Facebook censors Prophet's image after Zuckerberg's 'Je Suis Charlie' statement

United States: Two weeks into releasing a strongly worded ‘Je Suis Charlie' statement, emphasizing the importance of free speech, Facebook has now agreed to censor images of the prophet Mohammad in Turkey, including the image that served as a catalyst in the Charlie Hebdo attack.

Commenting on Zuckerberg's passionate defense of free speech with regard to the Chalie Hebdo case, Tibetan writer and dissident, Tsering Woeser said that her experience with Facebook tells a different story, after the video of a Tibetan self-immolation was deleted and a fellow dissident’s account was temporarily suspended last month.

In a similar incident, in December 2014 , Facebook agreed to censor the page of Russia’s leading Putin critic, Alexei Navalny, at the request of Russian Internet regulators.

This is conclusive proof of what many tech critics said of Zuckerberg’s free-speech declaration: Sweeping promises are all well and good, but Facebook’s record doesn’t entirely back it up.

As per the BBC, Facebook has blocked an unspecified number of pages that “offended the Prophet Mohammad” after receiving a court order from a local court in Ankara.

Turkey is one of Facebook’s more sensitive territories, at least where censorship is concerned. The country represents a huge potential audience for U.S. tech companies, with its growing population of young digital natives and its rapidly transforming economy.

Facebook, being a global company, is compelled to obey the laws of each country it operates in; the site can’t exactly pick and choose which regulations it finds agreeable, and it’s the site’s long-standing policy to comply with warrants and other government requests, provided they meet what Facebook calls a “very high legal bar.”

Zuckerberg's stand on blocking posts in Turkey about the prophet might perplex some but it would be unfair to fault Facebook for complying with a legitimate foreign government request, regardless of how repressive it may seem.

But for Facebook to do that while simultaneously styling itself as patron of political speech it does seem a little disingenuous. “I’m committed to building a service where you can speak freely without fear of violence,” Zuckerberg said in his Hebdo statement.

“A few years ago, an extremist in Pakistan fought to have me sentenced to death because Facebook refused to ban content about Mohammed that offended him,” Zuckerberg wrote in a post that attracted 435,00 likes and more than 45,000 shares. "We stood up for this because different voices — even if they're sometimes offensive — can make the world a better and more interesting place.”

Zuckerberg has always said that Faecbook is a place where people across the world share their views and ideals. “We follow the laws in each country, but we never let one country or group of people dictate what people can share across the world.” Despite it's strong stand on free speech, Facebook has attraced criticism from a section of its users for removing posts related to the prophet.

In the past, companies like LinkedIn and Microsoft have been criticized by free speech advocates for caving into Chinese pressure to censor material in order to retain a position in the Chinese market.