Apple Once Threatened Facebook Ban Over Mideast Maid Abuse (apnews.com) 90
Two years ago, Apple threatened to pull Facebook and Instagram from its app store over concerns about the platform being used as a tool to trade and sell maids in the Mideast. From a report: After publicly promising to crack down, Facebook acknowledged in internal documents obtained by The Associated Press that it was "under-enforcing on confirmed abusive activity" that saw Filipina maids complaining on the social media site of being abused. Apple relented and Facebook and Instagram remained in the app store. But Facebook's crackdown seems to have had a limited effect. Even today, a quick search for "khadima," or "maids" in Arabic, will bring up accounts featuring posed photographs of Africans and South Asians with ages and prices listed next to their images. That's even as the Philippines government has a team of workers that do nothing but scour Facebook posts each day to try and protect desperate job seekers from criminal gangs and unscrupulous recruiters using the site.
Re: (Score:1)
Wow, we can't advertise maid service now because of Apple? What's next, a ban on sales of horse wormer paste?
Re: (Score:1)
What's next, a ban on sales of horse wormer paste?
It's a dewormer paste.
Re: (Score:3)
That would be the brown paste that comes out of the horse.
Re: THAT's where you draw the line?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, no, none of it was fine. Facebook has been involved in violence all over the world, and it's not okay.
I suppose you are of the opinion that those guys with the gallows where just tourists taking a walk around the Capitol building, looking for Mike Pence and Nancy Pelosy to give her them their regards.
Re: THAT's where you draw the line?? (Score:1)
I am the guy who is of the opinion that you apply the law equally and without political favorites.
Re: THAT's where you draw the line?? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'll never get tired of posting this image of Andrew Clyde shitting his pants over the "tourists" he talked about. Look at his expression.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E1... [twimg.com]
That is certainly the face you make when greeted by tourists. https://www.independent.co.uk/... [independent.co.uk]
Re: (Score:2)
You keep using that word. It does not mean what you think it means. Tourists do not attack police with fire extinguishers [usatoday.com], flag poles [cnbc.com], pull officers down stairs [nbcwashington.com], use bear spray [cnn.com], or bring guns [politifact.com].
But if lying makes you happy, keep at it. At least we'll know to ignore anything you say.
Re: (Score:2)
> Tourists do not [...] bring guns
Surely there are some Americans among the tourists.
Re: (Score:2)
Facebook has been involved in violence all over the world, and it's not okay.
It doesn't work that way. That's like blaming AT&T if someone uses their phone lines for criminal activity. That'd be like blaming the paper manufacturer if a criminal plan was written in a paper notebook.
Re: (Score:1)
> More were killed in CHAZ/CHOP!
There was a higher proportion of unarmed black murders in CHAZ/CHOP than the general population they were protesting against.
Re: THAT's where you draw the line?? (Score:4, Funny)
Cause using a fire extinguisher to attack police, using weapons taken from police, breaking windows, using tear gas against police, wearing of tactical vests with body armor, having zip cuffs, calling out for specific individuals so you could hang them, yeah, just a walk in the park.
and one gets shot and killed.
This is what happens when you don't obey the law. Had the terrorist not tried to climb through a broken window (see above) in her attempt to overthrow the government, she wouldn't have been shot.
Re: (Score:2)
I count the gallows. And the chemical spray they were using on police, whatever that was. We have all seen the videos.
Re: (Score:2)
While distasteful, it was not a weapon or real threat...it was a symbolic prop.
Armed means deadly weapon. Bear spray won't kill you...I do think anyone USING that should be charged with assault tho for sure.
Being armed is being armed with a deadly weapon, like a firearm or knife.
Bringing a prop gallows or hanging someone in effigy isn't armed insurrection.
Again, if it truly was an armed insurrection, it would be something we could all agree was one....it isn't like there is a sh
Re: (Score:2)
I'll use that one next time I rob a bank. "It wasn't a weapon, your honour, it was merely a prop I used in my performance!"
