Facebook bowed to demands from Turkey to block one of its military opponents – By Igor Bonifacic (Engadget) / Feb 24 2021
New emails show the company prioritized staying online over objecting to censorship.
When Turkey launched its Afrin offensive in early 2018 to dislodge Kurdish minorities from Northern Syria, the country ordered Facebook to block the page of a prominent militia group in the area known as the People’s Protection Units or YPG. Forced to make a decision, the company prioritized staying online over objecting to censorship, new internal emails obtained by ProPublica show.
Since then, the social media giant has blocked users in Turkey from accessing the YPG’s Facebook page. Facebook complied with the order even though, like the US government, it does not consider the group a terrorist organization.
“… We are in favor of geo-blocking YPG content if the prospects of a full-service blockage are great,” the team that accessed the situation wrote to Joel Kaplan, the company’s vice-president of global public policy. “Geo-blocking the YPG is not without risk — activists outside of Turkey will likely notice our actions, and our decision may draw unwanted attention to our overall geo-blocking policy.”
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