Matthew Ingram of GigaOm brings up a good point regarding censorship and Facebook. Although Facebook is a public place, it’s controlled by a public company. Although, it encourages free speech, it can remove content whenever it wants to. In the case of Roger Ebert’s Facebook page that was taken down, possibly due from the outrage caused by Ebert’s response to Ryan Dunn’s death on Twitter. Ebert’s Facebook page was later reinstated. Facebook, later apologized, saying the page was taken down by mistake. Interesting read.
Facebook has not only been censored in China, where I have lived for the past six plus years, it has been blocked, or “harmonized” to use the government’s parlance, by the Great Firewall. While possibly some cause for concern in certain narrow circumstances, Facebook’s self-censorship pales in comparison to it’s total inaccessibility to about 1/6 of the world population.
Yes, thank you for putting everything in perspective. There are a few countries, North Korea, Iran, where censorship is even worst than China. I hear you. it does fail in comparison to what happens in the West.