Crackdown On Taliban Associated Social Media

After the US Army left Afghanistan, the Taliban-a terrorist organization has taken over the state. They are running a government by forcefully pushing the elected government into exile. Midst of the evolving situations, calls for crackdown on the social media accounts of Taliban has increased all over the globe. Under the US Sanction Laws, the US-based social media companies will to ban or restrict terror affiliated accounts.

The various social media giants questioned intensively on whether they will allow terrorist groups to function on their platforms. In an internet-driven global world, the glorification of terrorist organizations, justification of hate crimes has become common. This justification has led to the normalization of violence in daily lives leading to an increasingly polarized world. 

GOOGLE:

The Alphabet Inc. subsidiary YouTube assured that their platform won’t allow propagation of Talibani perspective. They further said, their long-held policy of restricting accounts working under the Terrorist won’t change. As per some unconfirmed reports, the search engine giant, Google will push Talibani favoring links down in the page rank system. Though they won’t remove any documentary, educational content or artistic works related to the Taliban. 

FACEBOOK:

Mark Zuckerberg owned Facebook had already banned the Taliban many years back on their platform. They would continue on the same stance along with their subsidiary, Instagram. They will either ban or restrict more accounts related to the Taliban in the coming days with the removal of Talibani favoring posts. Through the hiring of local people, they’re identifying and removing posts in local languages praising the Taliban and related organizations. 

Another Facebook Inc. subsidiary, WhatsApp says that due to their message encryption system, it is difficult to control the flow of content. A FB spokesperson told CNBC that, “They will AI systems to identify and evaluate non-encrypted information like profile photos, names and group descriptions”. This will help them detect potentially harmful content and accounts. 

TWITTER:

Unlike other social media giants, Twitter is following a different approach on the crackdown on related accounts. Their approach is being called politically motivated. Twitter told that their platform is used by people for help during rapidly changing times. Hence, they are in turmoil and will enforce rules only if they find violations of their policies. In short, they won’t ban the Taliban from their platform if they follow the rules of the platform. To note that, Donald Trump is still banned from Twitter and the Taliban isn’t. 

TIKTOK AND OTHER SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS:

TikTok banned in India said that, “They consider Taliban as a terrorist group. They would ban any content found video that glorify, promote or even support Taliban”. Above all, several other relatively less popular social media sites like Reddit, Twitch and Koo etc. haven’t disclosed their approaches in dealing with Taliban related accounts.

Also Read| Russia Supporting Taliban, Here’s how