Facebook shut down the official page of Syria's armed forces on Friday, prompting Syrian state newspapers to blacklist the website along with an array of states and media outlets they accuse of colluding against the country, according to CNN.
Al-Thawra, one of Syria’s three main state-run papers, accused Facebook of having “double-standards” and of “collusion with the alleged Syrian revolution." It denounced the closure of the military's page, which had more than 60,000 members, without prior notification.
On the same day, according to Al-Thawra, Facebook shut down another military group whose members reached 18,000 in its first hour.
The newspaper added that a page created by Syria's opposition had been activated, saying that this page "only serves to sow sedition" and that its number of members grew from zero to 140,000 in ten minutes, though it had been hacked by engineering students
Facebook has been instrumental for protest groups in the region, as a channel for calls for demonstrations and strikes.
Al-Thawra quoted the administrator of the Syrian military Facebook page as saying that a surprise is being prepared for Facebook in coordination with a number of programmers and engineering students. Further details were not given.
Translated from the Arabic Edition
