only countries in the world with the political will to ban a company like Facebook or Google where the market actually matters.
The US gov has no legal authority to ban anything. If you fold to them it is just because you are weak and scared or greedy for whatever the are offering you.
Use a court for what? We have a thing called a constitution with free speech rights here. The govt gets nothing by going to court. They get what they want by intimidation, threats and bribes.
When someone in the US govt wants something from Google or Facebook they go to them and remind them about anti-trust law and the FTC and tell them that if they do what they are told they will have people in secret committees telling congressmen and senators that they are vital to national security and to leave them alone.
A country I live in has a constitution with free speech, freedom of assembly and the press. When someone attempts to use those freedoms, they and their lawyers disappear. It's not worth the paper it's written on.
I haven't been on Facebook in over a decade; I didn't see that it had any positive effect on my life (quite the contrary), and I'm definitely not impressed by their lack of social conscience. Despite the excessive pay and "pedigree" that working for them would offer, I'd never do it. I hope that a growing number of people from my and future generations will think the same.
> decrease in the perceived prestige of an engineering job at Facebook
Actually FB became a haven for xooglers that wanted to escape deteriorating engineering at lower levels at Google; there is still burning spirit of hacking present, even after IPO. FB works hard to retain it (outside noisy open offices though).
If you ever went through engineering interview process at FB, you'd have noticed it's one notch better prepared than the one at Google. Their Glassdoor rating is even slightly better and there are very few companies that are rated better (and usually smaller like Odersky's Lightbend, JetBrains...), so there is almost nowhere to go for a better engineering experience.
Have you found any meaningful correlation between "talent" (engineering or otherwise) and tenure at a well-known tech company?
From my experience, and based on people I know that work at Facebook, e.g., getting your foot in the door is just a matter of studying medium/hard-level problems on Leetcode (speaking verbatim here). I'm not sure you need a strong foundation in systems programming or design, or even a strong track record of building great software to get hired at these kinds of companies. The metric is mostly Leetcode; it's for efficiency I guess, because of the sheer number of applicants.
I've also worked closely with a few people from such companies. I'd say only one was a great engineer. And he definitely didn't have a high opinion of his former co-workers.
The one company whose engineers I'd probably give the benefit of the doubt would be Netflix, because they're so intentional about "performance".
In my mind, that does apply when you're talking about entry level software development positions. If someone is an SDE1 (or equivalent) at Facebook/Google/Amazon, I assume they're smart, determined and they studied a lot for the standard whiteboard interview.
If someone is a senior engineer at one of those companies, I assume they have a reasonable amount of talent. It's not easy to fake it or avoid expectations as a senior engineer.
Agreed, the level of responsibility as a senior engineer at the "Big N" companies is generally too high to permit a mediocre engineer to survive. People get demoted from manager and staff engineer positions all the time, and it's not a career-ending event either.
It sad to see such an article in the top posts at HW... I wouldn't even bother to reply if not for good people getting the wrong picture on what's going on. Yes, Facebook does delete posts (Nothing new so far), though only ones which violate Facebook's rules. I live in Israel and not once I've been shown some horrible video of Palestinians attacking locals. I'm not here to blame, nor generalize. I'm saying that this case is nothing special, but rather any other case of posts violating Facebook's rules only in a larger scale and at a specific target, Israel. For what it's worth, the hatred being published about Israel does not go the other way around. I, and many others, do respect and have no hate for Palestinians. We do have some radicals though, but just like in any other society. The sad part of the story is we get casualties on a daily-basis. Almost every week you hear of a terror attack in any part of the country. Most of the attackers are of young age, some of them even take advantage of their youth for lighter punishments. Both sides are losing people, no doubt. But at the end of the day, what's happening is chaos in our streets being done by /any person/ from the other side who feels like it and go on a killing-spree and yet we get slandered over false accusations on the Internet which pictures a wrong description of the situation. I've yet to witness the same brutality being manifested against us the Israelis but to Palestinians on the streets. I wouldn't go talking about IDF besides saying you would laugh if you knew how many restrictions an IDF solider has in any situations /even if his life is in danger/.
