Papua New Guinea Bans Facebook For a Month To Root Out 'Fake Users' (theguardian.com)

The Papua New Guinean government will ban Facebook for a month in a bid to crack down on "fake users" and study the effects the website is having on the population. From a report: The communication minister, Sam Basil, said the shutdown would allow his department's analysts to carry out research and analysis on who was using the platform, and how they were using it, admits rising concerns about social well-being, security and productivity. "The 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," Basil told the Post Courier newspaper. "This will allow genuine people with real identities to use the social network responsibly." Basil has repeatedly raised concerns about protecting the privacy of PNG's Facebook users in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica revelations, which found Facebook had leaked the personal data of tens of millions of users to a private company. The minister has closely followed the US Senate inquiry into Facebook.

Comments

PNG Colonial Past

[sickre]

PNG (Papua New Guinea) was an Australian Mandate for a long time. The country was on a slow and steady pathway to development and independence (keep in mind cannibalism was still practiced widely there until the 20th century). Then in the 70s, a bunch of do-gooder Australians hijacked the process in the midst of other native independence campaigns worldwide, and dumped independence on PNG even though they were still unprepared. It resulted in things like ministers and senior bureaucrats without a high school education being selected. So, PNG still has a long way to go, though they would have been in a better place if they were an Australian Mandate. I guess banning Facebook and focusing people on work and productivity is probably a good move.

Re:PNG Colonial Past

[hazardPPP]

I'm afraid you've messed things up a bit.

The island of Papua, also known as New Guinea, is divided into two. The eastern half of the island, along with surrounding islands, was mostly a German colony (called German New Guinea, and it has left behind interesting placenames, such as the Bismarck sea), with parts claimed by the British. After 1918, the British claim was combined with the former German colony to create a League of Nations mandate governed by Australia. In 1949 this mandate became a United Nations Trust Territory administred by Australia. In 1975 this territorry became independent as the "Independent State of Papua New Guinea", abbreviated to PNG.

The western half of the island was a Dutch colony (and never administred by Australia), just like Indonesia was. Indonesia became independent in 1949, but West Papua remained a Dutch colony. Indonesia claimed West Papua as its own, and was quite aggressive in attempting to kick the Dutch out and acquire it. In 1960s, the Dutch started preparing to grant West Papua independence, but under threat of Indonesian invasion, handed West Papua over to a UN transitional administration - which then handed it over to Indonesia in 1963, when Indonesian troops occupied the western part of the island. In 1969, there was supposed to be a referendum on whether West Papua wanted to be part of Indonesia or not, but the Indonesian essentially faked it, and just annexed the territory outright. Since then there has been an armed conflict of low intensity between the Indonesian government and some groups in West Papua who want independece or unification with PNG. That part you got right...but that's not happening in PNG, but in West Papua.