国际英语新闻:Thai authority warns social media giants of breaching law

BANGKOK, Aug. 26 (Xinhua) -- Thailand's Ministry of Digital Economy and Society will issue official notifications to brand name social media networks, asking them to block access to websites which are deemed to be breaching Thai law, said Minister of Digital Economy and Society Buddhipongse Punnakanta on Wednesday.

The minister said he had sought court orders to block an additional 1,024 web links including 661 Facebook links, 289 YouTube links and 69 Twitter links.

"These powerful social media giants do understand Thai law, so I hope they will comply with the Thai court's order to shut down links that breach the Thai law," said Buddhipongse.

"There are just some issues of Thailand that should not be discussed or presented in a negative manner in open websites or social media," the minister explained.

Buddhipongse said he had just received a feedback from Facebook Singapore that it will block URLs that are deemed detrimental to Thailand's image.

The Thai court had on Aug. 10, given Facebook 15 days to remove information which violates the Computer Crime Act or face legal action.

"And so today (Aug. 26) the ministry had already received an agreement from Facebook that it will remove the URLs posted into its social media page," said Buddhipongse.

The minister said that in April alone, the Digital Economy and Society Ministry received complaints about 1,365 URLs and sent letters and emails to ask Facebook to remove them, though Facebook took down only 236 links and has not yet removed the other 1,129 pages despite court orders.