Key Points
- The hashtag #BanTaliban has clocked over 25,000 tweets to claim the top spot on Twitter’s trending list in Afghanistan
- Afghan Peace Watch founder Habib Khan said the Taliban uses the platform to "whitewash crimes and intimidate people".
Around the world, a chorus of journalists, activists, and social media users are calling on social media giant Twitter to remove Taliban officials from its platform.
It's gaining major momentum: clocking up over 25,000 tweets in the past 24 hours, the hashtag #BanTaliban has claimed the top spot on Twitter’s trending list in Afghanistan.
Afghan Peace Watch founder Habib Khan says the Taliban uses the platform to “whitewash crimes, intimidate people and propagate inaccurate information".
"I think the Taliban shouldn't be allowed to have a platform because, we know what they're going to talk about, they're going to whitewash their crimes, they're going to intimidate people," he told SBS News.
"They're not using Twitter and social media platforms to ... preach coexistence, to promote human rights. They're using social media to recruit people."
Social media is very powerful, especially Twitter, and the Taliban know thatHabib Khan
Calls for Twitter to remove the group went viral in July after Facebook’s parent company Meta removed Taliban pages from its platform.
Woman holds a sign reading "#BanTaliban" in support of the campaign. Credit: Twitter @HabibKhanT
Mr Khan said the Taliban was using Twitter to promote suicide bombings, as the Afghan term for suicide bomber trended on the site in Afghanistan.
Twitter responded to calls to remove the content from its trending list, and according to some reports, they’ve suspended over 1000 Taliban-affiliated accounts.
However, activists continue to push the company to remove every Taliban-identified account from its platform. Mr Khan estimates that there are tens of thousands of Taliban-affiliated accounts being used.
"The Taliban spokespeople, the Taliban officials, top leadership, they have a large following on Twitter, and like some of them have half a million followers on Twitter," Mr Khan said.
"What people asked Twitter to do is to suspend all those major accounts, deny access to the Taliban to use Twitter as a propaganda tool as a tool to promote their terror agendas."
While the hashtag continues to garner support, Mr Khan says he is happy to see people “from all different walks of life” expressing solidarity against the Taliban.
"The Taliban has been using Twitter to glorify those very same members who have caused all these civilian casualties in Afghanistan and dire human rights abuses."
