August 17, (THEWILL) – Social media giant, Facebook, has designated Taliban as a “terrorist organisation” and banned any Taliban-related content on its platform.
According to Facebook, “under ‘Dangerous Organisation Policies,” Taliban is banned; adding that a team of dedicated Afghan experts has been assembled to monitor and remove any Taliban-related content from any of its platforms.
The company said: “The Taliban are sanctioned as a terrorist organization under US law and we have banned them from our services under our Dangerous Organisation Policies. This means we remove accounts maintained by/on behalf of the Taliban and ban their praise, support, and representation.
“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 about emerging issues on the platform.”
The social media giant said, it does not make decisions about the recognition of national governments but instead follows the “authority of the international community.”
According to Facebook, the policy applies to all of its platforms, including its flagship social media network, Instagram and WhatsApp.
However, there are reports that the Taliban is using WhatsApp to communicate.
According to media reports, Facebook would take action if it found accounts on the app to be linked to the group.
The brutal war in Afghanistan reached a watershed moment on Sunday when the Taliban insurgents closed in on Kabul before entering the city and took over the presidential palace, forcing embattled President Ashraf Ghani to flee the country.
US President Joe Biden has also warned the Taliban and promised that “response will be swift and forceful” if the terror group attacks US interests.
He asked them not to disrupt or threaten the evacuation of thousands of American diplomats and Afghan translators at the Kabul airport.
The response to any attack would be “swift and forceful. We will defend our people with devastating force if necessary,” Biden said in a televised address from the White House.
On America’s perspective over Afghanistan, Biden said, “Our mission in Afghanistan was never supposed to be nation building; it was never supposed to be creating a unified centralized democracy. Our only intention in Afghanistan remains what it’s always been –preventing a terrorist attack on the American homeland.”
