If you thought social media platforms deciding whether to ban former President Trump was ethically thorny...that was a single briar compared to the Maleficent’s thicket that is the Taliban’s web presence.
The last time the Taliban was in power in Afghanistan (1996–2001), just one-tenth of 1% of the country was on the internet, according to the World Bank. So, this is the first time social media platforms have had to take a stance on whether to allow the Taliban in its resumed role as effective leader of Afghanistan to post content.
How it stands
- Facebook and YouTube have banned the Taliban under the premise that it’s a terrorist organization, and Facebook additionally prohibits any “praise, support, and representation” of the group, even from non-Taliban accounts.
- Twitter is more hands-off, only banning posts that exhibit “glorification of violence, platform manipulation, and spam.”
They’ll need to decide whether to update these policies or double down on enforcing them soon, because the Taliban has been more active than a LinkedIn thought leader lately: 100+ new accounts and Facebook pages claiming ties to or supporting the Taliban have cropped up since August 9 across Twitter and Facebook, according to a report by the NYT.
These accounts work together to amplify each other, so when one posts, they all engage with it and post on similar topics.
But cracking down may be a question of “can,” not “should”
Taliban posters evade current content policies by, for instance,...
Read Full Story: https://www.morningbrew.com/daily/stories/2021/08/20/social-media-companies-confront-taliban
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