Taliban leader endorses Elon Musk's Twitter, accuses Mark Zuckerberg's Threads of having an 'intolerant' policy on free speech

• Anas Haqqani, a Taliban official, said Twitter is more committed to "free speech" than its rivals.
• Haqqani's father founded the Haqqani Network, a US-designated foreign terrorist organization.
• "Twitter doesn't have an intolerant policy like Meta," Haqqani wrote.

A senior leader of the Taliban on Monday weighed in on the social media battle between tech billionaires Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, arguing that when it comes to social media, Twitter has some "important advantages" over the competition.

The first advantage that Twitter has "is the freedom of speech," Anas Haqqani, who helped lead Taliban negotiations with Afghanistan's former, elected government, wrote in a July 10 post. The second is its "public nature" and "credibility," he continued, adding that he's no fan of the company's chief competitor, which launched a rival application, Threads, just this month.

"Twitter doesn't have an intolerant policy like Meta," Haqqani wrote. "Other platforms cannot replace it."

Musk, a self-described "free-speech absolutist," has sought to position Twitter under his ownership as welcoming of all speech, even if controversial, as long as it's lawful. But his follow-through on that promise has come under scrutiny, with Twitter's approval rate of censorship requests from governments like Turkey and India increasing since his takeover, El Pais previously reported.

Critics slammed Musk for complying with censorship requests ahead of Turkey's presidential election, for example. Responding to the criticism, Musk said Twitter effectively has "no choice" but to honor the requests.

Twitter, which under Musk has eliminated its media relations department, did not respond to a request for comment.

Haqqani's is a controversial endorsement. In November 2019, he was released from an Afghan prison after five years behind bars as part of a prisoner swap with the Taliban. He joined Twitter about eight months later, during its previous ownership.

At the time of his release, Afghan officials described Haqqani as a computer guru who was charged with "strategic decision-making" and fundraising for the Haqqani Network, according to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, a US state-funded media outlet. Haqqani himself claims he was innocent and used as a bargaining chip.

His father, Jalaluddin Haqqani, was the founder of the Haqqani Network, which is aligned with the Taliban and was considered the "most lethal and sophisticated insurgent group" in Afghanistan during the US-led occupation, according to the National Counterterrorism Center.

In 2012, the US government designated the Haqqani Network a foreign terrorist organization. The Taliban was designated a terrorist group more than a decade earlier, following the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

The Taliban vs. Meta

Haqqani's endorsement also comes as Twitter faces stiff new competition from decentralized social media networks like Mastodon and BlueSky, which have attracted users unhappy with Musk's erratic leadership, his promotion of far-right content, and recent technical issues that have periodically made the site unusable.

But Meta's launch this week of Threads, a text-based social network built off Instagram, poses the most formidable threat to Twitter yet, with the app gaining more than 100 million registered users since its launch less than a week ago, according to the data-tracking platform Quiver Quantitative.

It is unlikely that members of designated terrorist groups will ever find a platform on Threads. Meta has banned the Taliban from Facebook, with limited exceptions, and has sought to kick off Taliban members from WhatsApp, its encrypted messaging platform.

Members of the Taliban began joining Twitter in earnest back in 2020 to reach an international, English-speaking audience, with a member of the group telling the BBC that they did not want claims about them from Afghanistan's prior, internationally recognized government to go unchallenged. The group seized power by force in August 2021, just before the final withdrawal of US troops from the country.

"The Taliban wanted to counter their propaganda and that's why we too focused ourselves on Twitter," the Taliban member said. "Social media is a powerful tool to change public perception."

Some members of the Taliban were at one point verified, or given blue checks. After Musk took over Twitter, he made blue check marks available for purchase, doing away with verification and removing them from anyone's account that didn't pay, whether or not they had been previously verified.

Taliban leaders Hedayatullah Hedayat and Abdul Haq Hammad both briefly appeared to have paid for the blue ticks, the BBC reported.

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