New Guinea, in Papua blocked Facebook for a month

The GOVERNMENT of Papua New Guinea will block Facebook for a month. A period of time that will serve to clean up the local version of the social network, looking for fake users and a deepening of the effects on the population and on the public opinion of the country to the southwest of the Pacific. This was announced by the Ministry of Communications of Port Moresby in the person of Minister Sam Basil: the "insights" on the platform will be conducted by analysts and officials of his department.

"Time will gather information to identify users who hide behind fake accounts, those who upload pornographic images, and those who publish fake and misleading information on Facebook, in order to be filtered and removed - he explained to the Post Courier - This will allow real people, with real identities, to use the social network responsibly ".

In addition to checking accounts, therefore, the government will also be able to assess the impact on the population and may even consider creating a local Facebook, that is, a self-developed alternative. But this honestly appears to be a too ambitious hypothesis. The monthly block is part of a series of initiatives related to cybercrime, in the context of which local police are being trained. According to the Washington Post, Facebook would contact the administration of the country "to understand their concerns".

At the moment it is not known when the blackout will start or why it was absolutely necessary to suspend the platform to conduct the investigation of the case. In any case, it seems a rather singular eventuality both with respect to absolute bans like the Chinese bans and the temporary blocs of authoritarian regimes: in this case we start with an apparently positive approach but we do not know where we can end up.