The U.S. State Department’s Policy Director for Innovation, Ben Scott, is discussing how Facebook helped give protest organizers in the Middle East a voice — and you can watch the livestream here.
The world renowned street artist Banksy published his own creative interpretation of Facebook-powered revolutions which appear to be spreading through the middle east.
The so-called Facebook-powered revolution happening in Egypt appears to be emboldening an ever-widening array of middle eastern nations to call for their own protests and also seek supporting demonstrations at embassies around the world.
An unofficial US Navy Facebook page got a good verbal battle going over the use of “Arabian Gulf” instead of “Persian Gulf,” the term historically used by Iranians.
Last week Facebook announced that they will partner with Connect Ads, a Cairo-based advertising agency with coverage of 15 vital Arab-speaking regions, to better engage advertisers in the Middle East. This is part of Facebook’s push to ensure that global advertisers have easy access to get their brands and ads onto Facebook. Last year, Facebook worked with iHub as their partner in Southeast Asia and Taiwan, and rapidly grew to be the dominant social network in the Asia-Pacific market. Facebook currently has 10 million regular Facebook users in the Arab market, and plans to repeat the same successes in the Middle East as in Asia-Pac.
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Even though the Israeli government is turning to online social networks to distribute information about the war in Gaza, there are others using such social networks for their own agendas. According to Gawker, some Facebook users have found it impossible to post certain content related to words like “Gaza” or “Palestine.”
From the users’ perspective, it seems as though Facebook is censoring some politically sensitive content. But Gawker reports that the supposed censorship is really a result of the self-contained flagging system, which enables users to report inappropriate content. To the dismay of many, this merely reflects Facebook as the user-generated network that it is. As a reflection of human nature’s truest colors, users are no doubt frustrated by the act of not being able to express themselves through Facebook’s network. What’s a user to do?
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