Illustration by James Bareham / The Verge
In this week’s episode of “should the social network leave it up or take it down?” we have Facebook wading into another thorny moderation situation, this time in Thailand. According to a report from The Guardian, the company has removed a Facebook group with more than 1 million members after it was threatened by the Thai government for violating local laws around defaming the ruling monarch.
The group, called “Royalist Marketplace,” was created in April by academic Pavin Chachavalpongpun, a critic of the Thai government and its king, Maha Vajiralongkorn, who now lives in Japan. However, on Monday, the group was restricted based on a legal request from Thailand’s Ministry of Digital Economy and Society. The group was dedicated to…