Facebook says a special team is moderating and removing Taliban-related content

Since the Taliban assumed control of the Afghan capital, Kabul, on Sunday, Facebook has been actively identifying and removing any content related to them on the platform, reports Insider. A spokesperson for the social networking service said that the Taliban, as a terrorist organization sanctioned under U.S. law, is legally prohibited from Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, keeping in view the "Dangerous Organization" policy of the company.

The spokesperson stated:

Facebook does not make decisions about the recognized 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.

They also added that Facebook takes down accounts managed by or on behalf of the Taliban and forbids users from representing, supporting, and expressing approval of the organization. Moreover, as Pashto and Dari are the major languages spoken in Afghanistan, the company says that it has a "dedicated team of Afghanistan experts, who are native Dari and Pashto speakers and have knowledge of local context" aiding in identifying and alerting the company to the unfolding issues on the platform.

Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram said:

We are relying on that policy to proactively take down anything that we can that might be dangerous or that is related to the Taliban in general. Now this situation is evolving rapidly, and with it I'm sure the risk will evolve as well. We are going to have to modify what we do and how we do it to respond to those changing risks as they happen.

In 2018, Facebook acknowledged that it had failed to take appropriate action when the platform was employed as a tool to instigate hatred against Rohingya people in Myanmar. During that time, the online social media service only had a team of 60 people managing 18 million Facebook users from Myanmar.

Again this time, the company has not yet revealed the number of people on its team of Afghanistan experts. For more information on the topic, we'll have to wait until the company issues any further statements.

Source: Insider