Facebook owner Meta Platforms and the government of Kazakhstan issued conflicting statements on Tuesday (November 2) after the government of Kazakhstan announced that it had granted it exclusive access to the social network content reporting system.
In its so-called Joint statement with FacebookAfter Central Asian countries threatened to prevent millions of local users from accessing Facebook, the government of Kazakhstan on Monday touted the so-called exclusive access as a compromise solution.
“Facebook has provided Kazakhstan with direct and exclusive access to Facebook’s’Content Reporting System’ (CRS), which can help the government report content that may violate Facebook’s global content policy and local laws of Kazakhstan,” the statement on the Kazakhstan government website read.
According to the “Joint Statement”, Kazakhstan is the first country in Central Asia to access the system, and has opened a direct channel to contact Facebook’s global operations team.
Quoting George Chen, Facebook’s regional public policy director, “Facebook is very pleased to cooperate with the government of Kazakhstan, especially in the area of children’s online safety. In order to take the first step in long-term cooperation with the government, we are very pleased to provide this to the government of Kazakhstan.” Content reporting system”, we hope it can help the government to deal with harmful content more effectively. The Facebook team will continue to provide training to Kazakhstan to ensure the security of its cyberspace.”
But Meta spokesperson Ben McConaghy denied any specific exclusive access rights and stated that the company has a dedicated online channel for governments around the world to report content that they believe violates local laws.
“We follow a consistent global process to evaluate individual requests-independent of any government-in compliance with Facebook’s policies, local laws and international human rights standards,” he said in an email to Reuters.
“This process is the same in Kazakhstan and other countries in the world.”
Although the local news site Zakon.kz quoted Information Minister Aida Balayeva as saying that Meta Platforms has not issued what Kazakhstan calls a joint statement, but insists that its text has been agreed with the company.
Balyaeva explained that the talks were conducted with (Meta) Facebook offices in China, Mongolia, and Central Asia based in Hong Kong.
“The text of the joint statement issued on November 1 and its publication in the media are fully consistent with the leadership of the regional office”, Balayeva wrote on her Facebook page.
The parliament of this oil-rich country began to enact a bill in September that would allow the government to block social networks and messaging applications unless its developers open offices in the country and appoint individual executives responsible for reviewing complaints from the authorities .
Aidos Sarym, one of the authors of the bill and a representative of Parliament, said His Facebook page On Monday, the bill paved the way for negotiations with the tech giants, and the authorities are now ready to soften its terms.
Critics of the bill accused the country’s 19 million authorities of trying to obtain new censorship tools, and the author of the bill stated that it aims to prevent the spread of cyberbullying and other dangerous content.
The government stated that Kazakhstan has at least 3.2 million Facebook users. Other meta-platform applications such as Instagram and WhatsApp are even more popular.
Facebook has long faced criticism from rights groups for overly complying with government censorship requirements.
The service basically avoided closures outside of China and other countries, where it has been blocked for a long time, but this year it is facing pressure in some countries including India, Vietnam and Myanmar.
(Editing by Georgi Getoff)
