Facebook’s ‘censorship tool may not open doors’ in China
Technology reportedly under development fans fears over abuse of privacy and human rights
Facebook might still struggle to get back into the Chinese market even if it develops a censorship tool to screen content from users’ feeds, an analyst said on Wednesday.
The New York Times reported on Tuesday that Facebook had quietly built software that could suppress posts from news feeds in specific geographic areas, igniting concerns over privacy and human rights.
Facebook would not conduct the censorship itself, but would offer the software to a third party for it to monitor posts and take full control to decide what should show up in users’ feeds, the report said. The third party was most likely to be a partner Chinese firm, and there was no indication that Facebook had offered the tool to Chinese authorities, it said.
A Facebook spokeswoman said the company had “not made any decision on our approach to China”, but it would not confirm or deny whether it was developing censorship software.
Facebook, the world’s biggest social media network, has long sought to return to the world’s largest market of internet users since it was banned on the mainland after the deadly Uygur riots in Xinjiang in 2009.
It should also be seen in the context of a country in which people are being given heavy prison terms for expressing their political views on social media