After the ban of Facebook in china since July 2009, Mark Zuckerberg’s frequent visits to china in order to reach an agreement with the Chinese government to allow Facebook’s re entry have not been successful so far. Could this finally be the silver lining Facebook has been waiting for?

 

As per the report of New York Times, the main target of Facebook is to back to the country of China. That is why it has developed a specific tool for the censorship of data in this nation. It seems like a too much effort to go through just for one country. There were different demands of Chinese government, and all these had to be fulfilled by it. So, some questions might arise on whether it would surely be successful in having an entry to China. In fact, social media platforms in China have already made advancement. Tencent Holdings Ltd.’s WeChat, has more than 800 million monthly active users yet provides the exact same services that Facebook does.

 

Facebook spokeswomen Arielle Aryah said in an e-mailed statement that they were interested in China and were spending time to try and understand and learn more about the country. However, they have not made any decision on their approach to china and that their focus is on helping Chinese businesses and developers attain more market outside china by using their ad platform.

 

Facebook was banned in China following an incident that occurred in 2009 in Xinjiang, leading to riots. It is believed that Xinjiang independent activists were using it as part of their communications network and for the perpetuation of the riots. The government then banned Facebook in an effort to restore peace and control the flow of information.

 

This censorship tool will restrict stories from showing up in news feeds based on the users’ location. However, the social media itself will not do the task of restraining the online posts. Rather, it has a plan of providing a software system for checking all topics and stories, shared by users. The software will determine whether the posts, which are displayed on Facebook page, are really presented by users. But, till now Facebook has not given such software, and the stated idea has only been discussed for accessing China once again.

 

Facebook, which has 1.8 billion active users, wants to expand its reach around the world and is visibly ready to move heavens in order to reach an agreement that benefits both the parties. Expansion into China will allow Mark Zuckerberg to tap into the 1.3 billion populations, who are currently banned. Seems like a win – win situation.