TLDR; Do not believe /everything/ you read on the internet. Regardless of the publisher's reputation.
>For what it's worth, the hatred being published about Israel does not go the other way around. I, and many others, do respect and have no hate for Palestinians.
The article does disagree with that view.
>As Al Jazeera reported last year, “Inflammatory speech posted in the Hebrew language . . . has attracted much less attention from the Israeli authorities and Facebook. One study found that ‘122,000 users directly called for violence with words like ‘murder’, ‘kill’, or ‘burn.’ Arabs were the No 1 recipients of hateful comments. Yet there appears to be little effort by Facebook to censor any of that.”
Have you noticed comments like this? Have you ever seen them deleted or Israeli accounts suspended for hateful language?
A strict definition sees many governments tarred with this brush, with the US, Russia, UK being stand outs. Others see the terrorists as freedom fighting, and they have some good points. This line of arguing achieves nothing, but that’s the point isn’t it?
AJ has some of the best reporting about, but attacking the messenger and not the message is far easier isn’t it?
They are not a messenger but are full party to praising those who would proudly kill children. I know the US has killed children in conflicts, but the US isn't proud of it, they don't celebrate it.
> Others see the terrorists as freedom fighting
No. This is false. No one sees terrorists as freedom fighting, except for those who support them.
A terrorist is a terrorist. Period. Calling them freedom fighters is utterly repulsive, and whitewashing things like "killing a 4 year old girl by smashing her skull against the rocks with the butt of his rifle." Yes, that is the loathsome creature who AJ celebrated.
Tell me how that is freedom fighting? I challenge you - tell me, exactly how that is freedom fighting. I await your answer.
Yes, Palestinians think freedom is worth fighting for. That man didn’t help his cause. This is not related to the issue though is it? AJ cover issues in the region better than many news orgs.
> Yes, Palestinians think freedom is worth fighting for.
And I guess that includes killing 4 year old girls?
And that's it? That's your feeble defense? "That man didn’t help his cause." No condemnation, no, "this is not what Palestinian are."
But of course you don't, because you can't, because this is the kind of offal Palestinians value. People who kill 4 year olds and rejoice in it.
If only this was some sort of one-off, that it was not representative, that it was just "didn't help his cause". But it's not, this is the kind of behavior Palestinians delight in. For example that guy who stabbed a young girl to death in her bed. Did they condemn that, or did they celebrate that?
You know the answer very well.
> This is not related to the issue though is it?
Of course is it. If AJ is going to throw that human excrement a birthday party then that are almost as loathsome as he is.
No one should ever read them again, that have removed themself from civilized life. Anything they say should be assumed false unless otherwise proven.
> AJ cover issues in the region better than many news orgs.
Only if by better you mean "praising and valuing terrorism".
If you are a Palestinian that it must suck to know you are by extension part of a group that is this horrible. I know very well not all Palestinians are this bad. Unfortunately the majority are. The fact that you don't condemn, and you even try to defend, them disturbs me though....
It’s intersting the way you shut down any discussion of Israeli wrongs, but broaden discussion on any opposing views even if off topic (ie story isn’t valid as it’s from AJ). It’s almost as though you have a vested interest in one sides view only.
A constructive approach is needed by both sides, not more of the same. You are desperate for a finger pointing fight and seem to be hoping to vilify me for being Palestinian. Why?
> It’s intersting the way you shut down any discussion of Israeli wrongs
I made absolutely no mention of Israel at all.
> ie story isn’t valid as it’s from AJ
Correct. You need another source. By supporting a murderer AJ has removed themself from civilized discourse.
> be hoping to vilify me for being Palestinian. Why?
Hoping to? Dude, you refused to condemn someone who killed a 4 year old by bashing her head in!!
What is wrong with you?
(If you refuse to condemn that, I guess it makes sense you would support AJ.)
Before I say another word to you I want to hear an unequivocal condemnation of that terrorist, and an unequivocal condemnation of AJ for throwing him a birthday party.
