On August 17, social media giant Facebook announced that it had banned Taliban and all content supporting it from all its platforms as it is considered as a terrorist organisation under US Law. A dedicated team of Afghan experts is monitoring and removing all content linked to the group from its platforms.
Notably, the Taliban has been using social media platforms for a long time to propagate its messages. Reports say that the Taliban has used WhatsApp extensively to spread its message.
While talking to ANI, Facebook’s spokesperson said, “The Taliban are sanctioned as a terrorist organisation under US law & we’ve banned them from our services under our Dangerous Organisation Policies. This means we remove accounts maintained by/on behalf of the Taliban and ban their praise, support, and representation.”
https://twitter.com/ANI/status/1427542384850595845?ref_src=twsrc%5EtfwThey further added, “We also have a dedicated team of Afghanistan experts, who are native Dari and Pashto speakers and have knowledge of local context, helping to identify and alert us about emerging issues on the platform.”
BBC quoted Facebook saying that the social media giant does not decide if it will recognise the governments but instead it follows the decisions made by the international community. The same policy applies to Instagram and WhatsApp. Facebook said that the company would take action against the accounts on all platforms linked to the terrorist outfit.
Twitter faced criticism for giving a platform to the Taliban
Facebook and its platforms are not the only ones used by the Taliban to spread its messages. Notably, Twitter has come under fire for giving a platform to the spokespersons of the Taliban to update their hundreds of thousands of followers as they took control of different regions of Afghanistan.
While talking to BBC, a Twitter spokesperson stated that Twitter does not allow groups that promote terrorism or violence against civilians, and there are policies laid down against violent organisations and hateful conduct.