The government of Papua New Guinea has announced that the country will ban Facebook for a month to study the effects that the world’s largest social network is having on its citizens, and to crack down on “fake users.”



Less than 10% of Papua New Guinea's population of 8 million people have access to the internet, according to data from the World Bank, but the country's communication minister Sam Basil told the Post-Courier that shutting down Facebook for a month would still allow analysts in his department to study how citizens of Papua New Guinea were using the platform, among other things. Papua New Guinea’s communications minister, Sam Basil, told the newspaper that the temporary shutdown would give researchers a chance to analyze how Facebook is used in the country and to explore the development of its own social network for the nation’s citizens. “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,” he told the Post Courier newspaper in Papua New Guinea, according to The Guardian. “This will allow genuine people with real identities to use the social network responsibly.”

The move comes as Facebook is increasingly being probed by governments across the world after it emerged that the social network, which has more than 2 billion users globally, leaked the personal data of 87 million Americans to private data analysis firm Cambridge Analytica. He also suggested that Papua New Guinea could create its own social network for citizens “to use with genuine profiles.”

Aim Sinpeng, a digital media expert from the University of Sydney, told The Guardian that the vast majority of Papua New Guineans do not use Facebook, so a ban will not have a major effect on the population.
Papua New Guinea bans Facebook for a month "in order to research the social network’s effects on the population and to crack down on fake accounts."