Facebook will launch censorship tool to return to China

[G.O.G]

Facebook developed software that will help keep certain content and news from countries that still contemplate previous censorship of their practices away.

This move reflects the company's willingness to meet the demands of the Chinese government to regain its presence in the Asian region.

The social network was banned in the country in 2009 due to the opposition of the high spheres. However, Facebook, along with many other technology companies in the United States, does not want to lose the possibility of entering a market of 1.4 billion people.

Thus, Mark Zuckerberg has even learned part of the language and has visited the country on numerous occasions to meet with top leaders.

The new tool suppresses messages from people appearing in certain geographical areas, but will not be operated directly by Facebook, according to the New York Times.

Thus, the solution will allow one or several partners, probably a Chinese company, to monitor po[CENSORED]r stories and topics on the page to have full control over whether those messages should appear in users' feeds.

In an internal event last July, Zuckerberg said that "it is better to be part of the conversation, even if it is not complete," the New York Times reports.

At the moment, there is no indication that Facebook has offered the tool to the country and, like other experiments carried out by the company, the tool could even be archived, according to newspaper sources.

China recently approved a new law on cybersecurity that gives it greater control over the Internet, including requiring the local storage of certain data and forcing any major enterprise working in the country to be subject to government security reviews.

"For a long time we have affirmed that we are interested in China and right now we are going through a process in which we are understanding and learning more about the country. However, we have not made any decisions about our approach there, "a Facebook spokesman wrote. "We are now focused on helping Chinese companies and developers to expand to new markets outside the region using our ad platform."