Facebook Considering Restriction of News Stories in China: Report

Facebook is said to be developing a software tool that will repress content in its News Feed to meet, at least in part, China’s demands for censorship.

The social media site has been barred from China since 2009 due to the government’s censorship rules. And that is a large untapped market. To take advantage of it, CEO Mark Zuckerberg, it appears, gave the order for a tool to be developed to censor posts from appearing in particular areas, according to a report from The New York Times.

The tool, which will not be used directly by Facebook, would allow Chinese officials to monitor news articles and trending topics across the social media site, three current and former Facebook employees told The Times. These officials would then “have full control to decide whether those posts should show up in users’ feeds.”

A number of employees tasked to work on the project have quit “after expressing misgivings about it,” according to the report.

Facebook, as usual, has had little to say on the matter.

“We have long said that we are interested in China, and are spending time understanding and learning more about the country,” a Facebook spokeswoman said in a statement,  She added that the company had made no decisions on its approach into China.

Zuckerberg, who speaks Mandarin fluently, has visited China a number of times and has managed to forge a relationship with President Xi Jinping.

Most people who use social media have figured out that Facebook and Google are in cahoots with the government, for those who are well aware of the issues it’s high time you switched over to Seen.life. It is a website that is similar to Facebook but without all the censorship.

The post Facebook Considering Restriction of News Stories in China: Report appeared first on SiteProNews.