In Egypt, the tried-and-true tool for opponents of PresidentHosni Mubarak in recent years has been Facebook. Most recently, itwas on Facebook - which boasts 5 million users in Egypt, the most inthe Arab world - where youthful outrage over the killing of aprominent activist spread, leading to the protests in Cairo's TahrirSquare and Mubarak's promise to step down this year.
But Facebook, which celebrates its seventh birthday Friday andhas more than a half-billion users worldwide, is not eagerlyembracing its role as the insurrectionists' instrument of choice.Its strategy contrasts with rivals Google and Twitter, whichactively helped opposition leaders communicate after the Egyptiangovernment shut down Internet access.
The Silicon Valley giant, whether it likes it or not, has beenthrust like never before into a sensitive global political momentthat pits the company's need for an open Internet against concernsthat autocratic regimes could limit use of the site or shut it downaltogether.
"The movement [in Egypt] was very dependent on Facebook," saidAlaa Abd El Fattah, an Egyptian blogger and activist in South Africawho has a strong following in Egypt. "It started with anger thenturned into a legitimate uprising."
The recent unrest in Egypt and Tunisia is forcing Facebookofficials to grapple with the prospect that other governments willgrow more cautious of permitting the company to operate in theircountries without restrictions or close monitoring, according toDavid Kirkpatrick, author of "The Facebook Effect," anauthorized biography of the company's history. Facebook is alsolooking at whether it should allow activists to have a measure ofanonymity on the site, he said.
"I have talked to people inside Facebook in the last week, andthey are debating this internally," Kirkpatrick said. "Manycountries where Facebook is popular have autocracies ordictatorships, and most of the countries have passively toleratedtheir popularity. But what's happened in Egypt or Tunisia is likelyto change other countries' attitudes, and they'll be more wary ofFacebook operating there."
A Facebook spokesman, Andrew Noyes, declined to make anyone atthe company available to discuss its role in the Egypt protests orits strategy in politically fraught environments. In a shortstatement, Noyes said: "Although the turmoil in Egypt is a matterfor the Egyptian people and their government to resolve, limitingInternet access for millions of people is a matter of concern forthe global community. It is essential to communication and tocommerce. No one should be denied access to the Internet."
(Washington Post Co. Chairman Donald E. Graham sits on Facebook'sboard.)
Even when Facebook has actively helped protesters work aroundgovernment intrusions, the company casts its moves as mere technicalsolutions. Last month, after Tunisian security officials used avirus to secretly collect local Facebook user IDs and passwords, theInternet giant took action. It rerouted Tunisia's Facebook trafficto a site where local Internet service providers couldn't gobble upuser information.
In a statement released to The Post, the company said it viewedthe predicament as just a "security problem" in need of a fix.
"Certainly there's a political context to the particularcircumstance in Tunisia, but from Facebook's perspective, whathappened was a security problem that required a technologicalsolution: we prevented an exploit that was making Facebook accountsvulnerable and restored the integrity of the compromised accounts,"wrote Joe Sullivan, Facebook's chief security officer. "We wouldhave taken the same approach in any situation where we saw asystematic exploit."
Yet Facebook seems to be veering in a different direction thanGoogle, which has battled China over censorship, or Twitter, themicroblogging site that earned renown during the Iranian protests of2009 for delaying a scheduled shutdown and facilitating civilprotest in Tehran. This week, Twitter, Google and SayNow, a voice-based social media platform, launched a service that providesEgyptians with phone numbers to call and leave messages, which arerecorded and posted on the Internet. It's called Tweet2Speak.
In early 2010, in the wake of Google's censorship clashes withChina, Facebook was one of a handful of companies blasted byCongress for refusing to participate in Senate committee hearingsthat examined how Silicon Valley companies were operating withforeign governments. Facebook responded at the time by saying it hadno employees in China and that it was a different kind of businessthan Google.
Facebook's director of public policy, Tim Sparapani, wrote in aletter to Sen. Richard J. Durbin. (D-Ill.): "These conflictingapproaches presents challenges for companies, particularly ones suchas Facebook that are small and growing, to navigate new marketsaround the world without strong support from national governmentsand multinational institutions."
Facebook hasn't joined the Global Network Initiative, a nonprofitcoalition of communications companies - including Microsoft, Googleand Yahoo - established to create anti-censorship standards aroundthe world. (Twitter hasn't joined, either.)
Some advocates of online free speech say Facebook can no longerlinger on the sidelines.
"The good news for Twitter and Facebook is how important theyare, and one should congratulate them for being critical tools,"said John Palfrey, the co-director of Harvard University's BerkmanCenter for Internet & Society. "But also, there is an obligationthat comes with that level of adoption."
Even though Facebook has refrained from taking overtly politicalstances on Egypt, the social network remains a vital tool forconveying anti-government news about Egypt.
Riyaad Minty, al-Jazeera's social-media head, said the newsagency has been live-streaming its coverage of the protests on itsFacebook fan pages in the United States and Arab world, boosting itsfan volume by 30 to 50 percent; its half-dozen status updates aboutthe crisis have reaped 10 million views a day, up from the 2 milliondaily views the pages had previously, Minty said.
"I do think governments see Facebook as a political tool, whichis why Egypt has shut off the Internet," said Minty, adding that heprefers Facebook's more objective approach so it does notunnecessarily rattle conservative foreign leaders.
Additionally, Facebook ad sales teams have been helping al-Jazeera capitalize on Egypt's crisis to attract more eyeballs in theUnited States and build up a new, loyal audience.
"They've been giving us strategic advice," he said. "We'retargeting people over 18, and our big push has been toward the U.S.audience."
Some Internet experts say Facebook needs to determine how toprotect its users in countries with restrictive regimes, but thecompany's terms of use - which require members to use realidentities - make protesters vulnerable to government spying.Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has insisted on the policy,saying the site would lose integrity if people hid behind phonyidentities.
"People at Facebook have been asking themselves in the wake ofEgypt or Tunisia whether there might be a way they can allowpolitical activities in these spontaneous revolts to acquire alittle bit of anonymity," said Kirkpatrick, the company'sbiographer. "The problem is, if they start making it easier forpolitical activists to use Facebook in places like Egypt or Tunisia,those same capabilities are likely to be used by people we don'tadmire or pro-government thugs."
Kirkpatrick added that these choices all come down to thecompany's famously private CEO.
"Inside Facebook," he said, "there's really only one person whomakes these decisions. He has to decide."
kangc@washpost.com shapirai@washpost.com
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