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Tuesday, 18 April 2017

Are MPs looking to charge Egyptians for using Facebook?

Charge Egyptians for using Facebook? Good luck. Some MPs are reportedly looking to making Egyptians pay a monthly fee for using Facebook, and will discuss proposals for a draft bill on this soon, Egypt Independent reports. “The purpose behind the suggested subscription is to put all users under government surveillance so it can effectively restrict any attempt by Egypt’s enemies to use social media as a mean to broadcast rumors and incite [people] against Egypt’s army and police forces,” explained MP Ryad Abdel Sattar, who proposed the law.

Abdel Sattar, whose understand of the how the interwebs work is clearly somewhat, uhm, challenged, was subtly rebuked by Rep. Ahmed Badway, deputy head of the House Committee on ICT, who simply denied on Sunday that the committee intends to discuss charging fees for Facebook use in Egypt.

Meanwhile, a Times of London reporter is accusing Facebook of failing to remove extremist posts, according to Reuters. The social network did not remove the posts even after the moderators were directly informed of the potentially illegal content. “Facebook moderators removed some of reported images but left untouched pro-jihadist posts praising recent attacks [in the UK and Egypt] and calling for new ones. The company appeared to take action only after The Times identified itself as reporting a story on the matter.” Facebook Vice President of Operations Justin Osofsky apologized later, saying “it is clear that we can do better, and we’ll continue to work hard to live up to the high standards people rightly expect of Facebook.”

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