Daily Times

Facebook has increasingly become a tool to suppress voices of Kashmiris. Recently, it blocked live streaming of the Pakistan Broadcasting Corporation’s (PBC) news bulletins regarding the situation of India-held Kashmir. The site also has to explain its position about the earlier decision to block news stories about the death anniversary of Hizbul Mujahideen leader Burhan Wani in July and the curfew imposed after the death of Zakir Musa, a Hizbul Mujahideen commander, in May. Earlier, in the second week of December, the site removed Jamaat-i-Islami’s (JI) official and other pages related to the party’s information dissemination, just a few days before its Kashmir March on Dec 22 in Islamabad. The action attracted criticism from the party, which accused the website of playing into the hands of the Indian lobby. This restriction is against the stated policy of Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg, who, in October, announced exempting politicians from fact checking, calling Facebook a champion of free speech. He says banning political speeches and political advertisements is against free expression. “I don’t think it’s right for a private company to censor politicians or news in a democracy… Banning political ads favours incumbents and whoever the media chooses to cover,” he said at a university.

Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Information and Broadcasting Firdous Ashiq Awan, who supports a move away from international [social media] platforms in order to become more self-reliant, should first raise the issue with the social media site. This is not the first time Facebook has censored Kashmir related content. In 2016, dozens of posts related to the death of Wani were censored. Other than Facebook, Twitter has also become a propaganda tool as it removed hundreds of tweets against the Indian government’s policies in occupied Kashmir. Altogether, one million tweets have been removed since 2017. Several social media activists critical of the government in Pakistan also complain that their twitter accounts have been suspended or removed on the directions of the state. Social media, which emerged as a powerful tool to defeat state censorship in the last decade, has slowly become a controlled space, mostly at the behest of governments. Social media, though it needs regulations to check fake news and propaganda, has given a free space to people against social injustice, inequality, suppression and state- and non-state-sponsored terrorism. Social media must remain accessible, while technological advancement must tackle the menace of propaganda. *