How Social Networking Platforms Are Dealing with the Taliban

[Axtremus]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/explainer-how-social-platforms-are-dealing-with-the-taliban/2021/08/19/0dac0006-012e-11ec-87e0-7e07bd9ce270_story.html

A few interesting points:

• “The last time the Taliban was in power in Afghanistan, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube did not exist. Neither did MySpace, …”
• Now that it looks like the Taliban will be the government of Afghanistan again, should the Taliban be given control of the “official accounts” for the Afghanistan government?
• Who will adjudicate whether the Taliban is a “legitimate government”? The social media companies do not really want to do this sort of adjudications. Neither do most private enterprises, I suspect.
• The US government does not consider the Taliban a “terrorist organization.” (I suppose that’s why the US government could cut and publicize a deal with the Taliban in 2020 without “negotiating with terrorists.”) So it’s not going to be as simple as drawing a circle around the label “terrorist organization” and coloring it red. The US government is not putting the Taliban in that circle. After all, if the Taliban can cut a deal with the US government, why can it not click “Accept” for a social media company’s end user agreement?

[Catseye3]

@axtremus said in How Social Networking Platforms Are Dealing with the Taliban:

Who will adjudicate whether the Taliban is a “legitimate government”?

[Shrug.] The UN? Is this a big concern of the Taliban?

[Jolly]

@catseye3 said in How Social Networking Platforms Are Dealing with the Taliban:

@axtremus said in How Social Networking Platforms Are Dealing with the Taliban:

Who will adjudicate whether the Taliban is a “legitimate government”?

[Shrug.] The UN? Is this a big concern of the Taliban?

Nope. Not even for a nanosecond.