Anas Haqqani, a senior leader in the Taliban, has officially endorsed Twitter over Facebook-owned competitor Threads.
“Twitter has two important advantages over other social media platforms,” Haqqani said in an English post on Twitter. “The first privilege is the freedom of speech. The second privilege is the public nature & credibility of Twitter. Twitter doesn’t have an intolerant policy like Meta. Other platforms cannot replace it.”
Twitter has fallen out of favor with many people since Elon Musk took over the company last year…The Taliban, however, seems to love it. Two Taliban officials even bought blue verification check marks after Musk started selling them in January.
Haqqani noted that the biggest draw of Twitter was this lax moderation policy…Facebook and TikTok both view the Taliban as a terrorist organization and disallow them from posting. It’s a ban that persists to this day.
Not that this changes anything but it’s worth noting that the Taliban were provided a platform on Twitter even before they took power and before even Elon acquired it.
Right now Facebook is also full of hate-speech by Islamists who circumvent hate-speech filters by writing in Arabic or Parsi, as Meta’s AI in those languages is a complete failure, very biased as it’s trained on hateful content already as laws in those countries favor hate-speech (as an example, in Saudi Arabia being an atheist is considered “terrorism” and in most MENA countries homophobic content is normal) and moderators are sourced locally and hence also very biased.
There’s a disturbing trend of big tech being comfortable hosting extremists and borderline terrorist spokespeople. And my unpopular guess is that it is obviously because the US wants the Taliban and other Islamist groups to be legitimized. Why? I’m not sure, geopolitics is totally above my pay grade. But it is clear that historically the US had no issues siding with hardcore Islamists in the MENA region and right now there is a clear trend to normalize Islamist propaganda online.
Reminder that the Taliban are still preventing girls from going to school since they took over, despite a certain president assuring us that the US isn’t abandoning Afghan women and that the Taliban have “changed” anyway, and they cracked down on female university students too.
They’re okay with it because it looks good for the bean counters and KPIs. There’s no KPI for “we removed hate speech visibility by 50%” but there is one for “we got 50 million new users from MENA on our platform to show ads to.”
Why is Facebook not beholden to the countries in which it provides service to provide the service those countries and people prefer?
Your problem is with those countries and people, not with social media.
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“We should let actual terrorists communicate and radicalize others, because there’s a block button already. PS: I’m very smart.”
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How is that hyperbole? That’s essentially what you are suggesting lmao
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Nah if that’s not what you meant you need to work on your writing skills bud.
Try to understand what you are trying to say before writing it, even if you don’t like it. That will make you less likely to be misunderstood.
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How could you possibly know that?
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How does not wanting my family (or myself - not sure why you made it sexist) to live there at all relevant?
If you want the world to declare unilateral war on authoritarian despot nations I’m all for that, but as I recall that view seems to be “Imperialist.”
How do you square these feelings in your head?
Answer the question.
I wasn’t the person you asked, but I am in favor of everyone who wants to escape any authoritarian state to be able to leave.
In fact, I am for the free movement of people as a natural right, coupled with absolute open borders, defended with military force by a coalition of world governments.
I am strongly anti-authoritarian. I just don’t see how it is Facebook’s responsibility to effect change in hostile nation-states.