Social Media Bans

First Pakistan banned Facebook for the user-created event that invited people to draw the prophet, Muhammad, to show Muslin extremists that people were not scared of the kinds of threats that have been doled out to cartoonists in the recent past. Then the government of Pakistan decided they would add YouTube, and certain pages on Flickr and Wikipedia to the ban list.

This is an interesting early effect of globalization. Certain countries, like China and Thailand, decide they do not want their people to have completely free access to all of the news and ideas coming out of other countries. But was Pakistan's ban more than that? Did the thousands of Muslims in Pakistan who protested Facebook have just cause to be angry? When using social media tools to reach global audiences, do we need to be more sensitive to alternative views and religions?

If the Facebook event had not encouraged people to draw the prophet (which is extraordinarily offensive to Muslims), if it had instead asked for discussion on the topic for example, would that have been as affective and not offensive? It it one thing to make a great point, but if your point causes the entire social media platform to be banned in that country (not to mention the thousands of people you made angry) is it still a point that needs to be made?

I'm not sure. I am an avid believer in freedom of the press, of course, and I think the global reach of social media tools is one of the most exciting things about them, but how do we approach possible censorship? If we give in to making our messages more politically correct are we guilty of allowing censorship to exist?

Interestingly enough, the Pakistani government has not yet banned Twitter. Let's see how long that lasts....