Is facebook deleting atheist pages? Yes - thanks to harassment campaigns by some Muslim groups

[rug]

Facebook has shut down over a dozen Arabic-language atheist group pages. (Image via Nagib/Shutterstock)

June 21, 2016
Aaron Homer

Facebook has been deleting some atheist pages, leading to heavy criticism of the social media giant and energizing atheists in the North Africa and Middle East region to rally against censorship, the News Hub is reporting.

In February 2016, Facebook deleted 10 Arabic-language Facebook groups devoted to atheism, and this was followed by the closure of six more atheist Facebook groups in April. The closure leaves approximately 100,000 members of those groups in the heavily-Muslim North Africa and the Middle East without a place to commune with one another on the social media giant.

Interestingly, Facebook has closed the groups not because of interference from any governments in the region, but because of managed campaigns by Islamist groups to convince the social media giant to censor the pages on the basis that they violate so-called “community standards.”

Facebook generally doesn’t police its content for violations of the so-called “community standards,” which, of course, will vary from place to place and culture to culture. Instead, the company relies on user-generated reports of violations. Theoretically, if a post or group gets enough reports of violations, the social media giant will shut the offending content down and delete it.

http://www.inquisitr.com/3228866/is-facebook-deleting-atheist-pages-yes-thanks-to-harassment-campaigns-by-some-muslim-groups/