28 Sep Facebook and Territorial Disputes
“Where do you live?”
Seems like a simple question, doesn’t it?
But the answer is not clear-cut for everyone. Take people who live in Srinagar, the capital of Kashmir, which is wedged between India, Pakistan and China. India and Pakistan have gone to war repeatedly over the disputed territory.
Technically, it’s “Indian-administered.”
But on Facebook, it’s simply in India.
Questions like this have been causing Facebook and other social networking sites a headache, because in terms of reactions from current and potential customers, it is “damned if you do, damned if you don’t.” CNN explains:
Facebook recently changed its listing for the Golan Heights — which Israel captured from Syria in 1967 — so users there could choose to say whether they live in Israel or Syria.
It was responding to pressure from a pro-Israel group called HonestReporting — and from Facebook users who set up a group on the site itself called “Facebook, Golan Residents Live in Israel, not Syria.”
“It is not for Facebook to decide the national origin of Golan residents,” the group says on its page.
Facebook may have pleased pro-Israel users there by giving them the choice to say where they live, but not all Syrians were happy about the change.
“I think Facebook sort of shot itself in the foot to make it optional for the Golan to say this is part of Israel,” said Ammar Abdulhamid, a Syrian scholar based in the United States.
“This is against international law,” he said.
It should come as no surprise to readers of this blog that..
…the Golan is only the tip of the iceberg.
Jerusalem, which remains hotly disputed between Israel and the Palestinians, is simply in Israel as far as Facebook is concerned.
Tibet’s capital Lhasa is in China on Facebook, although many Tibetans and their supporters reject China’s rule of Tibet. The “Free Tibet” group on Facebook has nearly 188,000 members.
Russia and the former Soviet republic of Georgia briefly went to war last summer over the breakaway Georgian territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, but the Abkhaz capital Sukhumi is listed as being in Georgia on Facebook. Two pro-independence Abkhaz Facebook groups have about 1,200 members between them.
In terms of potential solutions,
[t]he social-networking site “deals with the listings for disputed territories on a case-by-case basis,” Facebook representative Debbie Frost told CNN by e-mail.
She said the site — which recently announced it has 300 million users — consults the International Organization for Standardization, the United Nations and other global organizations…
As for two of Facebook’s main competitors, Yahoo and Google,
[Yahoo] offers “disputed territory” as an option for users creating a new account, but won’t actually register a new account if users choose that option.
It does allow users to say they are from Taiwan — which China considers a renegade province and is not represented at the United Nations — and the “Occupied Palestinian Territories.” But it does not appear to allow users to create an account if they choose “Occupied Palestinian Territories.”
It does not offer Tibet, Kashmir or Abkhazia.
Google, for its part, offers Taiwan and “Palestinian Territories,” as well as Western Sahara, a breakaway region of Morocco that is not recognized internationally.
It does not offer Tibet, Kashmir or Abkhazia.
Maybe “recognition by at least two social networking sites” needs to be added to the customary criteria for statehood…
It’s a bit odd that the configuration of Facebook is becoming a major news-item in regards to territorial disputes. What is next? ECtHR will have to decide whether the decision of a company to “acknowledge” the sovereignty of a territory violates human rights of the users of its website? It is hardly an indispensable service Facebook is providing, although it may seem otherwise to many.
As much as a social networking service can be of good use to us, how dependent are we on it, that the wrongful denomination of the country we live in enrages us thusly? Obviously, the Facebook rep couldn’t possibly have said “We don’t care and advise people who do to go outside more”. But they should have. There is far more important issues (like, for example, the actual territorial differences that cause war and carnage in many parts of the world) than some list to choose from on some website.
Now, I don’t live in disputed territory, so I cannot judge those who do or did. But for those who do, is this one really the right battle to choose?
In short: What a curious piece of news, this. But thanks for reporting it anyway.