Papua New Guinea’s government has shut down social media platform Facebook, in what it describes as a “test” to mitigate hate speech, misinformation, pornography and “other detrimental content”.
The test, conducted under the country’s anti-terrorism laws, began on Monday morning and has extended into Tuesday.
Facebook users in the country have been unable to log-in to the platform and it is unclear how long the ban will go on for.
The government’s move was not flagged ahead of the “test” on Monday — a move opposition MPs and media leaders have described as “tyranny” and an “abuse of human rights”.
Facebook is by far the most popular social media platform in the country, with an estimated 1.3 million users, or about half of the country’s estimated 2.6 million internet users.
The platform is a critical tool for public discourse in the country, with many highly active forums used to discuss PNG politics and social issues.
Yet, the government has been highly critical of Facebook with the platform often blamed for helping spread misinformation, particularly in light of a recent spate of tribal killings in the country.
This just reeks of control.
Maybe, but it’s an onion of a problem.
We all know how much FB spreads disinfo and brain rot. The positive effect of disabling it feels as significant as the negative effect on freedom of speech.
The dichotomy is very much analogous to how I feel about tiktok bans.
Is it really a problem for freedom of speech, if it’s only a platform getting banned and not specific content?
If you are allowed to talk about anything still everywhere else on the web, I can’t see the freedom of speech card being valid in this case about FB.
FB is already controlling what you see, making freedom of speech better without them.
Look at what’s really happening though: the state is implicitly saying you can have free expression provided your reach is miniscule/ineffectual. The moment you get traction is the moment it will move to block use of your preferred platforms, or simply hard-/algorithmically ban you - it’s functionally identical to suppression of speech/association
They rely on the public’s credulity when they insist freedoms are intact because ‘only one website’ is verboten. It’s a dirty exploit. In reality, all platform denial should be protested
Facebook exclusively promoted rage bait and is used as a propaganda machine, if anything they’re circumventing a free and open space by not showing you everything in the first place.
If Facebook simply gave you a wall of every single thing pushed and didn’t hide/promote things you would have a leg to stand on.
I really don’t see any downsides, if anything they should ban all the major social media platforms and encourage diversity of platform ownership among the platforms used in the public discourse to strengthen freedom of speech.
Yeah, I understand. Meta is invasive, pervasive, and becomes endemic. I’m in Mexico looking for a place to live. The country runs on WhatsApp.
I agree that Facebook completely sucks, but I disagree that banning any service is worth it from a freedom of speech perspective. Once you let your country ban services it doesn’t like, it’s one bad administration from banning services critical of it. Don’t go down that road.
Agreed. One layer of the onion peeled. Next layer is that all of the content you see is curated and you only are fed fits your profile as dictated by the algorithm. You are served more dopamine hits and churn a lot of nothing.
There’s another layer of the onion next. Let’s hear what it is.
Sure, and I bailed on Facebook and Meta products long ago because I found their services insidious. I still don’t trust a government to decide which services to ban though.
Is my sentence so vague that it appears I’m saying that? Discourse is harder when you deviate from the format.
It’s literally never for a good reason. This also includes bans targeted at specific sub populations