10 countries where Facebook has been

banned
04 Feb 2014
BY ALICE KIRKLAND

Today Facebook celebrates its 10th anniversary. The social networking giant now has over 1.23 billion
users, but there are still political leaders around the world who don’t want their country to have access to the
site, or those who have banned it in the past amid fears it could be used to organise political rallies.
North Korea
Perhaps the most secretive country in the world little is known about internet access in Kim Jong-un’s nation.
Although a new 3G network is available to foreign visitors, for the majority of the population the internet is off
limits. But this doesn’t seem to bother many who, not knowing any different, enjoy the limited freedoms
offered to them by the country’s intranet, Kwangmyong, which appears to be mostly used to post birthday
messages.
A limited number of graduate students and professors at Pyongyang University of Science and Technology do
have access to the internet (from a specialist lab) but in fear of the outside world many chose not to use
it. Don’t expect to see Kim Jong-un’s personal Facebook page any time soon.
Iran
In Iran, however, political leaders have taken to social media- despite both Facebook and Twitter officially
being extraordinarily difficult to access in the country. Even President Hassan Rouhani has his own Twitter
account, although apparently he doesn’t write his own tweets, but access to these accounts can only be gained
via a proxy server.
Facebook was initially banned in the country after the 2009 election amid fears that opposition movements
were being organised via the website.
But things may be beginning to looking up as Iran’s Culture Minister, Ali Jannati, recently remarked that
social networks should be made accessible to ordinary Iranians.
China
The Great Firewall of China, a censorship and surveillance project run by the Chinese government, is a force
to be reckoned with. And behind this wall sits the likes of Facebook.
The social media site was first blocked following the July 2009 Ürümqi riots after it was perceived that
Xinjiang activists were using Facebook to communicate, plot and plan. Since then, China’s ruling Communist
Party has aggressively controlled the internet, regularly deleting posts and blocking access to websites it
simply does not like the look of.
Technically, the ban on Facebook was lifted in September 2013. But only within a 17-square-mile free-trade
zone in Shanghai and only to make foreign investors feel more at home. For the rest of China it is a waiting
game to see if the ban lifts elsewhere.

Cuba
Facebook isn’t officially banned in Cuba but it
sure is difficult to access it.
Only politicians, some journalists and medical
students can legally access the web from their
homes. For everyone else the only way to connect to the online world legally is via internet cafes. This may
not seem much to ask but when rates for an hour of unlimited access to the web cost between $6 and $10 and
the average salary is around $20 getting online becomes ridiculously expensive. High costs also don’t equal
fast internet as web pages can take several minutes to load: definitely not value for money for the Caribbean
country.
Bangladesh

