The Taliban will not be able to rely on Facebook to communicate
Eva Deschamps / August 17, 2021
Facebook will block all messages from the Taliban as well as any expressions of support for the group that recently regained power in Afghanistan. Facebook considers the Taliban a terrorist organization, a spokesman for the social media told the BBC on Tuesday.
A specialized team of Afghan experts has been set up by the American company to scan the web for suspicious messages and eventually delete them. These experts are familiar with the local situation and speak the local languages. WhatsApp and Instagram, subsidiaries of Facebook, will also ban such messages. The Taliban have used social media extensively in the past.
Now, social media companies must assess what they plan to do with these messages and the Taliban in general, following the capture of Kabul on Sunday night. The Taliban is considered a terrorist organization under U.S. law and we are excluding them from our services under our 'terrorist organizations' policy. This means that we will remove all accounts created in the name of the Taliban and ban all content that supports them, said the Facebook spokesperson.
Twitter has also stressed that it will not allow any content that promotes terrorism or violence against citizens. But the Taliban have so far made good use of the social network to report on their progress in the country, the BBC reports.