A South Pacific nation is banning Facebook for a month as the region grapples with fake news and censorship

The South Pacific nation of Papua New Guinea (PNG), Australia's closest neighbour, directly to its north, will temporarily ban Facebook as the region grapples with potentially troubling side effects of the platform. The month-long ban will allow the government to research how the social media platform is being used and, in particular, will target fake news and fake accounts.
"The time will allow information to be collected to identify users that hide behind fake accounts, users that upload pornographic images, users that post false and misleading information on Facebook to be filtered and removed," Communications Minister Sam Basil said, according to the local Post-Courier.
"This will allow genuine people with real identities to use the social network responsibly," he said, adding that a specific date for implementation hasn't been set.
"We cannot allow the abuse of Facebook to continue in the country," Basil said.
Fake accounts and potential political interference on Facebook aren't just in Russia's playbook. In 2016, weeks before Rodrigo Duterte was elected president of the Philippines, Rappler found 26 fake accounts were able to influence at least 3 million accounts. Earlier this year, Sri Lanka temporarily banned Facebook, as well as WhatsApp and Instagram, after posts inciting violence towards the country's Muslim population were discovered amid a state of emergency. But concern reached new levels when it emerged that Facebook has contributed to the suspected genocide in Myanmar. One UN official said in March that Facebook "substantively contributed to the level of acrimony and dissension and conflict, if you will, within the public. Hate speech is certainly of course a part of that."