Kazakhstan declares, Facebook denies: what happens to the authorities' "direct access" to the social network's content filtering system
On 1 November 2021, the government of Kazakhstan posted a "Joint Statement" on the country's official portal, which claimed that Mark Zuckerberg's social network had granted the country's authorities exclusive access to the internal "Content Reporting System" ("CRS").
In a statement, it was explained that this "will allow the Ministry to promptly report content containing violations of both Facebook's global content policy and national legislation of the Republic of Kazakhstan". In other words, Kazakhstan's authorities got a tool for direct censorship of content posted by the country's citizens.
The statement even includes a statement from Mr. George Chen, Facebook Regional Director for Public Relations:
"Facebook is pleased to note the joint work with the Government of Kazakhstan, especially in the direction of ensuring the safety of children on the Internet. As a first step toward our long-term cooperation, we are pleased to provide the Government of Kazakhstan with access to a "Content Notification System" that we hope will help the appropriate authorities of the Government of Kazakhstan to more effectively and efficiently combat harmful content. The Facebook team will also continue to provide training to Kazakhstani professionals to help secure cyberspace.
on October 28 this year Facebook team held a training for specialists of the Ministry on the "Content Notification System", as well as on Facebook Content Policy and Community Standards. Since the beginning of November, the Ministry will already start using the System".
However, the very next day Meta Platforms' director of political communications for Asia Pacific, Ben McConaghy, said:
"First, we did not make a joint statement with the Kazakh government - instead, the Kazakh government issued its own statement based on our discussions about the process for handling requests from governments to restrict content that violates local laws.
We follow a consistent global process for assessing individual requests - regardless of any government - in accordance with Facebook policy, local law and international human rights standards. This process in Kazakhstan is the same as elsewhere in the world."
From this we can conclude that negotiations and consultations did take place, Facebook is quite explicit about it. Meanwhile, the streamlined phrase about "compliance with Facebook policy and local legislation" makes one tense, because it's in the details of local legislation that the devil usually hides. Of course, it's impossible to prove or deny that special trainings were conducted for the ministry employees, but the fact that Facebook's rebuttals don't mention them a single word, and only the awkward wording "joint statement" is peddled, speaks volumes.
Illustration: gov.kz