Re: (Score:2)
Some did have guns [politifact.com]. Those guns were later confiscated.
you'd have heard MUCH more about it on the news, especially by the anti-2A folks on CNN and MSNBC
Funny how at least one of those news organizations did talk the terrorists having guns. But I guess speaking the truth is somehow anti-2A.
Re: (Score:3)
> Armed insurrection
Facebook wasn't even around in 1812.
Re: (Score:2)
"Trading maids" means slave-trading here, those all seem like good places to draw a line, too bad they only chose 1 out of the 3...
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
New spin on an old problem (Score:5, Interesting)
In Hong Kong, nearly every middle-class family and above has a live-in maid. They come from the Philippines and Indonesia. They were basically treated as slaves and got treated so poorly that HK eventually passed a law that every maid had to have Sunday off. But mandatory. And they're live-in maids; they have no other home. So what happens is, every Sunday, all the maids in Hong Kong become homeless for a day. There are over 336,000 of them, and about 14% of them are estimated to be a result of human trafficking.
The fact that they're organizing this on Facebook certainly isn't Facebook's fault. If Facebook cracked down, it'd just move to another site, or back to the non-digital form it's had for decades.
Re: (Score:2)
The fact that they're organizing this on Facebook certainly isn't Facebook's fault. If Facebook cracked down, it'd just move to another site, or back to the non-digital form it's had for decades.
Facebook is profiting hand over fist in open view as a publicly traded company.
How can you say "this is literally no different than if done in someone's basement on a hand-cranked printing machine"?
For one thing, the global reach of Facebook acts a massive efficiency boost for this illegal and immoral boost by connect demand and supply across oceans.
Who benefits from defeatism and false equivalencies here? Are you holding FB calls or something?
Re: (Score:2)
FB calls or something
Don't you think the timing of this revelation is just a little bit sus?
Re: New spin on an old problem (Score:2)
The fact that they're organizing this on Facebook certainly isn't Facebook's fault. If Facebook cracked down, it'd just move to another site, or back to the non-digital form it's had for decades.
It's not about stopping it, it's about being part of the problem or not. Like littering. You finding a trash can or providing them for others doesn't stop the problem. You do it because you're not an ass.
Duh (Score:5, Informative)
It's Middle East. Slave trade of non-muslims is the cultural norm to this day. Facebook merely reflects the social norms of each region where it operates. It doesn't actually create slavery. It merely facilitates communications between people. And that means that each regions traditions will be reflected on facebook in that region's facebook groups.
And with language barrier blocking most of the outsiders from ever accessing that particular culture, it'll keep going. There's a reason why the second biggest slave work hub after People's Republic of China today is Qatar with its need for slaves to build up the World Cup 2022 venues. And there's a reason why a lot of Philippino maids do in fact go to Middle East. Slaver traditions of the regions work in the other direction too. Menial labour like housework is something that no proper lady of the house should need to perform. That's for the slaves of the family. And since slavery is officially abolished, you have to go for de facto slaves that are de jure guest workers instead. And that means there's a lot of money to be made as a Philippina maid for your family in being a maid in a Middle Eastern one. You'll be a de facto slave, treated like shit, have no way of leaving with your passport confiscated by your employers/owners and local police and justice system aggressively enforcing their rights to be your de facto owners. But you'll be able to finance your children, siblings and parents to have a much better life than they otherwise would be able to.
It's a deal that a lot of people in places like Philippines are very willing to take considering the alternatives. So there's no shortage of either supply nor demand, and so it goes on. And since it goes on, it will also go on on facebook.
Re:Duh (Score:4, Interesting)
This. Exactly.
Cultural norms and wealth levels are so vastly different in poor countries. Many things wealthy countries consider abhorrent are actually necessary for survival in poor regions. De facto slavery, human trafficking, and sex work being among them.
A story once told by a coworker regarding an office in India that we were building...he went out to observe construction and found children (pre-teen to early teen, obviously not adults) working to bring in supplies and do menial labor. He immediately contacted the construction manager to put a halt to it and ream him out - assuming it was a cost cutting measure to pocket more profit at serious risk to our companies reputation. What he learned instead was that it was a way of giving back to the local community - basically charity - to employ these children. Most were homeless and/or orphans - the employment allowed them to buy food and survive. Doing the "right thing" by US standards would have ultimately caused a fair number of children to starve.
