Facebook policies designed to prevent “violent, hateful, or criminal activity” appear to be stifling the dissemination of critical information about the Taliban from the regime’s critics both inside and outside Afghanistan. In other words, Facebook’s opaque policies and algorithms seem to be doing exactly what the Taliban wants: suppressing knowledge of their cruel policies and crimes from spreading around the world.
Plugging the word “Taliban” into Facebook’s search system returns a warning: “Are you sure you want to continue?” After pressing “Continue,” the user receives yet another warning: “This search may be associated with violent, hateful, or criminal activity.” Users well-versed in social media cautions would likely stop searching after such a double warning filter.
Only after clicking on “See the results anyway” on the second warning do users see results of that “Taliban” word search. For Zan Times, the results included pages of stories by reputable media organizations as well as human rights organizations that document and report on Taliban abuses and violations of human rights. The same problem occurred whether “Taliban” was written in either English or Farsi-Dari.
Zan Times found this double set of warnings on Facebook in at least four countries: Afghanistan, Canada, Turkey, and Germany.
Because “Taliban” is the word used by critics to identify the Taliban movement and regime, such a double warning system has the effect of stifling the spread of information critical of the Taliban, which is also what the regime is doing inside Afghanistan by arresting journalists, activists, and anyone who dares to oppose them.
In effect, this Facebook policy has the effect of serving Taliban interests. On November 15, when Zan Times searched “Taliban,” the first item in the feed was a letter to Facebook from a popular Afghan singer who has been publicly critical of the Taliban. The letter reads, “Dear Facebook Team! I object! I disagree and strongly object against your decision for flagging me as a DANGEROUS INDIVIDUAL! Yes, my name is Farhad Darya, I am from Afghanistan, BUT I AM NOT A TERRORIST and I AM NOT DANGEROUS.”
Farhad Darya is one among many who have cried foul at Facebook. As he explained in that letter, “In the past few months, my posts have been flagged, which resulted in imposing some restrictions on my page such as inability to post for a specific time frame, removal of my posts from timeline, inability to boost content and come live.”
Many users of Facebook discussing Afghanistan and the Taliban are long aware of what is effectively censorship on the Facebook site. In particular, Farsi-Dari and Pashto users have been dealing with the adverse effect of its warnings for anyone using the word “Taliban.” To bypass Facebook censors, many use alternative spellings for the name: some who write in Farsi write them as “Toileb,” [no meaning] “Jaliban” (meaning interesting or odd) while others write “Zaliman” (meaning cruel).
Five Facebook users who use alternative spelling for Taliban tell Zan Times that they were forced to use such creative spellings for the word “Taliban” because they discovered their posts were flagged for breaking Facebook community standards and taken down when they used the correct spelling of “Taliban” in items criticizing the regime. Several users said their Facebook accounts have been put under restriction, which meant they could not post, write, like, or share anything for certain periods of time. One Facebook user, Kasra Radmehr, tells Zan Times of his experience.
“I shared an 8am.media news article about murder of ex-government soldiers by the Taliban and denounced the Taliban crimes about which the world is silent,” he says.
“I received an email from Facebook saying ‘Your post has been removed for violating Community Standards.’” In addition to having his post removed, Facebook restricted his activity on the site for 60 days. “Two consecutive months of restrictions were imposed on my account because of my anti-Taliban comments. Now I cannot post, like, or share anything,” says Radmehr.
He isn’t alone in having Facebook remove anti-Taliban posts or impose restrictions. Another Facebook user, Rohullah Mohammad, tells Zan Times, “Sometimes when I use the phrase ‘Taliban’ or share news about them, my post gets removed. Therefore, I write ‘Jaliban’ to skirt Facebook censors.”
Zakarya Hassani, another Facebook user, recounts, “Although I did not receive a direct message that the restrictions on my account is because of the use of the phrase ‘Taliban,’ I strongly felt it is because of that.” He adds, “My account was restricted for days. I could not message, go live, and my post engagement had gone down.”
On the other hand, Zan Times encountered no double warning filters when searching Facebook by the regime’s preferred name, “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,” in Afghanistan, Canada, Germany and Turkey. Instead, results instantly popped up, often including items supportive of the regime.
In essence, the Taliban and their supporters have a significant advantage on Facebook that is not enjoyed by their critics, whose posts are restricted by the social media giant, and flagged as possibly containing “violent, hateful or criminal activity.” Zan Times reached out to the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto to seek their help to put this anomaly into perspective. It is known for its research into information and communication technologies and how they intersect with human rights and global security. Citizen Lab responded: “A brief analysis by a researcher, reveals that keyword-based censorship is imprecise and frequently has gaps. Facebook may have data that we don’t have access to that links censored keywords to hateful or violent content that violates Facebook’s policies. Users who post hateful content, for example, are more likely to use the term ‘KKK’ rather than ‘Ku Klux Klan.’ Unfortunately, evaluating this hypothesis is difficult without the same access to Facebook’s data.”
A prominent blogger and satirist, Musa Zafar, echoes what the Citizen Lab noted: “Facebook’s imposition of restrictions on the phrase Taliban does not harm them or their trolls on Facebook, because they don’t call themselves Taliban, they call themselves IEA or Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. But it has become a serious barrier to voices of civil society and Taliban’s critics.”
Since November, Zan Times asked Facebook for a written statement on the issue as well as answers to a series of emailed questions, including the discrepancies in search results. The corporation did not provide a written response before this story was published.
Two days after the Taliban took over Afghanistan in August 2021, Facebook reiterated its ban on “accounts maintained by or on behalf of the Taliban” from its platforms, a spokesperson of the company told CNN.
Yet, it seems the ban continues to create confusion for Facebook. In September 2022, the Oversight Board, an independent body that helps Facebook decide what content to keep up or take down, overturned a decision by Facebook to remove a post from a news outlet’s page that mentioned the Taliban. The content was a January 2022 report by an Urdu-language India-based media on the Taliban’s promise to reopen schools for girls in March. As the Oversight Board explained, Facebook found the post violated its “Dangerous Individuals and Organizations” policy that prohibits “praise” of such entities. The news outlet was punished. After the Oversight Board looked at the case, Facebook “decided the post should not have been removed as its rules allow ‘reporting on’ terrorist organizations. It restored the content, reversed the strike, and removed the restrictions on the user’s account,” the board explained.
“The Board is concerned that [Facebook’s] systems and policies interfere with freedom of expression when it comes to reporting on terrorist regimes,” it stated in its findings. “This case may indicate a wider problem. The Board has considered a number of complaints on errors in enforcing the Dangerous Individuals and Organizations policy, particularly in languages other than English. This raises serious concerns, especially for journalists and human rights defenders,” the board states.
Whether that finding by the Oversight Board is being applied when it comes to posts critical of the Taliban is unclear. The searches conducted by Zan Times in both English and Dari-Farsi in four countries were undertaken in November and December, months after the Oversight Board issued its findings. All of its “Taliban” searches encountered double warning filters, something not encountered by the searches for “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.”
Hamayon Rastgar is the communications and research officer at Zan Times.
