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Afghan Taliban fighters listening to Mullah Mohammed Rasool, the newly-elected leader of a breakaway faction of the Taliban, in Farah province back in November 2015. AP/Press Association Images
Hate speech
Google takes down Taliban propaganda app
The app, which was designed to show news and videos from the group, was only up shortly before it was taken down.
AN APP DEVELOPED by the Taliban was removed from the Google Play store for violating a policy prohibiting hate speech.
The fundamentalist group released an app called Alemarah, was released as a way to show news and videos from the movement but was taken down shortly after launching on 1 April, say the BBC.
A spokesperson for the group told Bloomberg that the app was “part of our advanced technological efforts to make more global audience,” but the app was removed from the store.
The group originally told Bloomberg it had removed the app to fix a number of “technical issues” and would reappear soon.
The Google Play business and program policies list hate speech as one of the things Google would remove an app or delete an account.
It says “we don’t allow the promotion of hatred towards groups of people based on their race or ethnic origin, religion, disability, gender, age, veteran status, or sexual orientation/gender identity”.
Google didn’t confirm the exact reason for removing the app but told the BBC it “removes apps from Google Play that violate these policies”.
The app was discovered and reported by Site Intel Group, a US organisation that monitors jihadist activity.
The Taliban is an Islamic fundamentalist group based in Afghanistan, originally forming during the country’s civil war from 1996 to 2001.
In recent years, it has been making greater efforts in its online campaigning. Alongside its website and social media accounts on Facebook and Twitter, the group also have a channel on the encrypted messaging service Telegram.
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