TECH NEWS – Facebook has confirmed that it will continue to ban Taliban content from its platforms as it considers it a terrorist organisation.

The company said an exceptional team of Afghan experts is monitoring and removing content related to the group. The Taliban have been using social media to spread their messages for years. Following the US withdrawal, Islamist extremists took power in Afghanistan within moments of the US withdrawal, posing new challenges for technology companies to manage content related to the group.

“The Taliban is sanctioned as a terrorist organisation under US law, and we have banned them from our services under our Dangerous Organisation Policy. This means we are removing accounts maintained by or on behalf of the Taliban and banning their praise, support and advocacy,” a Facebook spokesperson told the BBC.

Facebook said, “We also have a team of Afghanistan experts, native speakers of Dari and Pashto, with excellent knowledge of the local conditions, who help identify and alert us to issues on the platform”. The social media giant said it would not decide on the recognition of national governments but would follow the “authority of the international community” (a rather vague definition – ed.)

Facebook stressed that the policy applies to all its platforms, including its flagship social media platforms Instagram and WhatsApp. However, there are also reports that WhatsApp is currently the primary tool used by the Taliban for communication. Facebook has responded to the BBC by saying it will take action if it finds accounts on the app linked to the group.

Rival social media platforms have also come under scrutiny over how they handle Taliban-related content. Spokespeople have used Twitter to notify their hundreds of thousands of followers since the group retook control of Afghanistan. Responding to questions from the BBC about how the Taliban use Twitter, a spokesperson for the company highlighted the company’s policy against violent organisations and hate speech.

According to Twitter’s rules, Twitter does not allow groups to exist that promote terrorism or violence against civilians. Alphabet, for YouTube part, has not yet responded to the BBC’s request for comment on its policy on the Taliban.

Source: BBC News