The government then decided to stop the spread of false news reports on various social media routes like Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, YouTube, Viber, and Snapchat.

However, the government did not announce the date or time when the ban will be lifted.

Moreover, it appears at a time when social media firms are striving to rein in the measure of misinformation.

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What was the reason for its ban?

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, ordered the people to hold the unverified reports and speculation about the uncertainty.

Thereby 300 people have died in a series of bombings at churches and hotels during the Sunday service, as per the reports.

All these factors resulted in an out-and-out ban on the most popular social media sites.

The government said the block would be temporary but complete in place “until investigations were settled.

Twitter seems to be unaffected by the ban- not many in Sri Lanka follow Twitter when compared to other mediums as per some experts.

The shutdown is not without a rule. Facebook was briefly blocked a year ago in Sri Lanka after it was blamed for allowing posts that incited anti-Muslim violence.

It is reasonably not surprising that the Sri Lankan government has taken such drastic measures given that the social network Facebook acknowledged in November that its service had been used to increase violence in Myanmar.

Is the ban a great idea?

Many from the public think that the ban is an inevitable response to the emerging tech firms to play safely on the spread of wrong information.
However, other sets of the group are concerned about the government taking quick action on blocking the flow of free information online worldwide. Sri Lanka’s history shows it can control the media.

Social media continues an active source for a piece of finding information and for eluding government restrictions.

Factors that affect the issue

When there is no questioning the fact that social media networks are used to mislead information, eventually, they are crucial communication platforms for people who are desperate to check about their beloved ones.

Facebook

Most people rely on our services to communicate with their loved ones.

With this, we are committed to maintaining our services and helping the community and the country during this tragic time…

Meanwhile, WhatsApp is widely used in Sri Lanka.

Moreover, platforms like Facebook are not just part of the Internet but are the Internet for many.

This means their only form of communication, to be specific when they need it most, is suddenly cut off.

Is the ban going?

A certain group of people is using virtual private networks to circumvent the ban.

As VPNs can hide someone’s location by funneling data through a server in another country.
As per Netblocks, an organization that tracks internet outages, of these – TunnelBear has also been blocked.

Dr. Claire Wardle [An academic who founded First Draft, a non-profit organization that researches misinformation]  told:

The confirmation of the influence of social media cessations in other connections points out that they don’t have the influence people demand. While there aren’t strong channels for quality information, this can backfire.

Additionally, social media can be an aid for those who attempt to connect with people.

Mr. Sajid Javid, home secretary of the UK will be taking measures to restrict the users of the UK from accessing Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter also if the social media platform fails to remove the content that is spreading terrorism, fake news, child abuse, sexual abuse will face removal from the search engines like google, bing, and Yahoo.

The UK government is taking these steps because of the terrorist attack that took place in Christchurch, New Zealand. The attacker name Brenton Tarrant went live on Facebook while shooting the locals and the people inside the mosque killed almost 50 Muslims, more than 4000 people watched it before it was taken down by Facebook millions of people around the world saw it on different social media sites like Twitter and Instagram.

The suicide case of Molly Russell who was just 14 years old was found watching self-harm and depressive content on social media before ending her life, as stated by her father in 2017 has also focused minds.

Online messaging services, file-hosting sites, and streaming sites for kids like youtube kids will also have to follow the new guidelines and block content which promotes violence, sexual activities, and pornographic material.

The new laws that are yet to be unveiled will also tackle the spread of fake news on social media and interference in election campaigns.

As the number of users is increasing, more business ideas and options are being created on Twitter, and that all lead to spam. Combating with spam is not an easy job because they find new ways of spamming when a company tries finding solutions.

Twitter has cut down the number of accounts you can follow per day to 400. It is a huge drop from the previous cap which is of 1000 accounts. That means, earlier you could follow 1000 accounts a day but now, you cannot follow more than 400 accounts a day.

https://twitter.com/TwitterSafety/status/1115308523901079557

One of the  Twitter spokespersons stated, “As a part of our commitment to building a healthy service, we remain focused on stopping spam and abuse on Twitter.”

What Twitter has done is right because there are spammers who do follow a huge number of accounts per day to get followed, and once they get followed, they start unfollowing others which is unethical. They do it to spam!

So, we respect Twitter’s decision of cutting down the numbers.