There's no perfect answer and none of above is meant to be an endorsement of slavery or child labor.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
India already has basically a western economic system and government model. As the posters story shows, it is not a cure all, at that India is currently having the same problems with Populist divisive government that parts of the west are having.
Re: (Score:2)
This is nonsense. Indian democracy is built on fundamentally very different principles. You can't even pretend that it's really a single system, considering just how much power each region has. And problems you mention also only exist in some regions, and are utterly absent in others.
Because ultimately, the biggest problem for India is its size-induced internal diversity. People in Jammu and Kashmir have fundamentally different culture, interests, beliefs and leadership needs than people in Delhi. Who in tu
Re: (Score:2)
While all you say is true, the fact is that India is a parliamentary democracy so invading it and imposing a democracy isn't going to help.
Re: (Score:2)
I agree, but you are once again having a misunderstanding. What West likes to impose is a liberal democracy. Liberal reflects the concepts such as respect and codification for certain fundamental rights, methodology for building the relationship between the people, the bureaucracy and the government structures. And a high degree of universality of interpretations and applications of those things across entirety of populace.
India is not a liberal democracy. It has its own fundamental, highly regionalized set
Re: (Score:2)
My understanding is that the goal of India's Constitution was a liberal democracy, it may not have turned out that way. Their Constitution as originally written did seem to stress liberty, justice and equality. From Wiki,
Re: (Score:2)
Many things wealthy countries consider abhorrent are actually necessary for survival in poor regions. De facto slavery, human trafficking, and sex work being among them.
There is no country where slavery, human trafficking, and sex work are necessary for survival. These are all artifacts of huge inequality, not of poverty.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
And huge inequality is the norm in natural world. For all species on this planet, including humans. It's just that Western nations have successfully defeated things like total privation due to massive economic success of their systems, so those like you who live in their social bubbles, utterly isolated from reality think that these sorts of resources and capital are available everywhere.
Meanwhile in real world, deep privation due to near total lack of capital is the norm, not the exception. Which is why Ph
Re: (Score:2)
I think you're agreeing with me. Without huge inequality, these things wouldn't happen.
Re: (Score:2)
I am. I'm also pointing out that complaining about a natural law that concerns all living being on this planet is like saying that Sun is responsible for global warming.
Yes it is. But there's nothing we can do about that. At least nothing that wouldn't almost certainly lead to unforeseen catastrophic consequences that typically arise from messing around with natural laws without comprehending the whole that is being impacted and driven by them.
What we can do something about is smaller secondary issues, like
Re: (Score:2)
It's not quite so bad. Most of what you're talking about goes down to the lack of capital in the poor countries to invest into gainful industry to employ such people.
And that problem has been corrected massively over last three to four decades. This is the one thing that globalisation can genuinely count as a clear cut massive net benefit. It allows to funnel capital from places that are already very well developed into places that are less developed, and where same capital be much more productive in genera
Re: (Score:2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Rosling is a statistician, not a data analyst. You appear to fundamentally misunderstand his message of "what is happening" as "why it is happening".
A common misunderstanding among the "let's fix the world by banning things like slavery, child labour, sex trafficking etc" crowd. Who can't understand why it is that people they "save" from those fates and are moved back to their original place in their glorious small family farm... run away to cities within a short period of time to go into the next slavery,
Re:Duh (Score:4, Interesting)
"Facebook merely profits off slavery" doesn't quite have the same "it's not their fault" ring to it.
Re: (Score:2)
Let me make it personal then. You profit from slavery. You buy products that are made cheaply because of cheap access to oil-related products which are sourced from Middle East.
Just like Facebook profits from the products sold in Middle East which are advertised against all of Middle Eastern content a tiny sliver of which is slavery related.
Six degrees of separation to blame the Jews is a mindset best avoided.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Absolutely. But criticism that is criticising failures as compared to imaginary utopia is inherently pointless. It's important to critique things that compare things to objective reality instead.
