Fresh move to control Facebook, Google

Khairul Islam | Published: December 01, 2014 00:00:00 | Updated: November 30, 2024 06:01:00

The telecom regulator will urge the US-based popular social networkÂ Facebook and leading search engine Google to open 'admin panel' in Bangladesh, officials said.
The officials said Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) has decided to send a proposal immediately to the companies for the purpose.
The move came following rejection of the government's request by Facebook to share information of 29 users of the social networking site in Bangladesh during the periods of January-June 2013 and January-June 2014.
"We will seek allowing admin panel from the two companies for the two popular sites in Dhaka," a top official at the regulator said preferring anonymity.
Once the proposal is granted, the local administration will entertain certain power to resolve the Facebook and Google-related problems.
According to the regulator, until October, the country has had 44.08 million internet users of whom 42.5 million people use mobile interment and almost all of the users have Facebook accounts. Â
The official said Dhaka doesn't have any agreement with the two popular media; as a result it couldn't solve Google and Facebook-related problems locally.
The proposal will also include empowering the local authorities to solve the problems from Bangladesh as the users of the corporations frequently face serious problems.
Â "As we don't have any agreement with the companies, they can reject our request, whatever it may be," the officer said adding that the companies definitely have a standard format for such deals.
"Google and Facebook usually deal with other governments and regulatory authorities," he said adding that Facebook refused to disclose information of different users on several occasions previously.
Earlier, Google-run YouTube had also refused to remove a specific content from the network despite a government request, he noted.
According to a report by Facebook, the country forwarded seven requests during January-June this year seeking information about 17 users and a single request from January-June 2013 seeking information of 12 other users.
In September 2012, the BTRC blocked video sharing site YouTube in Bangladesh for 260 days following worldwide protests at a 14-minute trailer of a film titled 'Innocence of Muslims' which mocks Islam and its Prophet Hazrat Muhammad (pbuh).
The BTRC initially asked the YouTube authorities to remove the video claiming that it hurts the religious sentiments of people in Bangladesh. But YouTube rejected the request.
Later, the telecom regulator requested YouTube to block the content for Bangladeshi viewers, but the company also refused to do so. Finally, the BTRC lifted the ban after YouTube agreed to put a cautionary note on top of that content.
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