The posting of a cartoon to Facebook saw the networking site shut down across Bangladesh in 2010. Satirical
images of the prophet Muhammad, along with some of the country’s leaders, saw one man arrested and
charged with “spreading malice and insulting the country’s leaders”. The ban lasted for an entire week while
the images were removed.
Since then the Awami-League led government has directed a surveillance campaign at Facebook, and other
social networking sites, looking for blasphemous posts.
Egypt
As Egyptians took to the streets in 2011 in an attempt to overthrow the regime of Egyptian President Hosni
Mubarak the government cut off access to a range of social media sites. As well as preventing protestors from
using the likes of Facebook to foment unrest, many websites registered in Egypt could no longer be accessed
by the outside world. Twitter, YouTube, Hotmail, Google, and a “proxy service” – which would have allowed
Egyptians to get around the enforced restrictions- seemed to be blocked from inside the country.
The ban lasted for several days.
Syria
Syria, however, dealt with the Arab Spring in a different manner. Facebook had been blocked in the country
since 2007 as part of a crackdown on political activism, as the government feared Israeli infiltration of Syrian
social networking sites. In an unprecedented move in 2011 President Bashar al-Assad lifted the five year ban
in an apparent attempt to prevent unrest on his own soil following the discontent in Egypt and Tunisia.
During the ban Syrians were still able to easily access Facebook and other social networking sites using proxy
servers.
Mauritius
Producing fake online profiles of celebrities is something of a hobby to some people. However, when a
Facebook page proclaiming to be that of Mauritius Prime Minister Navin Ramgoolam was discovered by the
government in 2007 the entire Mauritius Facebook community was plunged into darkness. But the ban didn’t
last for long as full access to the site was restored the following day.
These days it would seem Dr Ramgoolam has his own (real) Facebook account.
Pakistan
Another case of posting cartoons online, another case of a government banning Facebook. This time Pakistan
blocked access to the website in 2010 after a Facebook page, created to promote a global online competition to
submit drawings of the prophet Muhammad, was brought to their attention. Any depiction of the prophet is
proscribed under certain interpretations of Islam.
The ban was lifted two weeks later but Pakistan vowed to continue blocking individual pages that seemed to
contain blasphemous content.
Vietnam
During a week in November 2009, Vietnamese Facebook users reported an inability to access the website
following weeks of intermittent access. Reports suggested technicians had been ordered by the government to
block the social networking site, with a supposedly official decree leaked on the internet (although is
authenticity was never confirmed). The government denied deliberately blocking Facebook although access to
the site today is still hit-and-miss in the country.
Alongside this, what can be said on social networking sites like Facebook has also become limited. Decree 72,
which came into place in September 2013, prohibits users from posting links to news stories or other news
related websites on the social media site.
This article was published on 4 February 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
 ASIA INTERNET USE, POPULATION DATA AND
FACEBOOK STATISTICS - MARCH 31, 2019
Facebook
Population Internet Users, Internet Users Penetration Users
ASIA 31-DEC-
( 2019 Est.) (Year 2000) 31-March-2019 (% Population) % Asia
2017
Afganistan 37,209,007 1,000 6,538,124 17.6 % 0.3 % 3,200,000
Armenia 2,936,706 30,000 2,126,716 72.4 % 0.1 % 990,000
Azerbaijan 10,014,575 12,000 7,911,514 79.0 % 0.4 % 1,800,000
Bangladesh 168,065,920 100,000 92,061,000 54.8 % 4.2 % 28,000,000
Bhutan 826,229 500 397,499 54.8 % 0.0 % 350,000
Brunei Darussalam 439,336 30,000 416,798 94.9 % 0.0 % 350,000
Cambodia 16,482,646 6,000 8,005,551 48.6 % 0.4 % 6,300,000
China * 1,420,062,022 22,500,000 829,000,000 58.4 % 37.8 % 1,800,000
Georgia 3,904,204 20,000 2,658,311 68.1 % 0.1 % 2,100,000
Hong Kong * 7,490,776 2,283,000 6,698,252 89.4 % 0.3 % 5,200,000
India 1,368,737,513 5,000,000 560,000,000 40.9 % 25.5 % 251,000,000
Indonesia 269,536,482 2,000,000 143,260,000 53.2 % 6.5 % 130,000,000
Japan 126,854,745 47,080,000 118,626,672 93.5 % 5.4 % 71,000,000
Kazakhstan 18,592,970 70,000 14,210,607 76.4 % 0.6 % 2,500,000
Korea, North 25,727,408 -- 20,000 0.1 % 0.0 % 14,000
Korea, South 51,339,238 19,040,000 48,823,615 95.1 % 2.2 % 43,000,000
Kyrgystan 6,218,616 51,600 2,493,400 40.1 % 0.1 % 650,000
Laos 7,064,242 6,000 2,500,000 35.4 % 0.1 % 2,200,000
Macao * 642,090 60,000 534,026 83.2 % 0.0 % 380,000
Malaysia 32,454,455 3,700,000 26,009,000 80.1 % 1.2 % 22,000,000
Maldives 451,738 6,000 340,000 75.3 % 0.0 % 320,000
Mongolia 3,166,244 30,000 2,000,000 63.2 % 0.1 % 1,900,000
Myanmar 54,336,138 1,000 18,000,000 33.1 % 0.8 % 16,000,000
Nepal 29,942,018 50,000 16,190,000 54.1 % 0.7 % 8,700,000
Pakistan 204,596,442 133,900 44,608,065 21.8 % 2.0 % 32,000,000
Philippines 108,106,310 2,000,000 67,000,000 62.0 % 3.0 % 62,000,000
Singapore 5,868,104 1,200,000 4,955,614 84.5 % 0.2 % 4,300,000
Sri Lanka 21,018,859 121,500 7,169,533 34.1 % 0.3 % 5,500,000
Taiwan 23,758,247 6,260,000 22,042,902 92.8 % 1.0 % 18,000,000
Tajikistan 9,292,000 2,000 3,013,256 32.4 % 0.1 % 170,000
Thailand 69,306,160 2,300,000 57,000,000 82.2 % 2.6 % 46,000,000
Timor-Leste 1,352,360 0 410,000 30.3 % 0.0 % 390,000
Turkmenistan 5,942,561 2,000 1,262,794 21.2 % 0.1 % 20,000
Uzbekistan 32,807,368 7,500 17,161,534 52.3 % 0.8 % 800,000
Vietnam 97,429,061 200,000 64,000,000 65.7 % 2.9 % 50,000,000
TOTAL ASIA 4,241,972,790 114,304,000 2,197,444,783 51.8 % 100.0 % 818,934,000

