Facebook ban in Mauritius ?
The cat was out of the box. The Mauritian government will be approaching Facebook to ask for temporary country filtering during exams period or might even try to ban Facebook from Mauritian networks.
How did this happen? The most important exams in Mauritius are the HSC (Higher School Certificate-evaluating the end of high school studies) exams directed by the University of Cambridge, UK. The University of Cambridge deals with the same exams in many countries over the world namely Pakistan, Singapore or Malaysia. The exam papers are pretty much the same but the University of Cambridge has not been prepared enough to see the implication of social networking in exam paper leakage.
This ended up in having the same exam papers sent to different countries with different time zones. The 12 hour difference between Mauritius and Malaysia has been exploited over the Internet where students having done their examination in Malaysia have posted their exam questions and the answers on Facebook via the blackpapers.info portal and Facebook group.
Mauritian authorities don’t know how to deal with the situation and are proposing either that students sit for a new version of the exams and have also emitted the idea of banning the incriminated sites, provided they can be held guilty for this.
This has lead to a huge upheaval in the Mauritian Web community and bloggers are uniting for or against this government proposal. Some examples here (in Mauritius English, French and Creole are the main languages/dialect, so you might see a mixture of them on these blogs):
[DISCLAIMER: there might be some use of inappropriate language on some of these. Not my reponsibility.]
Island Crisis
The Media Guru
Shah – Wacko Geek
S4ndeep
My point of view is the following. I understand the frustration and the overall absurdity of the situation but this will not be done for certain because:
1/ Facebook is one of the most used social networks in the world and as many big companies, does not give a damn about being controlled by any world government. Do you think they will set their developers to spend their time building filters for Mauritius while they might be getting more money off new apps?
2/ One term: Cyberisland! Mauritian government has been bragging about this for the past years. Making an internet filter on Facebook in Mauritius is like putting a bullet in the government’s own foot! Will Mauritius stay in the new media, web 2.0, connectivity with an action like this? The simple act of citing this has already thrown years of work down the drain.
3/ Welcome to China! Try censorship. People have been fighting to speak freely and banning any site or building any filter will send the country back in the non-respect of human rights!
4/ All in all, if there are leaks, its Cambridge’s problem. There are many solutions available such a preprinted and student numbered answer booklets and the student has to give it back to have his/her copy corrected. Instead of investing in crap filters and site banishing which will cost millions they might as well use less money to get better results.
Category: News
Let’s ban phones, other social networking sites, messaging applications inc. e-mail, etc..
It’s laughable as well as irritable because some of us use social networking sites as means to communicate with uni friends. Instead of logging into the blackboard and use the intranet e-mail, one uses Facebook or ConnectU though the networks feature. Even tutors are registered.
I don’t know whether it’s the same with the Mauritius University but most grad students who are spending their holidays here while conducting research, will be severely affected.
I don’t care about the HSC leaked papers. I care about online censorship. The HSC leaked papers thingy is NOT related to web sites. Mind you, it’s connected to “communication” which is kinda ironic.
Let’s ban smoke signals!
ICTA = bullshit IMO.
[...] Web design Bureau of Mauritius. [...]
Twitter: kurtavish
ICTA = Bull ass!!! Sorry for the foul words!
Even I dnt care about those HSC thingy! The matter is that our medium of communication and expression is being threatened by the government!! This government had already banned facebook LAST YEAR!! And if they think that banning facebook from mauritius is the solution to the stinky shit smelling fault of CAMBRIDGE then I got to say that we have ass holes as government!!
Lets see what happen!
One of the core concepts of Web 2.0 is the fact that people interact on the web. Social networking is the basis of this
. We now live in a world where this type of communication prevails. If the University of Cambridge sets out to carry on working as if they were in last century’s 50s its their problem but they still have to take the “communication highways” in consideration.
Like Yusha said, best thing for them might be to work some more and make unique exam papers for each country they have to prepare HSCs.
In Mauritius quite a lot of persons fear new technology and have the prevailing idea that “Internet is bad” (actually, its the way a lot of people think around the world) and when something goes wrong the mantra is “the Internet is the culprit”
. We are in a situation where the means is being declared guilty. 
I offer you sanctuary.
URL: http://shah.developer4ever.com/index.php/2008/11/14/sanctuary/
An open space is available for HSC students on this blog here.
Twitter: tushal
Blogroll and bookmarked.
Finally they won’t ban facebook.ICTA “refused”.