Facebook takes down Taliban page from its site

Washington: Facebook has removed a page set up by the Pakistan Taliban, after a US monitoring group reported of its existence as a fresh example of a social media being used by terror groups to recruit new fighters. Earlier, the US-based SITE Intelligence Group said the Umar Media TTP page used Facebook as "a recruitment" tool and called attention to the Facebook page that belonged to Umar Media TTP, the media arm of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan.

The group noted Umar Media's October posting for "online job opportunities" for "video editing, translations, sharing, uploading, downloading and collection of required data", 'NBCNews.com' reported. In late November, page administrators posted a new item seeking writers, SITE said in its report.

The page has not been the only Taliban-related one on Facebook. There are others, including one supportive of the Afghanistan Taliban and another about Taliban news. A Facebook spokesperson said that the social network - with more than 1 billion users worldwide - does have rules that "bar direct statements of hate, attacks on private individuals and groups and the promotion of terrorism".

A spokesperson said that the social network does have rules that \'bar direct statements of hate\'.

"We have a large team of professional investigators both in the US and abroad who enforce these rules," the spokesperson said. "Where abusive content is posted and reported, Facebook removes it and disables accounts of those responsible. Whenever we become aware of possible violations of our terms, we will investigate these instances and take action if violations of our statements of rights and responsibilities take place," he said.

Facebook, however, did not not comment on specific pages, saying "yes, we have removed the page".

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