We can't blame it all on Facebook

What if you are uploading your beloved cat’s photos on Facebook and then a video pops up, thanks to one of your friends, and it features a beheading incident in the Middle East? Or what if you are having a good time with your children putting up photos of a birthday party on the social media site and pictures of bare female breasts appear out of the blue on the timeline? Well, Facebook’s critics say you’d better watch out for the former case, because the second scenario was less likely to happen.

The critics may be right. But then again, every coin has two sides. The pros and cons of beheading videos or images of bare breasts – as well as the “freedom” to publish them – are not something for any one individual to bang the table about and proclaim them to be right or wrong. If graphic content is a sensitive matter on the conventional media, it’s a lot more so on social media, only in a different way.

Facebook’s ideological soul-searching continues, after having embroiled itself in another controversy. This time it’s about the popular social media network’s apparent willingness to allow uploading of images or videos of extreme political violence – like beheading – and its firm stance against sexual content. So much for “Make love, not war”, someone must have said.

An outcry and charges of double standards have hit Facebook, and not for the first time. When it positions itself as an alternative media network where people go to great lengths to share news and experiences, whether they are good or bad, controversies like this are unavoidable. Facebook has played both soft and hard ball when it comes to graphic content, but the decision to allow the posting of a video showing a masked man beheading a woman is one of those “Damned if you do, damned if you don’t” matters.

First, Facebook defended its green light for the video, saying that if such material could raise awareness against violence, then so be it. After a storm of criticism, Facebook said it had re-examined the beheading video and found it also glorified ideological violence. Its overall policy, however, concerning fostering human rights and encouraging the sharing of harsh experiences remained the same, Facebook announced.

Facebook should be commended for reacting to outcries, and for making decisions that must be made, although they can never have the best of both worlds. Its initial ban on graphic content was noble, and its decision to make exceptions in order to raise awareness was also praiseworthy. Facebook has shown it is receptive and responsive. For a major social media network, those are good characteristics.

Facebook is often compared to a marketplace. That means someone provides a space and lays down some regulations and the rest is largely up to the vendors, buyers and visitors. This may sound like a cliché, but ask not what Facebook can do for you; ask what you can do for Facebook! Content is not up to Mark Zuckerberg; it is up to every one of Facebook’s users. There must be rules, of course, but “his” rules must be accompanied by “our” responsibility, because there will always be a grey area, such as the question of whether or not posting a beheading video is good. He can decide which is good and which is bad, but that’s not the way it’s supposed to be.