In case of Apple, they did a lot of work to attempt to alleviate the problems of slave labour. Age requirements, work time requirements, work conditions requirements, audits and checks, the list is long. Reality is, Apple is not able to significantly change the policy of the most populated nation on the planet. It's
but apple did not crack down on labor at there fac (Score:2)
but apple did not crack down on labor at there factory's? if apple is going to take an stand on some labor stuff then they need to hard on the factory's that make apple stuff.
Re: (Score:2)
They tried. But that's the way of the land in PRC. So they did what they reasonably could without losing money and then stopped trying to push beyond that.
Re: (Score:2)
but apple did not crack down on labor at there factory's?
The working conditions on the "Apple line" at Foxconn are better than the other production lines. The vast majority of the stories about Foxconn come from those other product lines (maybe all, haven't checked).
There's plenty of people lining up to go after Apple who don't care when it's Dell or Microsoft.
The more things change (Score:2)
The more things change, the more they stay the same. One of Al Jazeera English investigative groups did a story on this several years ago about the plight of the "maids" from overseas (predominately from the Philippines) and the struggles and the seedy trade that goes on. It was an eye opener but when you spend enough time on the Al Jazeera platform, humanity depravity seems par for the course. In a way you get desensitized from all of it but you still can't help to feel for the maids and in a dark sadistic
Re: (Score:2)
The game wouldn't exist if the players stopped playing.
We just need to shut facebook down... (Score:2)
In its original idea (post pix of family and friends and stuff), it was fine.
As soon as they tried to monetize it, it went to shit.
At this point I think we can all agree it was a failed experiment and it is time to just shut it down completely. No name change or algorithm change or anything is going to work as long as they are focused on making money on the platform.
Re:We just need to shut facebook down... (Score:4, Insightful)
All that will happen is that something else will replace that is just as bad, if we continue with the monolithic social network concept.
We need to change to a distributed concept, where people can be on their own social networks all interlinking. We had this before. Perhaps time to beef up the NNTP protocol to require all posts be signed by the site/network, which will allow posts to be revoked/deleted, as well as add items like expiration times, and allow users a solid way to determine if a user is real, and if a social network is sloppy about bots, tune that entire site out completely, with an old school killfile.
The only real alternative is for governments to run social networks, and that has its issues.
Re: (Score:1)
As an America, I can't think of a WORSE scenario than letting government run social networks!
Wow, just wow. Can you imagine what a wet dream THAT would be for authoritarians? (We have constant updates of everything a person does through their week. Earned some cash selling a few used items? Here, IRS! Go get 'em for the taxes on that sale! They effectively reported the income to us when they posted on OUR network! Oh, and go arrest John Q. Public. He just handed over evidence he was breaking several
Re: (Score:2)
Reading comprehension? He clearly said of government-run "that has its issues". He was trying to back up his proposal by saying the only alternative is government-run which is decidedly not wanted (probably for the same reasons you list).
Re: (Score:2)
"In its original idea (post pix of family and friends and stuff), it was fine."
The original idea was to rate college girls on how hot they were.
"As soon as they tried to monetize it, it went to shit."
Zuckerberg was monetizing it from the very start. He was actually a little amazed that everybody would throw their valuable personal info at him just because he asked them.
Re: (Score:1)
Ah, the good 'ol days when evil was hands-on.
Of course it wasn't banned (Score:3)
I mean, they were only selling people like cattle. It's not like they were misgendering or deadnaming them. Have some perspective people!
what I wanna know.. (Score:2)
When should I close my short positions? I don't want to be left holding the bag when these stories stop "leaking" to the press.
Re: (Score:2)
Hold a sec (Score:1)
But how else is The Terminator to find a wife?
How about if you search for models? (Score:2)
Just because people are renting themselves out doesn't automatically make it illegal, did the Philippines request a blanket ban on maid recruitment?
But then... (Score:2)
Money.
So they didn't bother.
Shouldn't be facebook's job (Score:1)
Apple thretened FB beacause (Score:1)