Facebook’s Intrusive Disruption To Our Engagement On Tibet

Image: techhive/factualized by @tibettruth

This is a heads-up to all our friends and subscribers who follow and engage with our Facebook (FB) page /digitalactivism

On Tuesday January 7 Facebook’s censor-bots will deny us access to that, so we’re reaching out to all our friends here who support our work on Tibet and would like to continue to follow us for news, information and campaigns. Join us at our replacement Facebook page here —>> https://www.facebook.com/Tibettruth-100444794824609

This has been created to temporarily replace our previous page /digitalactivism due to be locked down (January 7, 2020) to us by FB because we did not comply with demands to make known our account’s admin location nor provide a cell phone number. We declined to do so as we oppose that intrusion of privacy and confidentiality, and would not wish to expose such data to third-parties, including Chinese interests.

We’ve published this page to allow our many friends a link where they can continue to receive news, information and campaign actions on Tibet. It is vital that the human rights situation inside occupied Tibet is exposed and opposed, and allowed to reach the widest audience possible. As a dominant social media platform with a massive global reach Facebook is an invaluable resource towards our activism. It allows us to report on issues, abuses, and events relating to Tibet which mainstream media utterly ignores.

Denying us that freedom of speech is a form of censorship that pleases only the Chinese regime, who welcome the silencing of any voice that reveals their tyranny. In the spirit of human rights and free expression we hope that this latest page will not also be targeted by the censorial algorithms of Facebook.

Meanwhile we intend to rebuild our presence here, providing thoughtful articles, breaking news and related information on Tibet. We look forward to reaching out and reconnecting with our global friends and supporters. It begins today!

Please tell your friends and share this on your FB page.Thanks.

Why’s this happening you may wonder? Well our page has over the past months been attracting increasing numbers of views and interaction, which has been amazing in getting the message out on Tibet. Couple days back we get a notification from FB threatening to close our page unless we complete their ‘two way authentication’, which requires us to provide a cell number and confirm a location.

Image: shutterstock

Now given the record of FB on personal data-mining and releasing information to third parties, along with its notorious vulnerabilities we are not going to provide them with any details that would compromise our operational anonymity or personal data of volunteers who run our Facebook account. We read also that cell-phone numbers provided may have been made available to corporations and advertisers, of course we cannot discount that Chinese interest in such data could also be a risk.

Image: bengarrison

On this basis we wont be agreeing to their demand, in the short term it means an inconvenience and break in communication with many people who have been engaging with our page, but we will be reaching out across social-media to reconnect. What we shall not be doing is complying with Facebook’s latest intrusions nor allowing what is a form of censorship to block our outreach with friends on that platform.