{"id":364008,"date":"2018-06-04T17:17:44","date_gmt":"2018-06-04T16:17:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/papua-new-guinea-government-plans-to-block-access-to-facebook\/"},"modified":"2018-06-04T17:17:44","modified_gmt":"2018-06-04T16:17:44","slug":"papua-new-guinea-government-plans-to-block-access-to-facebook","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/papua-new-guinea-government-plans-to-block-access-to-facebook\/","title":{"rendered":"Papua New Guinea government plans to block access to Facebook"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"content\">\n<h3 class=\"nomargin\">\u00a0<\/h3>\n<h2>Papua New Guinea government plans to block access to Facebook<\/h2>\n<h5>\n<p>    By<br \/>\n    John Braddock<br \/>\n    <br \/>4 June 2018<\/p>\n<\/h5>\n<p>The Papua New Guinea (PNG) government declared on May 29 it will ban Facebook use for a month to give authorities time to analyse the social network for \u201cfake\u201d profiles and \u201cillegal\u201d usage.<\/p>\n<p>Communications Minister Sam Basil told the <em>PNG Post-Courier<\/em>: \u201cThe time will allow information to be collected to identify users that hide behind fake accounts, users that upload pornographic images, users that post false and misleading information on Facebook to be filtered and removed.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A start date is yet to be announced. Basil later told parliament he disputed the newspaper\u2019s report about an impending ban. He said the government\u2019s official position would be made known after studies into \u201cthe advantages and disadvantages of Facebook.\u201d Nevertheless, Basil declared he was \u201cnot afraid to put an indefinite ban\u201d on the networking site.<\/p>\n<p>The <em>Post-Courier<\/em> defended its report. Meanwhile, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) reported on May 29 that the PNG government intends to use its investigation to work out how to apply a restrictive \u201ccyber-crime law\u201d to social media more widely.<\/p>\n<p>The move coincides with a decision to disconnect mobile phone sim cards that are not registered to users with formal identification. Basil told the ABC the disconnection would stop people using telecommunications and social media anonymously, claiming false accounts are used to \u201cspread fake news and rumours.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Basil previously said US Senate hearings on Facebook and a class action lawsuit against Cambridge Analytica and other companies over misuse of data raised concerns \u201cfor Papua New Guinea citizens.\u201d Last month he commissioned a study of Facebook\u2019s \u201cimpact\u201d and the&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.wsws.org\/en\/articles\/2018\/06\/04\/pngf-j04.html\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0 Papua New Guinea government plans to block access to Facebook By John Braddock 4 June 2018 The Papua New Guinea (PNG) government declared on May 29 it will ban Facebook use for a month to give authorities time to analyse the social network for \u201cfake\u201d profiles and \u201cillegal\u201d usage. Communications Minister Sam Basil told [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2526,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-364008","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364008","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2526"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=364008"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364008\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=364008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=364008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=364008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}