Facebook Met Pakistani Official And Ensures Removal Of Hate Material

A meeting was held between Vice President of Facebook Mr Joel Kaplan and Interior Minister of Pakistan Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan in Islamabad. In the meeting it was assured by Facebook officials that fake accounts, hate speech and content that promotes terrorism and violence would be removed from the Facebook site.

Both the management from Pakistan and of Facebook discussed steps and measures that should be taken to eradicate blasphemous content from the social media site as its illegal in Pakistan. Facebook’s aim is to keep Facebook clean and promote morals and ethics that are in accordance with its Community Standards.

Read more: Facebook increases its staff to control unethical content

A couple of weeks ago the minister has cautioned that he would ban social media sites including Facebook in the country unless the management of the site eliminate blasphemous content as it hurts the emotions of the people. In response to this warning, for the first time senior officials of Facebook came to visit Pakistan and address the prevalent issue.

The interior minister of Pakistan also assembled a meeting with diplomats of Muslim majority countries so that all the Muslim, together take stand on fighting the blasphemous content posted on social media calling it freedom of expression. After this the minister also held a meeting with Secretary General OIC on April 11, 2017 discussing the issue.

Now with the vice president of Facebook, the minister said that the whole Muslim Ummah was concerned and to an extent furious about the kind of content posted on the internet. He further said that Pakistani government does encourage freedom of expression, but that too has limits. The minister acknowledged Facebook administration’s cooperation in the matter, in connecting communication gaps and creating a healthy environment. Nisar also asked and encouraged Facebook to start up office in the country which would further bring the nation and Facebook together.

Facebook officials discussed programs they have started in Pakistan like Facebook’s Developers Circles, a program for developers to communicate, learn and cooperate with local developer. The program has started in Lahore and Karachi and would soon be initiated in Islamabad as well.  Another program Facebook has launched is digital literacy campaign called iChamp with aim to improve education system all across Pakistan. Around 600,000 students would be trained via this program.

The Minister approved of the initiatives taken by Facebook and it was reinforced in the meeting that hate speech would be eradicated from the social media site.