Information Society Watch

June 12, 2007, Internet Artizans

The article analyses the social networking websites with regard to their support for freedom of expression. Although such websites claim to be public communities, in reality they are communities created by corporates for profit. This can result in serious privacy violations and restrictions on expression, as any content that poses a hindrance to revenue and advertising is liable to curbed. This conflict is apparent in the Terms of Service Agreements which is at significant variance to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and asserts the right of the company to remove content according to its judgment. The online community as well as organisations like Privacy International are now awake to the challenges posed by such corporate ownership of privately generated content and may have to fight a hard battle to ensure universal freedom expression in the Internet space.

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