Facebook is turning a corner by protecting its Afghan users from the Taliban

An Afghan Facebook user from a smartphone, Kabul, February 12, 2016. AP - Rahmat Gul

Text by: RFI Follow

2 min

After deciding earlier this week to ban the Taliban and all content that supports them by deleting their accounts, Facebook offers its users based in Afghanistan to lock their account with one click in order to prevent members of the fundamentalist Islamist group arrived in power to access their data.  

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This quick lock prevents anyone who is not on the contact list from seeing posts or even uploading or sharing the profile picture.

Nor is it possible to access the friends list of an account holder and search for profiles there.

In addition, users of Instagram, one of Facebook's subsidiaries, will receive a protocol explaining how to protect their account.

A shift for Facebook

For Jean de Chambure, digital strategy consultant at JDC Advisory, if Facebook's approach is going in the right direction, it remains unnatural.

“ 

You have to remember that Facebook was created in the United States with this idea of ​​transparency,” he

emphasizes. 

You are friends of friends, you can see the information of friends of your friends. Unlike, you have a social network like WeChat in China where the friends of your friends who are not your friends cannot see what you post. And that is a huge design difference that Facebook can't really tackle except by putting in some

post

patches

that are probably effective but lack the purity of the original design like WeChat. 

"

According to Jean de Chambure, this shift operated by Facebook marks the end of its non-engagement.

From now on, for the social network, it is impossible to remain neutral in the face of world events.

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See also: Afghanistan: Facebook bans the Taliban from its platforms

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