 2015: Facebook finds out Cambridge Analytica bought user data, violating Facebook’s
rules. Cambridge Analytica promises Facebook the data was deleted; they lied
 May 2015: Instant Articles launches (publishers beware)
 August 2015: Facebook Live comes into existence
 2016: Russians use Facebook to try and influence the 2016 election and no one notices
 March 2016: Zuck jogs through Beijing
 May 2016: Gizmodo reports that Facebook is suppressing conservative news through its
Trending Topics feature
 October 2016: Facebook launches Marketplace
 November 2016: Zuckerberg says fake news influencing the election was a “crazy idea”
 2017: Zuckerberg tours across America
 February 2017: Zuckerberg writes a 6,000-word manifesto about Facebook’s future
 April 2017: Facebook admits that malicious actors tried to manipulate election, but
doesn’t name Russia
 June 2017: Facebook hits two billion users
 September 2017: Facebook admits that Russians bought 3,000 political ads
 November 2017: Facebook’s general counsel testifies before Congress
 March 2018: The Cambridge Analytica data scandal is revealed by The New York
Times and the Guardian
 April 2018: Mark Zuckerberg testifies before Congress
 May 2018: Facebook starts labeling political ads; Facebook’s internal reorganization sets
the stage for the founders of Instagram and WhatsApp to leave
 September 2018: Instagram founders leave; hackers steal data from some 29 million
users
 December 2018: Facebook hits 2.3 billion users

Reachability

With more than 936 million daily active users worldwide (as of March 2015), Facebook
is easily the most popular social network out there. People often use it as a platform for
sharing useful information, advertising their products, etc. But do you know that the stuff
you share on Facebook doesn’t reach all of your friends and followers initially. It is only
visible to a small group of people, and based on their interaction, it may or may not
reach a wider audience.

Since its founding, Facebook has taken an aggressive strategy when it comes to
acquiring different companies. The most famous of Facebook's purchases
were Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014. Let’s take a look at the top companies
that Facebook has acquired over the years.

1. Instagram
[Fast Fact: Facebook purchased Instagram for $1 billion on April 9, 2012.]

Although Instagram was not generating revenue when Facebook purchased it in 2012, it
has recently been estimated to be worth $100 billion. Instagram is a social media photo-
and video-sharing platform that has generated money through on-platform
advertisements since 2013. It is not an exaggeration to say that the purchase of
Instagram transformed Facebook. First, some estimates indicate that Instagram
generates more advertising revenue than its parent company, with some indicators
suggesting that the company generates $8 billion or more in revenue per year. Further,
Instagram helped Facebook to shift its user base from the original web browser service
to an app-based service, which has also coincided with dramatic growth in the overall
number of Instagram app users over the years.

2. WhatsApp
[Fast Fact: Facebook acquired WhatsApp for a reported $19 billion on February 19,
2014.]

WhatsApp is a messaging and calling service available throughout the world. Founded
in 2009, WhatsApp was designed as a low-cost alternative to SMS services. As of this
writing, WhatsApp allows users to message and call other users of the app for no cost,
regardless of location around the globe. As of February of 2018, WhatsApp had
surpassed Instagram's user base, with about 1.5 billion active users.

For much of its history, WhatsApp generated revenue only through its initial purchase
price of $1 or, in some locations, a yearly $1 upkeep fee. Some estimatesplace
WhatsApp revenue at as high as $5 billion by 2020. However, the process of monetizing
the app beyond the initial cost and regular fees is unclear; aside from these costs,
WhatsApp remains a free messaging and calling service, and the app does not support
advertising.

3. Oculus VR
[Fast Fact: Facebook acquired Oculus VR on March 25, 2014 for a reported $2.3 billion
in cash and stock.]
Founded in 2012, Oculus VR is a technology company and one of the leaders in the
emerging virtual reality technology space. The company is best known for Oculus Rift,
its virtual reality headset hardware that was designed for video gaming. More recently,
the company has launched Oculus Go, its first stand-alone virtual reality headset which
does not require a console attachment. Although Facebook has not revealed a revenue
breakdown for Oculus, it seems clear that the company is interested in capitalizing on
this purchase in an attempt to dominate the virtual reality software and hardware
market.

Since Facebook's purchase of Oculus VR in 2014, this subsidiary has made multiple
acquisitions of its own. Perhaps the most prominent of these acquisitions was the 2015
purchase of Surreal Vision, a company specializing in 3D scene mapping
reconstruction.

