Social media giant Facebook while announcing that they have removed thousands of fake pages and accounts, mentioned Kashmir, with other countries giving an impression that it is a separate country.
In a blog post on Tuesday, Facebook’s Head of Cybersecurity Policy mentioned Kashmir as a separate entity from India.
“Today, we removed 513 Pages, Groups and accounts for engaging in coordinated inauthentic behaviour as part of multiple networks tied to Iran,” said Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s Head of Cybersecurity Policy.
“They operated in Egypt, India, Indonesia, Israel, Italy, Kashmir, Kazakhstan or broadly across the Middle East and North Africa,” Gleicher added.
Some of the axed Pages and accounts posted news stories on Indian politics as well as on the tension between India and Pakistan.
“They posted news stories on current events and frequently repurposed and amplified content from Iranian state media about topics including sanctions against Iran; tensions between India and Pakistan; conflicts in Syria and Yemen; terrorism; tensions between Israel and Palestine; Islamic religious issues; Indian politics; and the recent crisis in Venezuela,” the blog post noted.
Facebook said it removed a total of 2,632 Pages, Groups and accounts that were engaged in coordinated inauthentic behaviour from Iran, Russia, Macedonia and Kosovo on its platform, as well as on Instagram.
Recently, Facebook had told its moderators to “look out for” the phrase “Free Kashmir” on its platform “urging moderators to apply extra scrutiny” on such posts.
Recently, The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Freedom of opinion and expression David Kaye had written a letter to Twitter CEO regarding the blocking of Twitter handles of Kashmiris and blocking users for sharing or posting Kashmir related content.
Both the social media giants, Facebook and Twitter have been blocking Kashmir related content lately. Recently, Facebook has, once again, censored Kashmir related content by taking down prominent page, ‘Lost Kashmiri History’, which documents past historical events, from its portal.
In a similar incident, in October, Facebook removed online Kashmir-based magazine, Wande Magazine’s page from its portal.
Recently, the Facebook page of Free Press Kashmir was unpublished by the social media platform for nearly 48 hours.
Recently, Facebook took down news portal Kashmir Walla’s video featuring scholar-turned-militant Mannan Wani’s father’s voice in the background.
Over the past one year, the social media giant headed by Mark Zuckerberg has been embroiled in controversies ranging from censoring posts and user accounts in 2016, for poorly handling user account information by being susceptible to breaches or letting third parties use such information as tools for analysing voter tendencies.
A documentary series by Channel 4 Dispatches has revealed that moderators at Facebook are protectingfar-right activists by preventing their pages from getting deleted even after they violate the rules set up by the social media giant.
