On Thursday, the monitoring board for the corporation that owns Facebook, Meta Monitoring Board Urges that Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen should be banned from the social media site for a period of six months because he posted a video that violated the rules against making violent threats.
The board, which is funded by Meta but functions independently, stated that the company had made a mistake by not removing the video after it was published in January. The statement was made by the board.
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Meta Monitoring Board Urges in a written statement, Meta confirmed that it would remove the video but indicated that it would respond to the board’s proposal to suspend Hun Sen only after conducting further research.
It is less than a month before elections in Cambodia, and any suspension would make it impossible for the Prime Minister of Cambodia to continue using his Facebook profile. The government has responded by denying the allegations that the election will be rigged, which have been made by the opposition and rights groups.
Hun Sen, who has been in power for almost four decades, is one of the world’s longest-serving leaders. On Wednesday, Hun Sen announced that he had switched from Facebook to the messaging app Telegram in order to reach a greater number of people. However, he did not mention the video.
On Thursday, the government did not immediately issue a statement or comment regarding the situation.
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The ruling is the most recent in a string of criticisms leveled by the oversight board on the manner in which the largest social media firm in the world deals with contentious statements made by political leaders and posts calling for violence in relation to elections.
As the United States of America gets ready to hold presidential elections in the next year, the company’s attempts to ensure the honesty of the voting process are receiving a lot of attention.
After the deadly Capitol Hill riot on January 6, the board supported Meta’s 2021 banishment of former United States President Donald Trump, who is the current front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024. However, the board criticized the indefinite nature of his suspension and urged more careful preparation for volatile political situations in general.
Earlier on in this year, Meta decided to give the account of the previous President of the United States a second chance.
The lawsuit in Cambodia was brought about after a number of users noticed a video from January in which Hun Sen was heard saying that individuals who accused his Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) of purchasing votes in a local election in 2022 either submit a court action or suffer a beating at the hands of CPP’s followers.
According to the judgement, Meta concluded at the time that the video violated its regulations, but it chose to leave it up under a “newsworthiness” exemption because it reasoned that the public had an interest in hearing threats of violence by their government.
The board came to the conclusion that the negative effects of the video outweighed any potential benefits it might have brought.
The government of Cambodia has denied that it is targeting the opposition and has claimed that those who are being investigated for possible legal action are lawbreakers.
Phil Robertson, the deputy Asia director for Human Rights Watch, stated that it was about time that Hun Sen was called out for encouraging violence.
“This kind of face-off between big tech and a dictator over human rights issues is long overdue,” he said in a statement. “It’s been a long time coming.”
The board expressed persistent concern about the efficiency of Meta’s election activities last week, saying that the company’s response to demands for violence following the 2022 Brazilian election continues to raise questions in this regard.
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