Taliban Answers Question On Free Speech By Asking, But What About Facebook, Tho?

A Taliban spokesman on Tuesday bewailed Facebook in response to a question about free speech, saying “those people” didn’t allow his group to express itself.

Terror group spox Zabihullah Mujahid made the comment during a press conference in Kabul when a reporter asked about free expression, or lack thereof, under oppressive Taliban rule.

“This question should be asked to those people who are claiming to be promoters of freedom of speech who do not allow publication of all information,” he replied, according to a translator for Al Jazeera, which carried the event. “Ask Facebook … This question should be asked of them.”

The Taliban spokesman got a question about freedom of speech and he said the question should be asked to US companies like Facebook who claim to promote it while still censoring pic.twitter.com/woXd5RRCWK

— Liam McCollum (@MLiamMcCollum) August 17, 2021

A spokesman for Facebook said in a statement earlier in the day the company was going to continue banning content from the Taliban, citing the fact the State Department designated it as a terrorist group.

“The Taliban is sanctioned as a terrorist organization under U.S. law, and we have banned them from our services under our Dangerous Organization policies,” the spokesman said. “We also have a dedicated team of Afghanistan experts, who are native Dari and Pashto speakers and have knowledge of local context, helping to identify and alert us to emerging issues on the platform.”

TikTok, a video-sharing platform owned by Chinese parent company ByteDance, said it would also continue banning content from the group. By contrast, Twitter and the Google-owned YouTube said they would allow the Taliban to continue using their platforms if its content did not their policies against promoting violence.

Watch above via Twitter.