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Facebook's Arab Problem? Network Blocks 'Palestinian' and 'Arab' From Profiles

by Matthew Zuras on July 27, 2010 at 02:14 PM

screenshot of facebook signup page
Last week, Facebook accidentally deleted Sarah Palin's rant at/plea to Muslims (depending on your side of the fence) to oppose the construction of the so-called Ground Zero Mosque. On Sunday, a group called The Palestinian Refugee ResearchNet tried to make a Facebook fan page for its supporters, but wasn't allowed because a glitch in the system blocked the world "Palestinian" from page titles. (The conspiracy theorists out there can rest their tin-foil-bedecked heads, because "Palestine" made it through without a problem, and Facebook has corrected the bizarre bug.)

To compound Facebook's seeming anti-Arab connivance, a reader wrote to Gawker yesterday, saying that, when she tried to change her maiden name to her married name ("Arab," a common Palestinian surname), Facebook did not approve the change. Although her husband had successfully signed up with his English-transliterated name in 2007, when he changed it to Arabic characters, and then back to English, he was also denied. So this points to a recent change in Facebook's filters.

We don't think that there is any anti-Arab sentiment encoded in Facebook's system, but the repeated problems reveal a company that struggles to promote an open atmosphere while also restricting hate speech, troubled further by lazy or ridiculous filtration parameters. After all, Facebook probably shouldn't allow someone to sign up with the name "F**kthe Arab," or whatever, but that doesn't mean it needs to block the word 'Arab,' itself. (As most everyone would expect, Facebook does block words like "kill" and "murder" from profile names, as well as the standard 4-letter vulgarities.)

Facebook must recognize that it is, due to its breadth, now a political micro-arena. Especially since its flip-flopping stance on 'Everybody Draw Mohammad Day,' the network has been accused of either promoting or disparaging Islam. And while we expect the company to retain a neutral public image, Facebook needs to do a thorough overhaul of its automated processes, so that it won't continue to offend people with inadvertent political gaffes, and stick to simply annoying users with hyperactive FarmVille updates. [From: Gawker]

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Tags: arab, arabic, censorship, facebook, FacebookPrivacy, filter, gawker, muslim, Palestine, palestinians, racism, top

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