Social media giant Facebook recently took on the Australian government’s policy of paying for news content and blocked the Australian news sharing service. Meanwhile, British media have revealed that Facebook received funding from Chinese media to help the Chinese government conduct a major Facebook outreach campaign to deny the persecution of the Uighur and other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang.
The Press Gazette reported that Facebook received hundreds of dollars each from Chinese media outlets such as China Daily and China Global Television Network (CGTN) to promote the campaign to millions of Facebook users.
The report mentioned that even though Facebook is blocked in China, Chinese official media outlets China Global Television Network (CGTN), China Daily, Xinhua News Agency, People’s Daily and CCTV have held five of the top six most liked news fan pages on Facebook worldwide, with the help of Facebook ads since 2018.
In the case of China Daily, for example, an October article in the newspaper paid Facebook just $400 (about NT$11,000) to reach more than 1 million Facebook users, using ads to accuse Western countries of “lying” and “spreading false news “In a separate video, it accuses reports of re-Education camps in Xinjiang of being “completely false” and “a trick of the Western media” and says that “reports of oppression in Xinjiang are a myth that the Western media refuse to The film accuses the reporting on the Xinjiang re-education camps of being “completely wrong” and “a ploy by the Western media” and says “the reporting on the oppression in Xinjiang is a myth that the Western media refuse to give up.
China Global Television Network also pays Facebook for advertising, paying Facebook $200 to $299 (about NT$5,587 to NT$8,353) last month to promote an article on “How Western Media Distort #Xinjiang Boarding Schools”; in the same month, the media outlet’s story “What’s the real state of boarding schools in Xinjiang? What is the real state of the schools in Xinjiang? What difference are these schools making to local students?” It was viewed by 1 million Facebook users for less than $500 (about $13,000).
Imran Ahmed, executive director of the Anti-Digital Hate Center, said it was “disgusting” that Facebook was paid to promote Beijing and deny the reality of China’s human rights abuses, “Facebook claims not to notice that five of the six most popular news fan pages are promoting Facebook’s claim that it didn’t notice that five of its six most popular news fan pages were promoting division and whitewashing atrocities is so absurd that no one will believe they didn’t notice.”
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