A quandary for social media
Platforms will have to decide if Taliban can be allowed to run government accounts
As the Taliban negotiates with senior politicians and government leaders following its lighting-fast takeover of Afghanistan, U.S. social media companies are reckoning with how to deal with a violent extremist group that is poised to rule a country of 40 million people.
Should the Taliban be allowed on social platforms if they don’t break any rules, such as a ban on inciting violence, but instead use it to spread a narrative that they’re newly reformed and are handing out soap and medication in the streets? If the Taliban runs Afghanistan, should they also run the country’s official government accounts?
And should tech companies in Silicon Valley decide what is — and isn’t — a legitimate government? They certainly don’t want to. But as the situation unfolds, uncomfortable decisions lie ahead.
The last time the Taliban was in power in Afghanistan, Facebook, Twitter and
Youtube did not exist. Neither did Myspace, for that matter. Internet use in the country was virtually nonexistent with just 0.01% of the population online, according to the World Bank.
In recent years, that number has vastly increased. The Taliban have also increased their online presence, producing slick videos and maintaining official social media accounts. Despite bans, they have found ways to evade restrictions on Youtube, Facebook and Whatsapp. Last year, for instance, they used Whatsapp groups to share pictures of local health officials in white gowns and masks handing out protective masks and bars of soap to locals.
On Twitter, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid has been posting regular updates to more than 300,000 followers, including international media. Twitter suspended another account, @Afghpresident, which has served as the nation’s de facto official presidential account, pending verification of the account holder’s identity.
“There’s a realization that winning the war is as much a function of a nonmilitary tool like social media as it is about the bullets,” said Sarah Kreps, a law professor at Cornell University who focuses on international politics, technology and national
security. “Maybe these groups, even from just an instrumental perspective, have realized that beheading people is not a way to win the hearts and minds of the country.”
Facebook and Youtube consider the Taliban a terrorist organization and prohibit it from operating accounts. Twitter has not explicitly banned the group, though the company said Tuesday that it will continue to enforce its rules, in particular policies that bar “glorification of violence, platform manipulation and spam.”
This essentially means that until the accounts violate Twitter’s rules — for instance, by inciting violence — they are allowed to operate.
While the Taliban is not on the U.S. list of foreign terrorist organizations, the U.S. has imposed sanctions on it. Facebook said Tuesday that the group is banned from its platform under its “dangerous organization” policies which also bar “praise, support and representation” of the group and accounts run on its behalf. The company emphasized in a statement that it has a dedicated team of Afghanistan experts that are native speakers of Dari and Pashto, Afghanistan’s official languages, to help provide local context and to alert the company of emerging issues.