Facebook News & Update: Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg Willing To Create A Censored Facebook For China. Can This Censhorship Tool Be Used Against Us?

Back in 2009, China blocked its Facebook services. Analysts and insiders did not expect Facebook to come back and pursue its mission to make the world more open and connected by putting China back in the Facebook world. Facebook was originally blocked off from China in lieu of the Chinese communist government's effort to censor the Internet and its content.

Time reported that Mark Zuckerberg and his Facebook team has been working on a program that filters stories that show up in the news feeds depending on the user's location. The tool actively caters to censor certain information or posts online.

The program they created aided Facebook in getting back into China's market. According to the New York Times report, the program originally was an experiment that they plan to never put into use.

The news was surprising. It is a reflection of the practical desire of the social network giant, Facebook, to reach the market of 1.4 billion people in China. It also shows the moral compromises the company had to take to stand to its mission of connecting everyone everywhere and it definitely includes China.

China has 700 million Internet users that adds up every year, while its internet has been regressing compared to the rest of the world. That makes the country as Facebook's biggest untapped market.

Xi Jinping, president of China, made a move for a more exclusive Internet in his country. His administration has made drastic moves to filter media from the west. Such moves included banning Facebook.

Together with Facebook, Twitter was also banned in China since 2009. The country made replacement social media networks like Tencent's WeChat, which has a similar platform as Facebook, and Sina's Weibo, which is similar to Twitter.

WeChat and Weibo have become leaders is the social media market in China. Both companies had to comply with the Chinese government's censorship policies to keep their licenses and continue its operations in the country. Microsoft's Bing search engine and LinkedIn have agreed to China's censorship policies and looks like Facebook is following suit.

In an interview with Fortune magazine, a Facebook spokesperson had neither confirmed nor denied that such censorship tool exists. Facebook was previously under fire for apparently influencing the recent US presidential election for allowing the spread of fake news on its site.