Facebook May Not Lift Ban on Taliban Even if US Softens Its View

Facebook might not elevate its ban on the Taliban even when the United States stops imposing sanctions on the group, which has quickly taken management of Afghanistan, the social media firm’s coverage chief stated on Wednesday.

The US State Department doesn’t checklist the Afghan Taliban as a Foreign Terrorist Organization prefer it does the Pakistani Taliban. But Washington does sanction the group as a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist,” which freezes the US belongings of these blacklisted and bars Americans from working with them.

“They will not be allowed while they are prescribed by the US law and even if they were not prescribed by US law, we would have to do a policy analysis on whether or not they nevertheless violate our dangerous organisations policy,” Facebook’s vice president of content policy Monika Bickert said on a call with reporters about the company’s latest community standards enforcement report.

Facebook says it designates the Taliban a terrorist group and bans it from its platforms. Bickert said the ban had been in place before she joined the company in 2012.

Major tech companies have faced scrutiny about how they will handle the group that has seized control in Afghanistan following a withdrawal of US troops. Alphabet’s YouTube said that it bans the group due to US sanctions, but Twitter has allowed the group to have a presence.

“In 2001 when the US invaded Afghanistan, these corporations didn’t exist,” stated Rose Jackson, director of the Democracy & Tech Initiative on the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, and so they now face consequential choices akin to state determinations of governments.

The Taliban have develop into digitally savvy and now use a variety of social media platforms and messaging providers like Facebook’s WhatsApp and Telegram to speak with Afghan residents and the worldwide group.

© Thomson Reuters 2021