Facebook removes Taliban spokesperson’s account

KABUL: The Taliban Spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, has accused the Facebook of violating the Islamist group’s right to free speech by banning them from all its platforms, foreign media reported.

The Facebook has removed user accounts linked to the Taliban spokesperson.

Journalists, Mujahid suggested, should ask people at Facebook “who are claiming to be promoters of freedom of speech,” why the Islamist movement is banned from posting on any Facebook-owned platform, including Instagram and WhatsApp.

Until Mujahid appeared in the Afghan government press center on Tuesday, following the Taliban’s capture of the capital over the weekend, he had spoken to reporters on behalf of the group for nearly two decades without ever having been seen by them or photographed.

A Facebook spokesperson declined to comment on the criticism from her Taliban counterpart but provided a statement from the company explaining the rationale for the ban.

“The Taliban is sanctioned as a terrorist organisation under US law and they are banned from our services under our Dangerous Organisation policies. This means we remove accounts maintained by or on behalf of the Taliban and prohibit praise, support, and representation of them,” the statement said.

Determinations about which content to remove are made by what the company calls “a dedicated team of Afghanistan experts, who are native Dari and Pashto speakers and have knowledge of local context.”

While those experts are “closely monitoring this situation as it evolves,” the company stressed that “Facebook does not make decisions about the recognised government in any particular country but instead respects the authority of the international community in making these determinations.

Regardless of who holds power, we will take the appropriate action against accounts and content that breaks our rules.”

Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, told Bloomberg News on Monday, “We don’t actually allow any presence, any celebration, any promotion or any representation of the Taliban on Instagram or on any of the Facebook apps.” He added that the company was “proactively” taking down “anything that might be dangerous or that is related to the Taliban.”