4. FriendFeed
[Fast Fact: FriendFeed was one of Facebook's earliest acquisitions. This company was
purchased for $47.5 million in cash and stock on August 10, 2009.]

Although not currently an active brand of Facebook's, FriendFeed nonetheless

represents a crucial acquisition in the company's history. FriendFeed was one of the
first companies that Facebook purchased. FriendFeed served as an aggregator,
drawing together information from social media sites, blogs, and RSS-type feeds.
FriendFeed was eventually shut down in 2015, but its services and aesthetic live on in
many of the features of Facebook's News Feed, a core component of the Facebook
user experience.

5. LiveRail
[Fast Fact: Facebook purchased LiveRail on August 14, 2014 for somewhere between
$400 million and $500 million.]

Facebook acquired video ad tech company LiveRail in 2014, perhaps most likely in an
attempt to seek out new sources of revenue. LiveRail provides publishers with data and
technology related to video advertisements in order to assist them in best targeting and
reaching motivated customers. After purchasing the company, Facebook shifted some
of its focus points: it gradually diminished LiveRail Central, the company's bidding
network, and subsumed some of LiveRail's other projects into the Facebook
brand. There has been speculation that the integration of LiveRail into the Facebook
umbrella did not go as quickly or as smoothly as initially anticipated.
WHOSE INVOLVED

Facebook's Most Important People

Feb.9,2012,12:

The two most important people at Facebook are CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg.

You already knew that.

Thanks to a movie about his life, Zuckerberg is world famous.

Sandberg is getting that way. She is on track to becoming one of the world's wealthiest self-made
women.

But who are the other crucial players at Facebook? Who are the people who the company has to
do everything it can to hang onto after its $100 billion IPO?

Bret Taylor is building the Facebook phone

Wikimedia Commons

Facebook's various mobile apps are installed on over 400 million phones.

And yet, Facebook doesn't make much money at all from its mobile users.

Worse, Facebook is constantly beholden to the companies that make those phones and the
companies that makes the operating systems for those phones. Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg
publicly complained about this issue at our Ignition conference in December.

To solve these problems, Facebook is actually working on building its own phone and phone
operating system.

Bret Taylor, former Facebook CTO, is the guy leading that project.

Chris Cox is Mark Zuckerberg's soulmate, and he embodies Facebook's values.

Chris Cox has had a remarkable career at Facebook.

He led development of the News Feed and then he took over Facebook's Human Resources
department, where he crafted the company's guiding principles and turned around a poor
recruiting track record.

Because he understands where Zuckerberg wants to take Facebook, he is one of the CEO's most
trusted advisors. He is one of handful of his direct reports.
Sam Lessin designs what your Facebook profile looks like

Sam Lessin has Mark Zuckerberg's ear.

The two went to Harvard together and formed a lasting bond.

After that, Lessin founded a startup called Drop.io. It didn't really take off, and Facebook
acquired it last year - mostly to employ Lessin.

Zuckerberg immediately put Lessin in charge of one of Facebook's most important pages, the
user profile.

In the Fall, the company released "Timeline" a completely redesigned profile.

Dirk Stoop is the guy in charge of Facebook's most used product, Photos
Facebook

Underneath all the hype, Facebook is mostly just a very popular photo-sharing Web site.

On average, users upload more than 250 million photos to Facebook every day.

Back when Facebook first started allowing users to tag each other in photos in 2006, user
engagement took off like a rocket. Suddenly 70% of users started coming back every day, 85%
every week.

Engagement has slowed down a bit since then, but it's still crazy high thanks mostly to people
coming back to literally see what their friends and family are up to.

Stoop's next big challenge will be fixing Facebook photo-sharing through it's iPhone app. Right
now, it's way too slow.

Elliot Schrage manages Facebook's quarterly privacy disasters

Mark Zuckerberg is constantly pushing the boundaries on user-privacy.

This has made Facebook very popular - Zuckerberg usually knows what users want before they
do - but it has also made Facebook a nearly quarterly target of the press on privacy issues.

Global public policy boss Elliot Schrage is the sometimes sweet-talking, sometimes bullying man
who fights for Facebook's reputation in the press and in the public's eye.

Facebook is so worried about the damage the press can do to its reputation over privacy issues
that such a concern is actually listed as one of the company's "risk factors" on its IPO filing.
Schrage simply cannot afford to fail.

Carolyn Everson has to turn around Facebook's ad revenue deceleration

Source: TechCrunch

Despite a 42% increase in inventory sold and an 18% increase in rates, Facebook ad revenues are
actually decelerating.

Facebook ad sales boss Carolyn Everson has to turn that around if the company is going to
justify even the conservative, $75 billion valuation at which Facebook is expected to IPO.