If you refuse to do that you have removed yourself from the realm of civilized people and I want nothing to do with you.
I refer to the thread as a whole, not just comments to me.
You’re obsessed with a bad guy who did bad things that is irrelevant to the thread, so of course I don’t join your soirée into the irrelevant (my race? Really?).
You keep arguing about the messenger, not the message. Dispute the message with a contrary link, not an attack on the messenger. There is a term for this style of argument.
Except "fighting" means attacking your enemy. It doesn't mean targeting civilians. It's usually quite easy to tell terrorists from freedom fighters: Look at their targets. Military/government targets--freedom fighters. Civilian targets--terrorists. Dual-use targets are considered military for this purpose. Mistakes and malfunctions don't count--what counts is what the person who picked the target believed to be in the area of effect.
There are very few cases where this doesn't provide a clear answer. (Although occasionally politicians get it wrong--the USS Cole bombing was not terrorism.)
The story isn't even about Israel and Palestinians per se. It's about how, when you institute censorship (whether public or private) supposedly for the sake of public good, in practice it tends to be used by groups in power to target groups who aren't - i.e. by majorities against minorities, or, as is the case in Israel, by the occupying force against political dissent among occupied populace.
I encourage you to come over and see how things actually go by. People are getting killed by terrorists who happen to be 16 years old kid brain-washed by the same news you and I are having an argument over. My point was that we've never demonstrated the same approach to the so-called beef. We do not go out to the streets, gun blazing, and start killing. I'm sure some of you will hop and go say "Right, you prefer to do it in the fields, with soldiers bullying and taking lands they don't own." For fuck sake, give me a break. For all I care, my neighbor could be Arab and we can be BFFs as long as the killing-spree stops.
I'm not against Palesintians, nor any Arabs. I care for my family and friends being slaughtered in our fucking streets and we have nothing to do about it.
> I'm sure some of you will hop and go say "Right, you prefer to do it in the fields, with soldiers bullying and taking lands they don't own." For fuck sake, give me a break. For all I care, my neighbor could be Arab and we can be BFFs as long as the killing-spree stops.
I think there must be a premise hidden somewhere behind that expletive.
What is the nature of the sentence between the quotation marks? Is that a hypothetical counterargument of someone who is misrepresenting (or misunderstanding) what Israeli soldiers are doing? Or is it supposed to be an accurate account of what Israeli soldiers are doing, and you mean to say that people wrongly think you agree with what the soldiers are doing?
You have nothing to do about it? How about stop building government sponsored settlements inside of Palestinian territory, Stop blocking the free movement of Palestinians by putting checkpoints outside of every village. Stop treating these human beings as animals where they are not allowed to walk on "Jewish only" paths. Stop demolishing Palestinian homes in what the IDF calls "Collective Punishment".
Those are just some suggestions if you are looking for peace.
Then stop your government from taunting, harassing and humiliating Palestinians. I understand being prey of FUD so I can imagine how difficult it is -- what if we let them, they'll take over, they'll out-number us, push us back to the sea! -- but you should collectively stop voting cynical sociopaths that lead your country just to prepare for the next round of war and further cement their grip on their constituency.
And I'm curious, I don't want to compare the palestinians situation to that of the jews during WWII even though there are many parallels especially those living in Gaza, but would you call the Black civil rights activists in the 50's and 60's or the Anti-Apartheid movement "terrorists" or "inciters"? I mean Nelson Mandela himself said “We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.” Brother, if there is no JUSTICE, there will be no PEACE.
If the military situation were reversed, there would be no jews on this land. That tells you a bit who really wants to exterminate the other in that conflict.
> I'm sure some of you will hop and go say "Right, you prefer to do it in the fields, with soldiers bullying and taking lands they don't own." For fuck sake, give me a break.
"Give me a break"? Isn't what you described exactly what happens?
I'm neutral to the Israeli-Palestine conflict. Each side is doing what they believe is just. The palestine side does not have the resources or military hardware so they turn to asymmetric warfare. On the other hand israel faces a huge security issue as a result and will deploy their resources accordingly.
