Apparently, Arab governments censorship on media and internet helped by Western tech companies is not seeing an end.
Lately, reports that the Canadian tech company, Netsweeper Inc. has been providing software helps censoring LGBT+ content for homophobic governments has sparked a backlash.
One of the governments that was involved with Netsweeper is the UAE government, who has been using the Canadian company’s filters to censor LGBT+ content on the internet. In UAE and many other countries in the Middle East, homosexuality is still criminalized and coverage of LGBT+ news is also facing restrictions across most Muslim-majority countries, where entire articles have been blacked out in newspapers in addition to the lack of any Arabic content on LGBT+ issues.
Despite the fact that it violates human rights guidelines, it seems that Netsweeper financial and business ties with the UAE are worth the risk.
Several LGBT+ advocacy groups have went to speak out loud about these violations and condemn them.
Activists had also started an online petition to end the content censorship.
In their petition, they addressed the founder and chief executive officer at Netsweeper urging him to stop providing anti-LGBT+ content censorship.
“Your company is providing homophobic governments with the necessary technology to block LGBT+ content, including life-saving information on HIV/AIDS prevention.”
Not only this, the Canadian tech company was accused of taking part in blocking precious information on HIV prevention, with no response or clarification from their side.
Also, a report released earlier by Open Global Rights proves that Netsweeper has been provided financial support from the Canadian government itself.
However, the Canadian government responded to activists and agreed on reviewing the recommendations provided by them.
The Netsweeper is actually not the first tech company criticized and accused of violating freedom rights by censoring content.
In fact, it sheds light on the controversy on the internet censorship in the West that has been on the rise lately.
In a time when Twitter is being accused of liberal bias and deliberate targeting of conservatives in the west and Facebook is accused of bias by censoring Palestinian content under Israeli pressure, several reports confirmed that Twitter’s regional headquarters in Dubai has spies who work in favour of the Saudi and Emirati governments.
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