Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn said this week they had moved to secure the accounts of Afghan citizens to protect them against being targeted amid the Taliban’s swift takeover of the country.
Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s security policy chief, announced on Thursday that the ability to access or search the friend’s lists of accounts in Afghanistan has been temporarily disabled.
Gleicher also stated that they have introduced a “one-click mechanism” for Afghan users to lock down their accounts, preventing those who are not Facebook friends from seeing their timeline postings or sharing their profile images.
Human rights organizations have expressed worry that the Taliban may utilize online platforms to trace Afghans’ digital records or social relationships. According to Amnesty International, thousands of Afghans, including academics, journalists, and human rights campaigners, are at risk of Taliban retaliation. Also, the former captain of the Afghan women’s soccer team has called on the players to remove their social media accounts and hide their names from the public eye.
To assist groups in the country, Twitter Inc. said it was in contact with civil society partners and working with the Internet Archive to expedite direct requests to delete archived tweets.
People who can’t access accounts that include information that could put them at risk, such as direct messages or followers, will have their accounts suspended until they can regain access and erase their content, according to the business.
According to a statement, it has come forward that Twitter said it was aggressively monitoring accounts connected with government entities and might temporarily suspend accounts pending additional information to authenticate their identity.
According to a LinkedIn spokesperson, the Microsoft-owned professional networking site LinkedIn has temporarily obscured the connections of its users in Afghanistan so that others cannot view them.
