Social Media Platforms Are Helping Users in Afghanistan Hide Their Personal Information and Histories

Amid the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, numerous social media platforms have begun implementing new features to protect the identities of their users from being traced.

According to Reuters, Facebook spearheaded the movement, temporarily preventing users from searching for profiles or looking through the friends lists of those registered in the country. The company’s head of security policy Nathaniel Gleicher also tweeted that Facebook has launched a one-click tool for those in Afghanistan to swiftly lock down their accounts, so no one else could look at their timeline posts or share profile images.

Twitter expressed similar concerns over the post history of its Afghan users, saying that it has gotten in touch with civil society partners in order to support various groups within the unstable country. It’s also working with the Internet Archive to expedite direct requests to delete past sensitive tweets that have been archived by the organization.

Professional networking platform LinkedIn also followed suit, with a spokesman revealing that the website has temporarily hidden connections of users based in Afghanistan so other users outside of their connected circle would not be able to find them online.

Elsewhere in the tech industry, Elon Musk has unveiled plans to construct a human-sized Tesla Bot.