Facebook is increasingly striving to please Greeks and Trojans, this time they are struggling to please the people of Mao Tsè-Tung, creating an app as a key to success because of the censorship they have had in China.
The solution found by the social networking giant was to create an application far from the eyes of the world, a software that automatically disappears the messages that appear in users' feeds in specific regions. This information was reported by the New York Times and CNET.com, with sources inside the company.
Mark Zuckerberg has so far attempted to build a relationship with Chinese leaders, including President Xi Jiping himself and also tries to get closer to his platform. He is also struggling to learn Mandarin.
For a long time we have said that we are interested in China and we are spending time understanding more about the country, the more we have not made a decision about our approach to China, ”said a Facebook spokesman in a statement. “Our focus now is on helping Chinese companies and developers to expand into new markets outside of China using our ad platform.
China is the largest internet market in the world, with about 700 million users, twice the entire population of the United States. But the censorship rules instituted by the government on US sites have limited the population to share information and opinions on sensitive issues.
By their strict rules, some technology companies have also been blocked within the Chinese territory, requiring companies to block sensitive information or content within China. Popular sites and services like Gmail, Facebook and Twitter have been blocked in the country.
The job that facebook has to get into China is very deep. The social network has quietly developed software to suppress the posts that appear in news feeds of people in specific geographic areas, according to three current Facebook former employees who have asked to be anonymous because the tool developed is confidential. This feature was created to help Facebook enter China, a market where social networking has been blocked, these people say that Mr. Zuckerber himself supported and defended the effort created.
China is not the first country to restrict Facebook within its territory, as we have Pakistan, Russia, and Turkey, according to the typical practice of American companies on the internet that generally comply with requests from the government to block certain content after it is posted.
Facebook blocked about 55.000 pieces of content in about 20 countries between July of 2015 to December of 2015. Plus the new feature goes to another level, preventing content from appearing in China's feeds first.
Is censoring content a good strategy?
