Facebook Has Been Regularly Shutting Down Atheist and Ex-Muslim Groups
Exclusive: Facebook Has Been Regularly Shutting Down
Atheist and Ex-Muslim Groups
By Masha Froliak | 10:27 pm, May 9, 2017
Yesterday, Facebook restricted and then shut down the
public pages of Ex-Muslims of North America (24k followers) and Atheist
Republic (1,6 million followers) –groups that advocate secularism and provide
support to “apostates” (people who leave Islam and who often face persecution).
In fact, the ex-Muslim group claims that for the last
several years, Facebook has been continuously blocking groups like it. The
ex-Muslims have written an open letter to the social media giant, calling on it
to “to stop exercising intellectual persecution” against atheist and ex-Muslim
organizations and to “whitelist” such vulnerable groups from organized false
flagging attacks.
On Monday, Muhammad Syed, the president of the Ex-Muslims
of North America took to Twitter to report that the Facebook pages of
Ex-Muslims and Atheist Republic were restricted (and the next morning shut
down) “in violation of Facebook’s community standards”. No details were given
as to what standards were violated. On Tuesday, after appealing the case, both
groups were able to regain full access to their pages.
Syed believes the pages had been targeted in coordinated
attacks by Muslim fundamentalists using “simple and effective” Facebook
flagging tools to report that pages falsely for standards violations. Facebook,
Syed said, isn’t doing enough to protect “groups vulnerable to malicious
attacks”.
In the open letter to Facebook, which was revealed to
Heat Street, Syed pressures the social media company to take measures to
improve its reporting mechanisms and to protect ex-Muslim groups.
“Ironically, the same social media which empowers
religious minorities is susceptible to abuse by religious fundamentalists to
enforce what are essentially the equivalent of online blasphemy laws. A simple
English language search reveals hundreds of public groups and pages on Facebook
explicitly dedicated to this purpose – giving their members easy-to-follow
instructions on how to report public groups and infiltrate private ones,” Syed
writes.
The Atheist Republic group has been shut down 4 times in
the last two years, Syed says, and then reinstated. He adds that attacks of
this nature are not new and there are there are hundreds of Facebook accounts
that are working to shut down atheist and ex-Muslim public pages in an
organized effort. Facebook, he alleges, is doing nothing about it.
“Arab atheists, Bangladeshi secularists, and numerous
other groups have been under attack for years, as religious conservatives in
the Muslim world learn to abuse Facebook’s reporting system to their advantage.
Early last year, multiple atheist and secularist groups were targeted with
mass, coordinated infiltration and reporting – leading to the closure of many
groups. These groups were eventually restored, but only after a lengthy and
sustained effort by organizers to draw public attention to the issue,” he
explains.
In his letter to Facebook, Syed, with the help of the
Arab Atheist Network, compiled a list of groups that have been targeted in
coordinated flagging attacks and shut down by Facebook in the last several
weeks. At least nine other groups have been abused with Facebook’s reporting
tool.
Syed, who was raised in Pakistan, believes that
ex-Muslims are among the most persecuted groups in the world and that online
platforms like Facebook are the “last refuge” for many atheists and secularists
in the Muslim world.
“Many of these groups are not simply pages – they are
communities in which atheists who are abandoned by those around them find comfort,
support and emergency assistance in case of persecution or abuse. The closure
of these groups means the loss of these vital resources for the isolated and
vulnerable,” Muhammad tells Heat Street.
The letter urges Facebook to create a “whitelist” for
groups and pages that are vulnerable to such attacks and asks to penalize
accounts that repeatedly abuse its reporting tools.
In the meantime, as Heat Street reported, in March
Facebook kowtowed to officials in Pakistan and removed “blasphemous” content insulting
Islam within the country. In this instance, Facebook had no problem with
censoring freedom of speech on its platform.
Other atheist groups shut down by Facebook in the course
of a month:
A Science Enthusiast (750,000 members)
Arab Atheist Network (23,500 members)
Arab Atheist Forum and Network (9,200 members)
Radical Atheists without Borders (23,500 members)
Arab Atheist Syndicate (11,000 members)
Arab Atheist Syndicate, backup (5,000 members)
Humanitarian Non-Religious (32,000 members)
Human Atheists (11,000 members)
Arab Atheists Forum and Network (6,400 members)
Mind and Discussion (6,500 members)
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