According to ArabianBusiness.com the next online community website facing a ban could be FACEBOOK!!! I can't believe such a cool site might be blocked when it is so much better and advanced than Orkut. You can always count on Gulf News to lead the pack of morality wolves. Are there all mutawwas on the board of the TRA?!
Read the article here
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17 comments:
If they banned Orkut.com, why not facebook too since it's a social network as well and there's explicit material in places there too. why don't they do something about that "want a bigger dick?" spam shit going around with pictures of a really big cock. how is THAT not offensive? Hell. Why don't they just ban all of the Internet because there's a lot of offensive material anywhere you go, according to the bozos at the TRA anyway. "OMG social network? no can't have that, ban it it's bad for our young people" no wonder UAE's full of freaks and sickos.
jay,
The 'world' is full of freaks and sicko's.. it's not exclusive to the UAE.
Okay, I know this is off-topic, but I tried to get my blog added to the blogroll a couple days back..
http://dxb-business.blogspot.com/
That Gulf News has banned orkut is nothing new as their forte being news and having not much reporting to DO other than just culling from other news agencies is no wonder its claiming to be the # 1 news provider. BTW its a matter of time Face Book and the like if not UAE Community blog and SD and Samurai Sam will get the axe the next time gulf news wants to highlights its moral policing in the UAE.
clayfuture, where in the article ArabianBusiness.com does it say that facebook *could* be facing a ban *officially*?
"The move (after blocking Orkut) has fueled SPECULATION among UAE internet-users...AS TO WHETHER...Facebook..is next in line to get the axe."
This is the media, reporting on SPECULATION. Same as hooters, which never officially applied to the government for a license!
There's a difference between the media reporting speculation, and reporting official bans.
All you've done is added publicity to the issue, when so far, there's no offical ban, or consideration of it ;)
And btw your statement "Are there all mutawwas on the board of the TRA?!" is quite offensive.
"BTW its a matter of time Face Book and the like if not UAE Community blog and SD and Samurai Sam will get the axe the next time gulf news wants to highlights its moral policing in the UAE."
I eagerly await the fast hand of the TRA to move and block any blog; especially considering they take half a fucking decade to unblock music on myspace.
Someone should tell the TRA how social networking sites are used by employment agencies and HR these days.
Given the right spin, I'm sure they'd end up making one of their own...
As for an official word on the ban, there was no TRA comment regarding similar sites, so it's a matter of wait and see, methinks.
Gulfnews have introduced a poll now on there front page;
"Was Gulf News right in highlighting the issue of adult content on orkut.com?"
Yes
15.84%
No
80.79%
Do not know
3.359%
I personally am going to never buy another copy of Gulf news due to the content being inconsistent with the cultural, political and moral values of myself.
Please excuse atrocious grammer of above comment. It was typed in anger.
I am going to get it blocked.
I havent really come across any explicit material on facebook
You can still use Orkut. Goto www.powerscrap.com and login to your orkut account there. Well use it until Etifuck blocks that too.
I haven't come across any explicit material on Facebook, but then I haven't gone look for it. Just searching "UAE" or "Dubai" brought up all sort of sexually-related shit on Orkut, and there was so much sex spam even in normal communities.
But if they want to stop people hooking up online for sex, then they need to cut off the entire internet. People people will flirt and hook up wherever they can find a forum to do so.
Better education of younger, impressionable people about the risks, and better monitoring of children's internet use is the way to go. Not trying to stop adults from hooking up with other adults - because you can't stop that offline or online.
We'll block Facebook and Orkut and anything else since you're not using our very own Weyak.
secretdubai,
I have only started using facebook recently and have yet to come across any objectionable material (unless you call friends who post pictures of their cats objectionable - I do!).
As long as both sites (or more) are not affecting businesses, I don't think anyone cares to give this a second thought.
'Dubai Entrepreneur - As long as both sites (or more) are not affecting businesses, I don't think anyone cares to give this a second thought.'
Facebook does have a similiar functionality to 'linkedin' it sources you address book and allows you to keep in contact with old work colleagues and buisness contacts when they change email address.
There are also a lot of groups based on buisness subjects from IT to boat building.
4th comment above from Anon @ 12:58 mentioned:
"BTW its a matter of time Face Book and the like if not UAE Community blog and SD and Samurai Sam will get the axe the next time gulf news wants to highlights its moral policing in the UAE."
Interesting opinion, we don't see much of it on here.
Interesting opinion, we don't see much of it on here.
Here's another interesting opinion. How about seeing some triple-faced, hypocritical, & holier-than-thou sites get axed first?
BTW its a matter of time Face Book and the like if not UAE Community blog and SD and Samurai Sam will get the axe the next time gulf news wants to highlights its moral policing in the UAE.
Well I doubt any of our sites would be blocked for moral policing. There are no obscene images on my site, no sexually-related ads, and any sex-related posts I do make (eg the man and the camel) nearly all derive from a UAE newspaper first.
At the end of the day you cannot use my website - or UAE comm - to indulge in or incite immoral activity. If we found people using comments to post sexually related links we would delete them.
There are some blog that post more about people's personal sexual experiences that the moral police may try to block, but I sincerely hope they don't. At the end of the day it is your choice whether you read these blogs or not. Anyone seriously looking for sexual material can find it, blocks or not.
I don't mind them blocking the kind of stuff that would cause offence to normal users: eg ads for sex sites. I'm quite happy to see the proxy page come up instead of a banner ad for an XXX site.
One forum I used to be on had a "two clicks" rule: if people wanted to link to something questionable/adult, it had to be at least two clicks away. So you could link to another blog that linked to pics of Janet Jackson's wardrobe disaster, but you couldn't link directly to those pics. It gave people a bit more of a chance not to click and see stuff that offended them.
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