Facebook, while blocked in China, is a tool used by Beijing authorities to promote political views to hundreds of millions of Internet users abroad, sometimes even through advertisements. The Wall Street Journal reports that some Facebook employees have raised concerns on internal messaging platforms or other discussion forums that Facebook is being used as a tool for state propaganda, highlighting postings paid for by Chinese agencies about the prosperous lives of the Uighur Muslim minority in Xinjiang.
Facebook has not yet decided whether to act on those concerns, people familiar with the matter said. Facebook will be watching how international organizations such as the United Nations (UN) respond to the Xinjiang issue. The UN this week called on companies engaged in Xinjiang-related business to conduct “substantial human rights due diligence.
A Facebook spokesperson noted that Beijing authorities do not violate existing policies by publishing ads about Xinjiang, as long as advertisers follow Facebook’s rules when buying ads, and that the company is closely monitoring Xinjiang-related news “so that we are informed of practices and due diligence on this issue.
The report mentions that a Facebook employee pointed out this year in the company’s internal Muslim employee group that the U.S. government has determined that China’s actions in Xinjiang have constituted genocide, and that Twitter has taken action against the Chinese Embassy in the U.S. for a Uyghur-related tweet that violated its policies.
According to what the Wall Street Journal has, the Facebook employee posted in the group, “It’s time for our platform to take action to confront false messages on the genocide of the Uyghurs.”
Advertisements and postings from the Chinese government and state-run media feature people in Xinjiang, including children, looking into the camera and saying that their lives are gradually improving and that the West is engaged in a conspiracy to try to destabilize China.
Facebook employees are also discussing internally their unease about what they say are fake messages from China and the possibility that Facebook itself is being allowed to serve as a vehicle for China to spread human rights-related propaganda.
Analysts at a research firm that studies digital advertising say Facebook, which has been banned in China since 2009, fears that annual revenue from Chinese advertisers exceeds $5 billion and may be the highest contributor to Facebook’s revenue after the United States. Facebook does not publish revenue data for each country.
According to international research firm DataReportal, China’s state-run media accounts for three of the top 20 most tracked Facebook pages in the world. China Global Television Network (CGTN) has 115 million followers, ranking 4th most worldwide, ahead of Coca-Cola and pop star Rihanna.
China’s state-run media Xinhua News Agency spent less than $100 last month to run an interview promoting the mayor of Xinjiang’s capital, Urumqi, in which he said “the peace and stability longed for by all ethnic groups in Xinjiang has been achieved.” He also said that Western plots to interfere in China’s internal affairs are “doomed to failure.
The ad appeared as many as 200,000 times in the two days before it was removed, according to Facebook’s advertising profile. Xinhua was not available for comment.
A spokesman for Avaaz, a New York-based human rights group, said the ads were a propaganda tool for the Beijing authorities and that “it is particularly troubling that they are a direct source of revenue for Facebook, even if the amount is small.
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