I do have a lingering hope, given the number of organizations fighting asymmetric warfare like the IRA, FARC have now turned to non violent political representation, that we might see some change.
I condemn acts of terrorism there is simply nothing that justifies the murder of innocent lives, period.
> I'm neutral to the Israeli-Palestine conflict. Each side is doing what they believe is just.
Doesn't seem to me a very sound stance, as you can do very evil or wrong things while doing what you believe is just.
I agree with the "asymmetric warfare" definition (which by the way implies conventional warfare from one of the two sides); however you should not forget that is one of the two parties that is illegally occupying, controlling and expropriating a good portion of the other's territory.
If you see two people fighting in the street,the fact that one has illegally appropriated (i.e. stolen) something from the other might give you a better idea of what's going on.
Palestinians fight for their freedom and very right to exist. Israel fights to keep control over territories that have been stolen to somebody else. Nobody would object if they were fighting in self-defense, but they're not (though of course that is what they want you to believe, otherwise how could you support them or even declare yourself neutral?).
> All I've done is just depict the situation as it is.
No, you didn't. You described the Israeli position as they made you believe it is, not as it really is.
The interest in this article does not necessarily flow from its rather negative slant on the Israeli government.
What interests me are the consequences that follow from making a US corporation the global censor and arbiter, in the realm of communications, of other people's disputes.
The original article had zero factual content about the accounts that were suspended and presented no evidence that they were not suspended for completely valid reasons so I have no reason to think that they should not have been suspended.
Even with that being true, it is still interesting that people are both expecting Facebook to be a global censor, and then also criticizing them for the censorship decisions they make.
One could argue that turning a blind eye to the most basic of facts is itself, slander.
> Palestinians attacking locals
That attitude, in a nutshell, is a large part of the problem.
The Palestinians ARE the locals.
Once you accept the above, everything else starts to make sense.
Ignore this most obvious of facts, and then you start asking nonsensical questions like "why are they so touchy?" ,"why do they hate us?", "why are they so angry?", and "why aren't they content with living in a large open camp?"
This is what happens when everyone relies on some centralized global social network for their communications, instead of something they run locally on their own mesh network.
Censorship has become far too easy, with a few key players in a position to muzzle vast numbers of others. The Internet wasn't supposed to work this way.
Censorship can only be committed by the government. The fact that facebook is complying with requests from governments is both the right and responsibility of facebook.
> Censorship can only be committed by the government.
False. Heck, the modern understanding of censorship is strongly influenced by the (officially, still continuing, but greatly reduced in significance even within the Catholic community) official censorship practice of the Catholic Church.
Now, there are certainly consideration that apply tomstaye censorship that may not apply equally to non-state censorship, but state censorship isn't the only kind of censorship.
No, it wasn't. The Catholic Church had separate-from-the-state but binding authority in some areas of life, and something like extraterritoriality in much of the Western world, but it wasn't the government ever over any but a few relatively small parts of the Western World (well, technically, never over any of it, though certain clerical positions were conjoined to positions of state authority, either lower in the feudal heirarchy or, occasionally, actual sovereignties like the papal states or one of the co-princes of Andorra.)
Facebook is bigger than some governments. It deals with governments almost as a peer. No newspaper baron of the 20th century ever had such power. Not Murdoch. Not Hearst.
You've been using HN primarily for ideological and political battle. That's an abuse of the site, and we ban accounts that do it, so would you please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and use the site as intended?
Actually I use it primarily to read technical articles posted here and I reply to comments on here whatever the subject. Nothing I said was untrue and I was quite fair in fact to either of the two sides described in my post.
I will refrain from causing any future concern from you or anyone else, since I don't mean to hurt anyone's feelings.
So I was initially bearish on it, but I tried out Diaspora today. It's actually quite nice! I have started the laborous process of getting my family on it. I'm pitching it to them as Facebook like it was in the mid/late-2000's, but has no ads, isn't run for profit, no creepy big brother vibes, and there are only people on it (no stupid pages, brands, etc).
