syriastew.com

Facebook was blocked in Syria over the weekend, in an apparent crackdown of online activities. The Washington Post reported many in Syria are angered by the block:

Syrian users of Facebook said on Friday the authorities had blocked access to the social network Web site as part of a crackdown on political activism on the Internet.

“Facebook helped further civil society in Syria and form civic groups outside government control. This is why it has been banned,” women’s rights advocate Dania al-Sharif told Reuters.

“They cut off communications between us and the outside world. We are used to this behavior from our government,” said Mais al-Sharbaji, who set up a Facebook group for amateur Syrian photographers.

There was no comment form the government, which has intensified a campaign against bloggers, virtual opinion forums and independent media sites in recent months.

Syria has been under emergency rule since the Baath Party took power in a 1963 coup. No public criticism of the party and the powerful security apparatus is allowed. Scores of dissidents have been jailed over the past year.

On Joshua Landis’ site Syria Comment, at least one person presented a different view of the Facebook crackdown, arguing that the authorities were reacting to offensive spam aimed at President Assad’s wife. Here are some of his comments:

Dear Josh,

Lets put things in a bit of context!

Since the blocking of Facebook in Syria (first ISP blocked it on Saturday, the last ISP to block it was on Thursday), I was monitoring the “Syria Network” on Facebook (the official Facebook network for Syria).

First, here are the facts, my analysis will follow:

1-Official number of Syrian Internet SUBSCRIBERS in Syria is 370,000 (end 2006). The total estimated number of USERS is 1.5 million users.
2-Number of Syrians residing in Syria who are members of Facebook (those on the official “Syria Network”): 28,350 users (23-Nov-2007)
3-Increase ratio of Syrians joining Facebook (overwhelming majority with their full name): 10,000 users per month. In early October, the number of Syrians on the “Syria Network” was 12,000, today it is over 28,000 users.
4-Percentage of Internet Users in Syria who are Facebook users: 28,300 / 1.5 million = 0.0055 percent

Clearly, if I was in security services, the Syrian security services would love to increase this number and have all Syrians on Facebook. This would facilitate fully monitoring people who are using their photo/full name/ address/phone/email..etc. So the theory for blocking Facebook because few of those well-identified non-anonymous users (all 0.005 percent of Internet users!) are “politically active” does not stand.
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Why now? What has changed in the last few days? Politically active Syrians were using Facebook since day one and no censorship took place until now. What has changed? Did the censors have a target of 0.005 percent of Internet users in Syria to block access to facebook?!
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In my opinion, the reason is the following:
Since Facebook was launched, the official Syria Facebook network was overwhelmingly “social” in nature with occasional moderate “political activity”. A couple of days before the blocking took place (on Nov 15th), a systematic vulgar spam campaign was launched in the Syria Network by few people (with avatars resembling Israeli flags and ridiculing Syrians and Bashar). Those few persistent users posted thousands of nothing but profanity and attacks on Syria, Bashar and Asma Alasad.

If one enters the Syria Network in the last few days, they would find nothing but curses and profanity against Syria, Bashar and Asma Alasad. The Syrian censors acted as expected of any censorship system in the Middle East on such cases.. they blocked access to Facebook!
Anyone is welcome to try the following interesting experiment:
-Organize a team of few dedicated college students.
-Ask them to join Facebook on the Jordanian, Egyptian, Saudi, UAE, Qatari or Tunisian official networks. Let them spam the network with profanity attacking the president/king in that country with such dedication. I argue that in a matter of hours Facebook would be blocked in such countries. In fact, several social networking tools (similar to Facebook) are blocked in the most progressive (and politically neutral) Gulf countries such as the UAE (Dubai) and Bahrain (services such as Google’s Orkut for example). This is because very few opposition elements used to exist on them…
Despite heavy-handedness in Internet censorship in Syria, I don’t think that the “political activity” of a small portion of 0.005 percent of Syrian Internet users (most of whom by the way -as Alex argued- were staunchly defending Bashar online against such attack!) was the reason behind Facebook getting blocked. It was the systematic abusive spam attack that the Syrian censors had no other control on but to block access. I argue that Syria Comment or Creative Syria blogs have far more “political activity” of Syrian opposition than Facebook but they are still accessible in Syria.