Facebook on Tuesday announced that it will ban posts and other content related to the Taliban. The social media giant said that both the Taliban group itself and user-posted Taliban-related content will be not be allowed on any of its platforms, namely Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.
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A Facebook statement carried by US media said that the company considers the Afghan group, which has used social media platforms to project its messages for years, to be a terrorist organization.
"The Taliban is sanctioned as a terrorist organization under US law and we have banned them from our services under our Dangerous Organization policies," a spokesperson told Fast Company when reached for comment. "We also have a dedicated team of Afghanistan experts, who are native Dari and Pashto speakers and have knowledge of local context, helping to identify and alert us to emerging issues on the platform."
Facebook has tasked a team of content moderators to monitor and remove Taliban-related posts, images, videos, and other content related to the fundamentalist organization.
The spokesperson added that the policy is not new and that Facebook makes such determinations based on consensus within the international community.
Video-sharing platform TikTok followed suit, also saying that it "continues to view the Taliban as a terrorist organization" and will ban content related to the group.
Twitter has made no comment on Taliban-related content on its platform. The microblogging platform came under fire on Monday, when users noticed that it allowed the account of a senior Taliban official to remain active as he livestreamed images of the group rushing the Afghan capital of Kabul, while the account of former US President Donald Trump remained blocked.
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