You can't beat Facebook; just ask the kids

You can't beat Facebook; just ask the kids

Perched somewhere between stupidity and malice, we threatened to block Facebook. In trying to do so, we announced to the world that we believe in censoring the global stream of information, in stymying a new, collective consciousness. Apparently, we failed. Spectacularly. Not that it was the most surprising thing on this earth.

China can do it because it's big and cold and powerful. North Korea can do it because it's chosen to live in a parallel universe. What is Thailand? Were we so malicious or stupid, we should've done it a long time ago. But we're neither. We're indecisive, delusional, groping our way to the future like a man on crutches who thinks he is driving a Ferrari.

At 10am on Tuesday, 25 million people in Thailand waited with bated breath to see if their News Feed would be cut off, as the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC) had threatened Facebook should they fail to remove 131 pages deemed illegal. When the clock ticked 10, woof!, nothing happened. The NBTC also mentioned a lawsuit should the Zuckerberg machine not comply with our mighty demands and violate Thai laws. Such chest-thumping could only scare the faint-hearted, and Facebook, which said it was ready to cooperate when the authorities had all the papers in order, isn't one of them.

Even children know the NBTC won't block Facebook. It's too late -- the world has moved on to the point that it can't be turned back. If News Feed goes offline, the victims aren't just those trivial food pictures or cat videos or private lamentations. It's the businesses that put their ads on Facebook, multinational companies that rely on online traffic, or those that have released viral videos and conduct their sales on the platform. Our trustworthiness will tank. In short, Facebook cannot be defeated -- not today, and not by the NBTC or the military government whose digital literacy is, to be honest, tragic (just visit any state agency websites and you'll get the picture).

The whole dud built up to an epic anticlimax, and yet it's more than just a case of to-block-or-not-to-block the globe's most influential news provider. It's a display of our official state of mind: Our leadership still believe in censorship in a world where censorship is very, very hard, if not impossible. It shows they still believe in fixed borders, in definitive frontiers of information, when the global trafficking of images, texts, ideas and news has reached near infinity. They hold on to the illusion of control when we've entered an age where anyone with a smart phone can access the entire history of human knowledge and memory.

What are we to think we can stop that? In which century is the NBTC living in?

Should Facebook respect local laws? Of course it should. But then again, it's more complicated than that. And again we're talking about frontiers, jurisdiction, and clearly defined territory in an age where all those terms grow fuzzier by the day. No doubt Facebook is under pressure. If they let us tell them what's publishable or not, other countries will make the same demand. And as long as the "violation" isn't something universally defined, such as live murder or financial fraud, it will be hard to boss Mr Zuckerberg around. By nature, Facebook is a liberal-minded organism, and the strong arm of conservative thinking we valiantly practise has no place there. Really, I thought the people behind "Thailand 4.0" would be clever enough to know that.

So it became a petty spat in which we came out humiliated. All the more so because in this same week, another Facebook-related story got a lot of shares and column inches. We haven't forgotten Jatupat "pai Dao Din" Boonpattararaksa, who's still in jail for the crime of sharing an article on Facebook -- for clicking that innocuous button that hundreds of millions of people also click every day without being punished. This week, Mr Jatupat was awarded the 2017 Gwangju Prize for Human Rights. But since he wasn't allowed to leave jail, his parents travelled to South Korea on his behalf.

Who would've thought that "playing Facebook" -- as the Thai usage goes -- could bring upon a man such lamentable consequences? Jail term, bail denied and possibly a ruined future, plus many years of Facebook-lessness. In totalitarian states elsewhere, there are dissidents jailed for airing their views -- and yet we have never read a case of someone criminalised for sharing an article that nearly 3,000 other people also shared.

Facebook is a beast, but if there's something it should make a clear stance for, this is it: a mission to advocate accessibility, openness and responsible reporting. Mr Jatupat is a casualty, perhaps a martyr, in a long battle between the past and the future. Which one will we choose?

Kong Rithdee is Life editor, Bangkok Post.

Kong Rithdee

Bangkok Post columnist

Kong Rithdee is a Bangkok Post columnist. He has written about films for 18 years with the Bangkok Post and other publications, and is one of the most prominent writers on cinema in the region.

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