Whistleblower Saiyed Abdullah’s Facebook account suspended
The Facebook account of Md. Syed Abdullah, a former student of Law Department of Dhaka University, has been suspended from June 22nd 2024. This whistleblower posted several posts about Mushfiqur Rahman Ifat, who bought a goat at Tk12 lakh before the Eid-ul-Adha. Young whistleblower Syed Abdullah posted about the activities of Ifat and his identity and relationship with Matiur Rahman, a member of the National Board of Revenue (later removed although).
Violation of Facebook's policies or community standards is cited as the reason for account suspension.
Syed Abdullah, who identified himself as an activist (rights worker), said that on June 19, after publishing the relationship between Mushfiqur and Matiur on Facebook, he received a notification that someone was trying to hack into his account. Facebook was then shut down for two hours. Then it restarted. But on the morning of June 22, he found his account 'suspended'.
An e-mail was sent to Meta, the parent company of Facebook, through a public relations firm hired in Bangladesh on Sunday to find out why Syed Abdullah's account was suspended. On Monday, the public relations company said that Facebook did not agree to comment on this matter. Just stated, they don't allow three things in account suspension-1. Creating an account that belongs to someone else. 2. Using someone else's image to commit fraud and 3. Creating a page that speaks for others. However, it is not said which of these applies to Syed Abdullah. According to Syed Abdullah, multiple ‘reports’ have been made to Facebook against his account.
Stakeholders complain that Facebook is not encouraging citizen journalism; Those who speak against the corrupt cannot be protected. Instead, it suspended the account without giving any specific reason. This behavior of Facebook will encourage corrupt people.
