Twitter, Facebook May Let Taliban Control Afghan Government Social Media Accounts

The Taliban control all 34 provinces in Afghanistan, Kabul, the capital city, the presidential palace—and possibly soon a slew of valuable digital assets: Twitter and Facebook accounts once operated by the nation’s democratically elected government.

The social media companies say they won’t rule out allowing the Taliban to run those channels, which number more than two dozen across the two sites. Doing so would almost certainly hand the insurgents a useful platform on which to spread propaganda and misinformation, and no matter the decision, it is likely to reopen long-simmering debates about what should be on the internet and who should determine what belongs there.

“If I’m a large organization,” like the Taliban, “I want as many different pathways to shape my narratives and shape perceptions of what I’m doing,” says William Braniff, director of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism in Maryland. “Having more channels is ultimately quite useful.”

Twitter, whose spokesperson couldn’t be reached to comment for this story, has allowed different Taliban accounts on its site in the past and continues to let the group’s spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, tweet regularly to his 293,400 followers. Back in 2011, Sen. Joe Lieberman, then head of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, sent a letter to Twitter complaining about two active Taliban accounts, which were eventually taken down. In 2021, Mujahid has been issuing updates throughout the latest conflict in Afghanistan, including one missive sent Monday that said, simply: “The situation in Kabul is under control.”

As for Facebook, it has officially banned the Taliban from its platform. But even with the prohibition against the organization on its books, Facebook says it can’t yet decide what to do about the Afghan government accounts until more time passes, and there’s greater clarity about the situation in the country.

The Afghan government accounts range from a Facebook page dedicated to the Afghan embassy in Washington to the Afghan Ministry of Defense’s Twitter feed (its motto: “Allah, Country, Duty!”). These accounts have sizeable followings, likely totaling more than a million subscribers across all of them.