Hours after Kabul fell on Sunday, a Taliban spokesman posted five short videos to his official YouTube page. Each ran two to three minutes and showed Taliban leaders congratulating fighters. In one, co-founder Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar said it was time to serve the nation and give it peace and security. Dozens of pro-Taliban accounts on Twitter passed the clips around, and within a day they had drawn more than half a million views, The New York Times reported.
The videos put the big platforms in an awkward spot. Researchers told the Times the push was deliberate, an effort to look like a legitimate government. Graham Brookie of the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab said the group knows it must show a responsible public face on the world stage. Followers of the Taliban’s official Facebook pages jumped 120 percent to more than 49,000 by Wednesday, and YouTube views climbed from under 1,000 on average to tens of thousands.
Three companies, three answers
Facebook has banned the Taliban for years. A spokesperson told The Guardian the group is sanctioned as a terrorist organisation under US law, so accounts run by or for it come down, along with praise or support. The company also said regional experts were helping it spot new problems. Its WhatsApp unit has a harder job because encryption stops it reading messages. It blocked a Taliban “complaints hotline” number only after two days of complaints from observers.
Twitter has no blanket rule against the Taliban. Spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid’s account passed 300,000 followers after Kabul fell. Twitter said its priority was keeping people safe and that people in Afghanistan were using the service to ask for help. It did not answer the Times about the Taliban accounts. YouTube said it applies US sanctions rules and terminates any account it believes the Afghan Taliban own and operate, but until the fall of Kabul it was the one network that had not publicly rebuked the group.
Part of the muddle is the lists. The Taliban are not on the US State Department’s roster of foreign terrorist organisations, which most platforms follow when deciding whom to ban outright, though they sit on the Treasury’s list of specially designated global terrorists. In the US, Republicans were angry that Twitter, which had permanently banned Donald Trump in January, seemed relaxed about named Taliban members using the site.
Bans that leak
Enforcement is porous. Facebook and YouTube removed the accounts of Taliban spokesman Mohammad Naeem on Tuesday, but only after the Times asked about them. When Facebook blocked Mujahid’s WhatsApp account, he sent journalists the number of another Taliban leader that was still live. Researcher Ayman Aziz said the Taliban dodged detection by changing hashtag spellings and seeding messages through Telegram and WhatsApp. “So far, the approach of the tech companies is not very effective,” she said.
The net also catches the wrong people. After the Afghan news site HumSub published a piece countering a column that praised Taliban founder Mullah Muhammad Omar, Facebook removed the article. Editor Adnan Kakar said his own account and the site’s page were suspended for 24 hours and barred from livestreaming and advertising for 60 days. He said Facebook ignored his challenge.
At a Kabul news conference on Tuesday, Mujahid accused Facebook of hypocrisy for championing free speech while taking down Taliban accounts.
Sources
- Taliban Ramp Up on Social Media, Defying Bans by the Platforms – The New York Times
- Facebook no, Twitter yes: which tech firms let the Taliban post? | Taliban | The Guardian