While I agree, i’m Not familiar with even remotely neutral sources in Arabic; on one side you have a Hamas/Fatah “Iraqi information minister”’style reporting, and on the other side you have the Israeli reporting in Arabic. Facebook, despite being more closely aligned with Israel, and having the history of a Skinner box operator, is still more likely to bring news vetted by their friends with some commentary.
Very sadly, it might actually be their best source of news.
Facebook is deleting accounts that violate its ToS, governments (not just the US and Israeli ones) report accounts that constitute a violation of their laws all the time and Facebook removes those.
Common examples are pages promoting illegal activities in a country - like drug dealing, weapons trade etc.
yes, the average Palestinian without any capital or internet access will just go into his garage and start a new facebook.
What a facetious and despicable comment. As the article points out that Facebook is one of the most important news sources for Palestinians. This is effectively shutting them out of the modern communication system and a civil rights catastrophy.
It's not individuals doing harm, it's the Jewish state, as Israel defines itself. Of course from being Jewish doesn't follow a support for Israel (and there are many harsh critics of Israel who are indeed Jewish)- however let's not pretend there is no connection at all, as that is obviously not true.
If Zuckerberg were of Arab Palestinian descent it wouldn't be hard to imagine a greater sympathy for the Palestinian cause.
The problem isn't just capital in the sense of fiat currency, the problem is that they have no state and no rule of law, no incorporation into the global economy either formally or factually. There is no real way to even operate a global or local industry without the basic requirements, they are excluded from the rest of the world.
There isn't a single serious facebook competitor in the entire United States. Please don't pretend that this is somehow a serious suggestion for a region like Palestine. They are entirely dependent on the digital and analog infrastructure surrounding them due to the circumstances they find themselves in.
Or anything else, except speaking up, as demonstrated here. I mean, someone made a comment implying FB only removes really nasty, criminal things, but they don't get told that "it's Facebook's business" (even though it would apply just as much, but never is applied, to supportive comments), instead the response that adds some grounding in reality does. This is a discussion site, and the correct response to GP is to respond to GP, not do something else elsewhere.
>yes, the average Palestinian without any capital or internet access will just go into his garage and start a new facebook.
Freedom of the Press, to those who own the presses. It's always been that way.
>What a facetious and despicable comment.
If I was responding to a comment about promoting alt-right ideology, it would be +1000 internets for sure. Same response, Facebook's business. You want to promote alt-right, start your own.
This is simply not true. First off you're applying American sets of values to the entire world, a lot of countries take the access to information just as serious as the rights of distribution, and even within the US there has never been a situation in history where a single publisher controlled 96% of the news access to large parts of the population.
This kind of monopolisation of information, in the US largely spread up between Facebook and Google, is entirely new, and it was once commonly accepted that situations like this have no place in a market economy or a civil society.
Now apparently it seems legitimate that this monopoly position is used to leverage power against marginalised populations in foreign countries under the guise of 'they have the right to do whatever they want'. This is intellectually lazy and morally bankrupt.
> “Israeli security agencies monitor Facebook and send the company posts they consider incitement. Facebook has responded by removing most of them.”
Maybe because they are incitement? This kind of thing isn’t incitement? https://goo.gl/images/oknvLC many other examples catalogued here: http://m.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Social-media-playin... the incitement to violence is real. Love how Greenwald glosses over this as insignificant. In his world view, Israelis should just accept social media posts that incite murdering them, because Israelis are big
bad guys.
Maybe, except this is what Glen Greenwald writes instead:
> Last March, Facebook briefly shut down the Facebook page of the political party, Fatah, followed by millions, “because of an old photo posted of former leader Yasser Arafat holding a rifle.”
which is on the soft side of what Israel contests is incitement (see my post above, or Google for more examples, there are many).
Yeah, like Jefferson Davis, or any other dead dude with a rifle used to incite violence. Nothing new here. Nothing to take lightly.
> dead Arab with a gun
Why are you trivializing Arabs? Much less dead Arabs? I don’t think Arabs would appreciate being taken so lightly. I don’t take them lightly. They’re serious people.
