In a bid to re-enter China after a seven-year ban, Facebook has developed a tool to geographically censor posts on the website, The New York Times reported.
Three current and former employees of Facebook, who requested anonymity, told the newspaper that the tool had been quietly developed with the support of CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
Facebook itself will not suppress or censor any stories. Rather, the software would enable a third party to monitor them as they are shared by users using the social networking website. However, the feature has not been officially announced yet, and there are indications that it has been offered to Chinese authorities reported The Times.
Facebook spokeswoman Arielle Aryah said to Reuters, “We have long said that we are interested in China, and are spending time understanding and learning more about the country. However, we have not made any decision on our approach to China. Our focus right now is on helping Chinese businesses and developers expand to new markets outside China by using our ad platform.”
The censorship software has provoked disagreement among Facebook employees, according to NYT. The project is indicative of the company’s readiness to compromise its core mission statement of making “the world more open and connected” in order to reach the Chinese market of 1.4 billion users.
Several US companies have a policy of complying with requests of local governments to block certain posts and information, such as LinkedIn, and now possibly, Facebook. Google and Twitter continue to remain banned in China due to their refusal to conform to governmental demands of censorship.
Since its ban in the country following the Urumqi riots in July of 2009, Facebook has been looking for ways to get back into the Chinese market, which is the world’s second-largest economy. The ban was typical of China’s approach to foreign companies, especially media companies. They are subject to several regulations on the content matter.
Meanwhile, this is not the first time Facebook has restricted content. It has suppressed stories in countries such as Pakistan, Russia and France before, in compliance with requests from the governments of the countries. However, the new software nips the posts in question in the bud, rather than taking action post complaints.
This comes at a time when Facebook is still grappling with accusations of allowing the spread of fake news on its website.
