The ideological leader of the Taliban, Anas Haqqani, who has family ties to the leadership of the terrorist organization, wrote that Twitter “has two important advantages over other social networks”. The first of these is freedom of expression. The second is public character and trust in the platform.

Twitter has no zero tolerance policy like Meta. Other platforms cannot replace it,
Haqqani said in an English-language post on his Twitter page.

Anas Haqqani’s tweet / Channel 24 Screenshot

Since Elon Musk took over the company last year, Twitter has fallen out of favor and has come under constant criticism. Musk’s changes in easing verification and moderation policies have led to many experts, advertisers and regular users leaving the platform amid an increase in hate speech, racism and propaganda. But the Taliban seem to like it. Two Taliban officials even bought blue verification checks. After Musk started selling them in January. They are now verified users whose posts are automatically promoted by the system in their news feeds.

Haqqani says Twitter’s biggest appeal is its soft moderation policy. After the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan and the fall of the US-backed Afghan central government in 2021, the Taliban began to rule the country. The Taliban actively uses social networks to spread their ideas.. According to Vice, some ex-fighters are complaining about how much time they now spend on the computer compared to their free past.

Although the world community weakly condemns the presence of terrorists on Elon Musk’s platform, it still cannot do anything. So besides independent journalists, government officials, activists and ordinary people, you can hear a Taliban official’s thoughts on the current state of social media. In this case, Musk “represents a lawless, profit-driven society” where money is placed above common sense, said Aram Shabanian, director of OSINT at the New Lines Institute.