Facebook removes group of 300,000 Pakistani women

Meta has deleted a Facebook group which offered Pakistani women a space to discuss taboo subjects in a conservative country where they speak their voices often muzzled, online or in public space, its founder told AFP on Friday.

The Soul Sisters group, created in 2013, had more than 300,000 members and “represented a lot for Pakistani women who have nowhere to turn now”, says Kanwal Ahmed, at the origin of this deleted group, according to her, Wednesday evening by Meta.

Accusations of “debaucheries”

Soul Sisters – a closed network, inaccessible to men – operates in Pakistan where arranged unions are the norm, where more than 80% of women say they have been harassed in public spaces and where one in four women say they have suffered physical violence or psychological on the part of his companion, according to the authorities.

Some accuse Soul Sisters of promoting divorce and “debauchery” by offering information on sex education, domestic violence and other subjects little discussed publicly in Pakistan.

But in 2018, Facebook selected Ms. Ahmed as one of 115 “Community Leaders” using its platform to help others, awarding her a grant.

Now Meta, the social network suspended its group on Wednesday after “a warning about an intellectual property violation”, but, says Ms. Ahmed, “without mentioning what content it related to”.

“We only have personal stories and anonymous publications,” she further pleaded, refuting this warning.
AFP has contacted Facebook for comment.

“Lost” members

Shiza, one of the members, told AFP only under her first name: “I feel lost without this group, I went there when my life was too hard.”

For Shmyla Khan, digital rights specialist, “the suspension of Soul Sisters embodies the arbitrariness and opacity of platforms and how, in a subtle way, the rules of these platforms can go against the interests of users in the Global South.”

Although Soul Sisters was apparently suspended by Meta, Pakistani authorities regularly practice online censorship. Twitter (X) has been cut off since the legislative elections of February 8, marred by allegations of manipulation.

TikTok was banned twice by authorities for “inappropriate content” until it committed to moderating its content – and officially removed more than 18 million videos in the last quarter of 2023.

And YouTube was inaccessible from 2012 to 2016 for videos deemed “blasphemous”.