Tawakkol Karman for "Al Jazeera": These are the goals and plan of the Censorship Board in Facebook ... and Saudi tweets attack it

Yemeni activist Tawakkol Kerman spoke on "Al-Jazeera" channel about her selection as a member of the World Monitoring Council for Facebook and its goal, while voices calling for boycotting Facebook in Saudi Arabia because of his choice of the Nobel Prize-winning activist came out. 

In a direct interview with her broadcast on Al-Jazeera, Kerman confirmed that the primary oversight board’s mission is to supervise the content posted on the largest social media platforms, in accordance with human rights standards and international covenants for freedom of opinion and expression, and according to Facebook standards.

Kerman answered the broadcaster's question if the council was an attempt to embellish a Facebook image or a peg to suspend its mistakes, saying, "It is not the goal of the council members to defend Facebook and do not take legal responsibility for it," explaining that they "will constitute an additional lens of censorship, and an accountable point for Facebook."

Kerman said that the decisions of the Council are binding on Facebook and are transparent and clear, and the Council is completely independent of the company, and that all its members - despite their different languages ​​and identities - are unanimous in the importance of defending freedom of expression.

How will the council work?
The Yemeni activist says that the content that the council will agree to remove is content that will incite hatred, violence, terrorism and racism.

She pointed out that the council meets almost daily to approve the dealing mechanism, and there are three mechanisms including receiving appeals by users, referring Facebook to some issues to the council, then recommendations that the council will present to the company. Through the website, the council will publish its decisions it has made, and statements about Facebook's commitment to it.

And Kerman considered during the interview that Facebook and Instagram are a civilized achievement for humanity, and considers that the attempt of governments to monopolize the media and information and fight such platforms and voices, as annoying.

On her goal of membership in the council, Kerman says, "I will defend by being inside the council to enable the voices of people all over the world and in the Arab region in particular."

Campaigns to boycott Facebook
in response to the campaigns that target it, Kerman said that she has become accustomed to such campaigns from some countries, and attributes their reason to their positions opposing the policies of those countries and their criticism of their poor record in human rights.

"I deal positively with other points of view," the Yemeni activist said. "I consider the campaigns issued by electronic flies and carried out by fake and funded accounts, and members of the Council expect these actions."

And as soon as the announcement of Tawakkol Karman's membership in the Supervisory Board of Facebook, voices calling for boycotting the site came to punish the company for this decision. 

The "# No_Facebook_Saudi Arabia" tag appeared as a campaign of Saudi accounts on "Twitter", calling on Facebook users in the Kingdom to disable their accounts on the site of communication. In this tag, the tweets accused the Yemeni Nobel Peace Prize activist of hostility and incitement to Saudi Arabia, and of belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood.

In their tweets, they explained that most of the content on Facebook targets the Saudi interior, and that the Saudis' departure from it is considered an economic loss to the site in an advertisement, they said.

An account calling himself "Pilot Corner" was the first to tweet the campaign and invited the public to boycott Facebook, which is an imaginary account active in multiple campaigns, the last of which was the call to boycott the products of the company "Amazon" in the Kingdom, and his account was later subject to deletion and then returned again .

Mark Owen Jones, an expert in information systems and digital science, said that the manager of the "Pilot Corner" account had 12 previous Twitter accounts.

However, some tweeters played down the feasibility of calling to disable accounts via Facebook because the company has the most important applications used by the Saudi community, especially the "Instagram" and "WhatsApp" applications that are difficult to dispense with and find an alternative to them.

The "No to Facebook_ in the Kingdom" tag issued the circulation list in Saudi Arabia with about 8000 tweets, along with accompanying tags, including "# Tawakol_Kerman_Terrorism" and "#Delete_Face_Because of Tokel_Kerman".