Appreciating the initiative of blocking fake Facebook accounts, information and communication technology (ICT) experts yesterday said it would help prevent the harassment of people. Talking to The Independent, ICT expert Sumon Ahmed Sabir yesterday said the blocking move can help prevent militancy. However, he was of the opinion that entrepreneurs who conduct digital marketing using Facebook may face trouble because of the ongoing initiative. On April 15, the Facebook authorities said in a statement that it has taken a “spam operation” to effectively shutdown fake Facebook accounts.
The social media giant also said that it has identified a huge group that is involved in illegal activities suing Facebook and that the company was removing fake ‘likes’ by this group.
However, that Facebook authority said that the authentic accounts that would be shutdown during the ongoing initiative would be reopened through necessary verification.
The reopening process would require national identity card number, mobile phone number and e-mail verification. The authentic account holders would get back their accounts through two to three steps authentication.
Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) Chairman Dr Shahjahan Mahmud also spoke about the reopening of the blocked Facebook accounts, however there were no visible initiatives for that so far.
The BTRC Secretary Sarwar Alam, however, did not make any comment regarding the reopening of blocked accounts.
A BTRC official said Facebook carries out its activities through its own process and the government has nothing to do here.
However, State Minister for posts and telecommunications Tarana Halim told the media on Sunday that the Facebook authority was taking action against fake pages and accounts getting requests from the Bangladesh government.
However, the government was yet to a get a final estimate on the number of blocked accounts. On April 10, Tarana Halim told a media briefing that the government signed an MoU with Facebook and held a meeting with one of their teams in Singapore on March 30.
President of E-commerce association of Bangladesh Rajib Ahmed said there is nothing to be worried over the reduction in number of likes of different business pages. According to a recent survey, there are about 2.6 crore Facebook accounts operating from Bangladesh.