> That’s a laugh
This is exactly what I’m talking about. Glossing over and making trivial things like this. It’s not funny. It’s real and it’s serious. I’m certain you wouldn’t be laughing if it was your killing being incited.
Not good, though compared to the mainstream media lockdown I grew up under with uncle Walt and its "we've always been at war with eastasia" coverage, we live in charmed times.
According to the article, 96% of Palestinian Facebook users primarily use it to get news.
So why clamp down and fine if you can threaten to fine and help shape what is displayed to who? It seems like a much more effective approach since there are few other sites, sources, etc that everyone visits.
At that point, it comes down to who has the biggest hammer or budget.
I don't know what you mean by proof, but it's filled with information that supports the claim. For example,
Israeli Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked said Tel Aviv had submitted 158 requests to the social media giant over the previous four months asking it to remove content it deemed “incitement.” She said Facebook had granted 95 percent of the requests.
This information does support the claim that the Israeli government submitted requests to Facebook. I wonder if Facebook publishes information on how many requests each government makes.
> Tel Aviv is the internationally accepted capital of Israel, not Jerusalem.
Can we please not post that nonsense here? I expect it in some of the stupider social networks (which tend to draw a certain kind of poster), but seeing that here is surprising.
Other countries do not get to tell a county where its capital is.
What exactly makes Tel Aviv the capital anyway? There's no seat of government there, nothing. Did they just randomly pick a large city?
Can you please not post nonsense here. Tel Aviv IS the internationally accepted capital of Israel, period. It's a fact you might like or not, but it remains a fact.
All the world's embassies are in Tel Aviv, not Jerusalem.
Jerusalem might be not publicly acknowledged but no one claims TLV is the capital of Israel.
All International agreements are under signed as Jerusalem, anytime there is a foreign visit they go to Jerusalem, even Sadat when he came to visit Israel during the peace process went to the Knesset in Jerusalem to give his speech.
The US embassy and many others in the Netherlands are in The Hague it doesn’t make it the capital of the Netherlands. International recognition isn’t what defines a capital city so while most nations won’t publicaly say its Jerusalem not a single one would say it’s Tel Aviv they would simply refuse to answer.
Tel Aviv is not accepted as capital city because nobody declared it as capital city. All government offices are in the
west part of Jerusalem which is within the recognised borders of Israel. If anyone wanted to "recognise" a capital they could just call it west Jerusalem or something like that. Tel Aviv is one hour away. So it is a subtle political statement rather than factual news.
Yes, it is standard to refer to capital city as a short hand for its government or state. Different news organizations dance around this issue differently for Israel given the context. Many say Tel Aviv, as this article does. Some say Israeli government, Jerusalem government, or describe Jerusalem as the seat of Israel's government, saying nothing about what Israel's capital is. Others describe Jerusalem as Israel's capital. It will be interesting to see what happens over the next couple years given the US's recent announcement. My guess is more of the same.
>What makes this censorship particularly consequential is that “96 percent of Palestinians said their primary use of Facebook was for following news.” That means that Israeli officials have virtually unfettered control over a key communications forum of Palestinians.
I think the second sentence doesn't follow so clearly from the first one to warrant a "that means".
12/23/2017 Facebook banned the page of the Kremlin-backed Chechen leader Kadyrov (he has more power than police in Russia). FB said “that the accounts appear to be maintained by or on behalf of parties who appear on the U.S. Specially Designated Nationals List and thus, subject to U.S. trade sanctions." [1]
12/24/2017 Russian airline company registered FB page with the same name to get all traffic of the banned page.[2]
12/30/2017 Kadyrov makes this company to return this page back to him. The page is returned back to Chechen Republic[3].
Now FB is violating their TOS for transferring accounts and U.S. trade sanctions.
[1] https://www.rferl.org/a/facebook-instagram-kadyrov-chechnya-...
[2] https://meduza.io/en/news/2017/12/28/an-airline-makes-the-mo...
[3] https://fb.com/rkadyrov95