Facebook is developing a software tool that suppresses users’ posts from appearing in the News Feed in designated geographic areas, a possible first step toward making the social network available in China, the New York Times reported. The tool has reportedly caused a controversy within Facebook, with “several employees” quitting in protest after working on it, according to the Times.
Facebook has been banned from China since 2009. Like many US technology companies, Facebook has long sought a way back in, seeing the country’s 1.3 billion residents as a source of enormous potential growth. Google built a version of its search engine that complied with China’s censorship guidelines but retreated from the country in 2010 after a series of seemingly state-sponsored cyberattacks. More recently, Uber exited the Chinese market with a quick sale of its business there to local rival Didi Chuxing.
As the Times notes, Facebook has taken down posts in other countries around the world, including Pakistan, Russia, and Turkey. But the tool now in development would prevent the posts from ever surfacing in the News Feed at all, according to the report. Facebook plans to outsource censorship duties to a third-party company, the report said.
Allowing censors to manipulate public opinion directly
The news comes in the midst of a national discussion about Facebook’s growing power as a distributor of news, its role in containing the spread of lies and hoaxes, and the possibility that its refusal to adopt editorial standards may have influenced the US presidential election. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said the company is building new tools to address fake news. “I want what we do to have a good impact on the world,” Zuckerberg said earlier this month. “I want people to have a diversity of information.”